My knowledge of the latest military hardware is second hand. I am a historian, not an insider, and my observations here are based on the accounts of former military and intelligence officers that are publicly available.
The world has apparently entered a new era of aerial warfare, of military history. The idea of hypersonic ballistic missiles has been around since the 1930s, but the first use of hypersonic, intermediate-range, ballistic missiles in combat was last Thursday (November 21, 2024) against a Ukrainian weapons facility in Dnipropetrovsk.1 This was in response to the use of ATACMS missiles against targets in the Bryansk Oblast in western Russia two days before (November 19, 2024). The new Russian weapon, the Oreshnik Intermediate-Range Ballistic missile, flies at mach 11, and there is no effective countermeasure in Western arsenals.
According to one source, these missiles fly so fast and their conventional payloads hits so hard, that they can approximate the advantages of a small tactical nuclear weapon without the drawbacks (i.e. radioactive contamination and fallout). Complicating things further, each missile can carry up to 6 multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), each carrying 6 smaller warheads. The Oreshnik can also carry nuclear payloads.
On August 6, 1914, barely a week into the First World War, Liege became the first target of aerial bombs in wartime. Exactly thirty-one years later, Hiroshima was the first of two targets of an atomic bombing. Dnipro now shares the distinction of being the target of the latest kind of attack from above.
Russia has said that it is putting the missile into mass production.
Note
1. Russia used the hypersonic 3M22 Zircon cruise missile against Kiev on February 7, 2024.