A lengthy article by Jobst Landgrebe, written at the end of 2024, explains in more detail than he gave in an interview aired Jan. 2, 2025 with Kontrafunk, the use of MHD in most of Russia’s hypersonic weapons, including the innovative Oreshnik. While MHD was well known in the 1950s in the United States, it, along with a crash program for developing fusion energy, with which it was then closely associated, was largely abandoned by a succession of U.S. administrations. This was never the case in Russia.
Landgrebe explains that the technology is integral to all of the Russian weaponry that travels at a speed of Mach 8 or more. When the missile reaches the appropriate speed, the heat generated creates a plasma around it. Electricity, generated by an electric dynamo on the missile, is used to create a magnetic field which then operates on the air-plasma. This field modulates the wave pattern at the front and rear of the rocket to make it less steep, to smooth it out, which reduces the pressure and the heat that is proportional to it. This modulation of the ionized air also accelerates the rocket by means of the Lorentz force which transforms the magnetic field into mechanical energy of the ionized air particles.