Russia readies new 500-mile missile as weapon expert warns of 'terminal end game surprises'

Moscow is preparing for a final test of a new ballistic missile capable of striking targets hundreds of miles away and potentially maneuvering in ways that could challenge Ukraine’s already strained air defenses, a defense analyst warned Monday.

The warning comes as Ukrainian military officials said that Russia could conduct the test in the coming months and potentially in live-fire strikes.

"According to our estimates, Russia plans to conduct final tests of a new type of ballistic missile with a range of up to 800 km by the end of this year," Vadym Skibitskyi, deputy head of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU), said at a meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Interparliamentary Council, according to Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda.

"If, for instance, this 800-kilometer missile has more advanced maneuverability, well then that's going to create greater problems for Ukraine in that they're going to need the more sophisticated interceptors to get them," Tom Karako , director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Fox News Digital.

RUSSIA DEPLOYS NORTH KOREAN MISSILE UNIT TO UKRAINE; MOSCOW-PYONGYANG AXIS DEEPENS: REPORT "This means terminal maneuvers that weave a little bit so that the defender doesn't quite know where it's going or what trajectory it will have," Karako said.

"Another possibility is that they just figured out a way to make some kind of 800-kilometer missile more cheaply or in large numbers," the expert said of the Russians.

Karako said developments in precision-guided munitions, along with a broader shift away from unguided weaponry, could offer clues about the type of missile Russia will launch.

NEXT-GENERATION MISSILE DEFENSE AT MISSION SPEED "Everyone is going for increased maneuverability," Karako explained.

"Just about every gravity bomb that we have has some kind of terminal guidance for precision," he said, specifically of the U.S. arsenal.

"In a similar way, a moment's not too far in the future where you don't really have that many purely ballistic missiles." "You have things that may be ballistic for a good part of their path, but are also equipped with maneuvering reentry vehicles or some kind of terminal end game surprises," he warned.

Meanwhile, according to Ukraine's DIU, Russian forces may try to strike targets in western Ukraine during the missile tests as a live-fire demonstration, which Karako said is standard practice in wartime.

"This is a business-as-usual arrangement where you might do lots of developmental testing and then formally field and then have your operational testing," the expert said.