Russian Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

i think this is more of a macro threat-in-being type "weapon" that does better just sitting home doing nothing. it seems to me the idea would be the prospect of infinite flight duration pressures defenders to make exorbitant investments into air defense coverage. you're getting practical effects out of the weapon as long as it's costing you less to build and maintain this credibility than the adversary is spending trying to counter its potential.
credibility is the big problem here though.

Signalers of the Russian 35th Combined Arms Army, Forces Group "East," have begun using SNARK-120R satellite communications stations. The SNARK-120R satellite stations are designed for the rapid establishment of broadband satellite communications in the field. The SNARK mobile communications systems are a completely Russian development. SNARK stations are manufactured by the Race Group of Companies in the Moscow Region.
The SNARK-120R portable satellite communications systems can be set up in 10 minutes and are also used in civilian applications.

mack8 said:

The bombers and subs capable of launching similar conventional missiles are few in numbers and vulnerable to detection and countering by the enemy, plus they have to get closer to the target since no russian ALCM i can think of has that kind of range yet.

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I think the Kh-BD ALCM is supposed to have like 6500 km range. Far enough. Kalibr-M when it enters service will be 4500km.

The problem is the bombers are huge and easy to track with reconnaissance satellite constellations.

mack8 said:

The proliferation of ABM systems increasing the vulnerability of ICBMs and SLBMs to reach their targets in the numbers required for MAD.

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Modern Russian ICBMs and SLBMs use quick ascent and depressed trajectory. Not that easy to intercept. Space based interceptors will likely fail, as will mid-course high altitude ones. Maybe the terminal ones can do it, but only until the Russians get manueverable warheads. Which they are working on.
Relying on terminal interception is expensive like hell anyway. You need a huge number of very expensive systems.

I estimate that the drive is based on the further development of the high-temperature electrothermal reactors Topas or Yenisei, built about 40 years ago for the Legend reconnaissance satellites. It was assumed that a variant for a jet engine would be developed for them. However, the thermal power was only 150 kW, (electric less than 10 kW) which would probably be too little for the Burevestnik. The Russians had to increase the power by at least one order of magnitude and reduce the weight (Topas was around 1000 kg).
These reactors contained about 11 kg of highly enriched U 235 to 90%. Quite dangerous goods in the event of an unplanned landing, right? I would be quite interested to see how the Russians solved the safe landing in the wake of this test.
Otherwise, probably a very good engineering feat. Yes, the Russians can make reactors.