Date: Wednesday, 21 January 2026
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/americas-top-missile-scientist-says
https://theduran.com/americas-top-missile-scientist-says-russias-oreshnik-is
America’s top missile-scientist says Russia’s Oreshnik is ‘uninterceptible’.
19 January 2026, posted by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8rblc8LNPA&t=2997s
“Theodore Postol: The Secrets of Russia's Oreshnik Missile”
Glenn Diesen, 19 January 2026, interviews Ted Postol
49:58
How difficult is it to inter intercept the Oreshnik? There's no interception. This thing is
50:03
not interceptable. people who are talking about intercepting it because there are ways
50:08
of uh there's no intercepting it and the reason you wouldn't be able to intercept it is because of the trajectory it
50:15
takes. It has this high trajectory. It releases the um uh the warhead at a
50:23
um uh at a uh a very high altitude. It
50:29
releases the warheads at a very high altitude. Can you see again where the the
50:35
go here? [PICTURES]
50:57
So you have you the the the munition uh accelerates
51:03
to about nearly 4 kilometers per second. In one minute,
51:10
if you're here in the defensive area, what can you do about it? Now it coasts
51:15
to a very high altitude. It's close to 750 kilometers altitude. I mean that's tremendous.
51:22
It reorients itself at some point. You can do it anywhere along this trajectory and then deploys the canisters.
51:30
So now you have can — So you have six separate canisters, you know, moving away from the body.
51:38
How are you going to reach them? This thing is coming in at 4 kilometers uh or second uh and it's taking minutes
51:47
to come in. You're going to launch interceptors. Those interceptors are going to take minutes to get out.
51:52
They're only traveling at maybe a couple of kilometers per second. By that time,
51:57
the canisters will have released the submunitions. So, where's the defense? This is, you
52:04
know, there is no defense. There's no way you could put together a defense against this thing. You know, it's it's
52:11
a pipe dream. It's just something that someone who has no who hasn't done any
52:17
simple arithmetic uh will come up with and make a claim. It's just not true. There's no way you
52:23
can. There's no — the speeds and distances just don't allow you to launch any
52:28
interceptors at this thing. And once the submunitions are off, what are you going to —you’re going to try to hit the submunition that's traveling at three
52:35
and a three three and a half kilometers per second uh above the atmosphere. You're going to going to launch an
52:41
interceptor at each submunition. It's ridiculous. There is no defense against this. So, it does have that effect.
52:50
And you know in Iskander, there potentially potentially could be intercepted, but uh
52:57
I think if you look at the situation with the Iskander, it really can't be intercepted because the Russians know
53:04
uh I I should have I I can I should have put some we know that if you maneuver
53:13
intentionally as the Iskander can do, the Patriot interceptor will not be able to
53:19
match the lateral motions of the incoming Iskander and hence it won't be able to intercept
53:27
it. That's why the intercept rates are so low. So the Iskander is potentially interceptable
53:34
with with a low probability of intercept but not zero. But the iscander is a zero
53:40
probability of intercept. So, so the iscander though is or
53:45
is is not a um uh
53:50
is not something that can be easily intercepted either. It's basically a missile that's nearly impossible to
53:56
intercept with current systems and with essentially any new systems that I can
54:02
imagine. So I've been asked uh to go to Poland in
54:08
March and give a talk at a missile defense conference and I have tried to tell the people at this conference or
54:16
holding a conference at a military university there that I'm going to disappoint the audience because what I'm
54:21
going to tell the audience is you can't do any kind of missile defense against these ballistic targets. You can shoot
54:27
down airplanes, drones, airplanes, um hypersonic missiles. No. Uh but uh
54:36
the speeds of these things are too much too high a speed. The closing speeds are
54:41
much too high for a uh a standard interceptor like a Patriot or anything
54:48
that looks like uh anything like an air defense interceptor to to be able to
54:54
maneuver and hit. There's just no way to do it. There's no techn — You can't see the target early enough to maneuver. You
55:02
can't see the target with enough precision to know exactly where it is as it's coming at you at far enough range.
55:10
You just don't have time to maneuver to hit it. It's just that simple. Hypersonic missiles are not going to be
55:16
subject to air defense intercepts. Well, this is interesting because Putin
55:22
recently made the comment that the United States or NATO forced his hand in
55:30
terms of developing this weapon. So essentially, yeah, Washington became the author of this as uh the Russians warned
55:38
ever since um Bush withdrew from the anti-ballistic missile treaty back in
55:44
2002 that uh if if NATO was going to establish this uh um ballistic missile …
MY COMMENTS:
As Postol makes clear, the Oreshnik and the Iskander can carry nuclear warheads but Russia isn’t doing that now.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
