APOCALYPSE NOW: FUTURE OF WARFARE IN THE PRESENT

Imagine a future war, not too far in the future. Say, 10 years from today. Now, take a step back and imagine the ongoing wars. You might find that the future is now.

- KAJAL BASU

The worst that our nightmares have been able to cook up for decades involves nuclear-burst clouds, radiation burns impossible to recover from, vaporization en masse, buildings standing stripped of the living.

But what we already have are missiles that can inflict nuclear-level catastrophe—without being nuclear. Russia slung one at Ukraine in the fourth week of November, causing significant devastation and flabbergasting NATO. The Oreshnik—meaning ‘hazel tree’ in Russian, a reference to its many branches sharpened to killing points with six warheads, each with six payloads—is a ‘conventional’ intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) that travels at over 14,000 kmph; it’s unstoppable by any extant antimissile technology. Its 36 warheads can be individually directed to strike different targets.

The Oreshnik stunned military strategists across the world because, at Mach 11, it beat the Mach 9.6 scramjet NASA X-43, the fastest jet-powered aircraft on record. The Russian IRBM has the range to hit all the European capitals in less than 15 minutes (but not the US, although reports suggest an intercontinental version is on the cards by 2025).

If this is the stuff of nightmares, there are petits cauchemars or little nightmares in the making, too: dragon drones. A deadly new weapon in the Russo-Ukrainian war, they spray a molten metal heated to 2,427°C—a rain of fire. Dragon drones carry thermite, a mixture of metal powder often made of aluminum and powdered everyday rust.