When and because Russian's started to develop doomsday weapons.

"Status-6 Oceanic Multipurpose System" seems to be huge salted nuclear bomb similar to the the cobalt-salted doomsday bomb in the movie Dr. Strangelove. The goal of is to contaminate wast areas for long time.

"9M730 Burevestnik" is experimental nuclear powered, nuclear armed cruise missile. The US had similar crazy doomsday weapon development program (SLAM and project Pluto in the 60's). Nuclear powered ramjet is insane compared to ICBM. When you use it, you don't care abut contaminating the launch site or anything between launch site and target.

These kinds of weapons can be used only as retaliation when all hope is lost and you want to kill hundreds of millions of civilians and make wast areas inhabitable. Russian early warning system has deteriorated as well, so they need something like that.

So the unintended consequence of ballistic missile defence (which could probably do very little to stop an all out Russian attack) is that your opponent creates even worse weapons that are impervious to ballistic missile defence.

Typically for "logic" in such matter the arguments used by both sides make complete sense but the result is insanity.

The goal of the US ballistic missile defense is defend against a limited ICBM attack and regional missile threats. US ballistic missile defense program can't defend against large scale Russian attack. Defending against large scale attack has never been the goal of the program, nor is it a realistic goal.

Russians use the US BMDS it partly as an excuse. Russians can easily compensate against any BMDS development by adding little steeper arch to their ICBM's or adding more countermeasures.

Maybe they're worried about their capability to retaliate - US BMDS maybe can not defend against full Russian arsenal but it may be successful against limited retaliation (if most of Russian arsenal gets wiped out in first strike).

This does make perfect sense. They're holding up the M in MAD by creating these kinds of weapons. They're no different than ICBM subs in that they ensure the ability to strike back.

I find the comments about nuclear ramjets being dirty laughable. If you're shooting nukes you're in a situation where whether or not some area is contaminated it the least of your concerns.

The article refers to this as a “Doomsday Navigator” too but that was the word I dropped to meet the character limit for submissions.

Apparently the previous versions just weren’t that scary

Aren't all nuclear weapons doomsday weapons?

I tend to associate it with devices that would literally end the world (e.g. very large cobalt-salted thermonuclear bombs).