Mach 10 Hypersonic Strike That NATO Could Not Stop | Col. Douglas Macgregor скачать в хорошем качестве

Mach 10 Hypersonic Strike That NATO Could Not Stop | Col. Douglas Macgregor

Russia’s Oreshnik hypersonic strike on November 21, 2024, was not simply another battlefield event in the Ukraine conflict. It was a calculated strategic shock designed to deliver a message to NATO that diplomacy alone could no longer convey. Traveling at nearly 7,600 miles per hour, the missile carried Russian red lines in kinetic form—fast, precise, and impossible to intercept. At 23:23 Ukrainian time, an Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile launched from Russia’s Astrakhan region and crossed 800 kilometers in under eight minutes. Six conventional warheads struck a military-industrial facility in Dnipro with pinpoint accuracy. No Ukrainian air defense system responded. No NATO-supplied interceptor attempted engagement. The reason was simple and devastating: no existing Western defense technology can intercept hypersonic re-entry vehicles traveling at Mach 10 while maneuvering unpredictably. Within hours, Vladimir Putin addressed the nation, issuing a statement that left no room for ambiguity. Russia considers itself entitled to strike military facilities of countries whose weapons are used against Russian territory. The strike was not a warning shot—it was proof of capability. Oreshnik represents a fundamental shift in modern warfare. Unlike traditional ballistic missiles that follow predictable arcs, hypersonic weapons maneuver at extreme speeds, rendering NATO’s integrated air and missile defense architecture obsolete. Western defense systems were designed for a different era, one where reaction time and trajectory prediction still mattered. Hypersonic warfare eliminates both. Most destabilizing is the weapon’s conventional payload. By delivering destruction comparable to tactical nuclear weapons without crossing the nuclear threshold, Russia has bypassed the deterrence logic that governed global stability for decades. NATO’s nuclear doctrine assumes that strategic destruction requires nuclear escalation. Oreshnik proves that assumption wrong. The implications are profound. Russian hypersonic weapons can strike any target within a 3,000-kilometer radius—command centers, airfields, military headquarters—without warning and without fear of interception. NATO, by contrast, lacks both comparable offensive capability and effective defensive protection. This creates a strategic imbalance where Russia can escalate at will while NATO cannot respond without risking catastrophic nuclear confrontation. European security calculations are now fundamentally altered. French and British nuclear deterrents lose relevance if command-and-control systems can be destroyed before authorization. American security guarantees appear hollow when U.S. defenses cannot protect European allies from conventional hypersonic strikes. For Ukraine, the consequences are even starker. Hypersonic dominance eliminates meaningful defensive planning and renders Western military aid strategically irrelevant. Systems can be destroyed faster than they can be deployed. Oreshnik did not just strike a target. It shattered assumptions, collapsed deterrence stability, and marked the beginning of a new era in warfare—one where speed replaces numbers, technology replaces doctrine, and hypersonic weapons decide strategic outcomes before diplomacy can react.