What you need to know about intercontinental ballistic missilespublished at 11:03 Greenwich Mean Time
Chris Partridge
BBC weapons analyst
Intercontinental ballistic missiles are a throwback to the Cold War between the then Soviet Union and the West – when fear of nuclear war dominated military doctrine for much of the 20th century.
ICBMs largely remain in the arsenals of the United States, Russia and a handful of other countries, within an international regulatory framework. ICBMs are strategic weapons in that they are designed to deliver nuclear warheads, but they can also be equipped with conventional explosives and can travel several thousand kilometers at high speed, making interception difficult.
There is no indication that a nuclear warhead was used or deployed in today’s incident.
Image source, Russian Ministry of DefenseImage caption,
A test launch of an ICBM in Astrakhan, Russia, is shown in this video from April
If what the Ukrainian Air Force says is actually the case, then this is the first time an ICBM has been launched in anger during a conflict.
There is no word yet from Moscow, which earlier this week threatened consequences with Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied ATACMS missiles and British Storm Shadow cruise missiles on the territory of the Russian Federation.
It is worth noting that all weapons entering Ukraine formally become Ukrainian owned and managed by the Ukrainian military. But clear terms of use remain for fear of conflict escalation.
This two-and-a-half-year war has led to a constant barrage of missile and drone attacks on Ukraine, and Kiev’s moves into Russia’s Kursk region earlier this year took the war to a new level.
We have no independent confirmation that an ICBM was fired in this latest attack by Russia, but debris from exploded weapons often appears online shortly afterwards and from there it can often be determined which weapons were likely used.
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