The missile fired by Russia at Ukraine last week, hailed by Putin as a new kind of experimental hypersonic weapon, was actually an application of old technology used for many years in intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), six military experts told Reuters.

An examination by two of these experts of the debris recovered from the new intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), known in Russian as the Oreshnik, or hazel tree, showed how it dropped multiple payloads across the target area, a characteristic of ICBMs.

After the missile strike, Putin said the Oreshnik was hypersonic and could not be intercepted. But Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California, noted that all ballistic missiles of that range are hypersonic, and that missile interceptors such as Israel’s Arrow 3 and the U.S. SM-3 Block 2A were designed to destroy them.