Ukrainian Cruise Missile Development and Deployment

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Forest Green

Forest Green

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/davida...sile-that-could-strike-halfway-across-russia/
This isn’t just speculation. In one of his last interviews before Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky fired him on Sunday, disgraced former Ukrainian defense minister Oleksiy Reznikov said that, in order to hit targets deep inside Russia proper, Ukraine’s military needs a munition capable of traveling 2,000 kilometers. That’s 1,240 miles, roughly a third the distance across Russia from east to west.
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https://en.defence-ua.com/analysis/...and_what_it_will_be_able_to_achieve-6985.html
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Scale model of a Ukrainian Korshun-2 cruise missile in development
 
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And if produced, such a development would only give a signal to Russia to hit back across the whole country taking the conflict outwith its current regional confines :/
 
This article seems to be from last year but nobody noticed:

https://armyrecognition.com/focus-a...rim-2-missile-hits-russian-target-700-km-away
According to Igor Sushko on November 3, 2023, Ukraine deployed an improved variant of its Hrim-2 short-range ballistic missile system, successfully striking a Russian target at a range of 700 km. This surprising revelation came from Brigadier General Serhiy Baranov, head of the Main Directorate of Missile Forces and Artillery and Unmanned Systems of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, during an interview with Armiya FM.
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Dilandu said:
It's "Grim-2" not "Hrim-2". Grim (ukr) - Grom (rus) - Thunder (eng)
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No, it is Hrim. In Ukrainian (just like in Slovak, Czech, Belarusian and Southern Russian dialects) the Proto-Slavic voiced velar stop *g has been lenited to a voiced spirant (a voiced laryngeal spirant [ɦ] like in the English word hill in Ukrainian, Slovak and Czech, a voiced velar spirant [] like the Dutch pronunciation of <g> in Belarusian and Southern Russian). In Ukrainian, the voiced velar stop /g/ (written with the Cyrillic letter <ґ> and romanised <g>) only exists in recent, mostly Polish, loanwords and the Cyrillic letter <г> should be pronounced similarly to the English word-initial /h/. This voiced laryngeal spirant then also contrasts with the voiceless velar spirant /x/ (the same as the German Ach-Laut and Russian <х>), written with the Cyrillic letter <x> and romanised in widely different ways, including <kh>, <x>, <ch> and <h'>. It should also be noted that while an opposition between /g/ and /h/ exists in Ukrainian, it does not exist in Surzhyk where there only exists /h/ (in opposition to /x/) which causes many "Russian-speaking" Ukrainians being completely unable to pronounce a voiced velar spirant [g].
 
Based on the 3.4KN engine, I'd say this is more cruise missile than drone.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1829620350076022814
View: https://x.com/DanielR33187703/status/1829620350076022814

https://twitter.com/x/status/1829620352764498212
View: https://x.com/DanielR33187703/status/1829620352764498212

https://twitter.com/x/status/1829620361564209493
View: https://x.com/DanielR33187703/status/1829620361564209493

https://twitter.com/x/status/1829620367662727308
View: https://x.com/DanielR33187703/status/1829620367662727308


https://twitter.com/x/status/1829620373203403169
View: https://x.com/DanielR33187703/status/1829620373203403169


https://twitter.com/x/status/1829620379041792368
View: https://x.com/DanielR33187703/status/1829620379041792368


https://twitter.com/x/status/1829620383965958440
View: https://x.com/DanielR33187703/status/1829620383965958440


https://twitter.com/x/status/1830016790258467081
View: https://x.com/DanielR33187703/status/1830016790258467081
 
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I find it mildly funny how Ukraine, out of need, is turning into a blue Iran of sorts.

Large MIC was too expensive, too vulnerable and overall too corrupt and disfunctional.

Dispersed off the shelf jihad, however, is almost unstoppable. Israel still struggles to suppress Gaza, after well over a year, despite total blockade, electricity blackout and even direct starvation.
Good luck suppressing Ukraine.
 
I wonder what engine it uses; it must be something beefy already in production. Does Ukraine have any active turbine production or are all it cruise missiles using western engines? I believe they made a lot of turbines pre war going back to Soviet days.
 
Josh_TN said:
I wonder what engine it uses; it must be something beefy already in production. Does Ukraine have any active turbine production or are all it cruise missiles using western engines? I believe they made a lot of turbines pre war going back to Soviet days.
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Could be something surplus -- this article calls out a couple of Western European candidates (unreheated Adour being the most likely, IMO) or the Ukrainian AI-25, mass produced for the L-39 trainer.

https://en.defence-ua.com/analysis/...aines_fp_5_flamingo_cruise_missile-15526.html
 
Archibald said:
That what it takes to get 3000 km range. By present cruise missile standards that's huge; and order of magnitude comparable with 1950's big cruise missiles.
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That 1,000kg warhead is going to make a mess when it hits though. Also, would not want to try shoot it down with the internal cannon on a fighter.
 
I wonder how expensive such a huge missile is? It’s probably almost twice the MTOW of the USAF incr 1 CCAs, though obviously the avionics and construction are far less expensive. The claimed build rate of 50/month seems rather fantastic. At a minimum I would guess that means someone has a pile of compatible turbofans just lying around. Perhaps they are directly repurposed from aircraft or represent engines that have reached end of life but were not yet discarded?

The top speed seems to be kinda high subsonic - are the straight wings just to ease production? I would think it fast enough to benefit from a wing sweep.
 
Forest Green said:
That 1,000kg warhead is going to make a mess when it hits though. Also, would not want to try shoot it down with the internal cannon on a fighter.
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It's a much bigger targetthan the small prop planes the UAF use for their long range drones right now, but it’s also a lot faster. I wager that gun intercepts will pretty much be off the table completely.

And yeah, a 2000 pound warhead is going to fuck things up. You hit a distillation column with that, and it will not punch a hole; It will annihilate it.

Likewise I wouldn’t want to be around when they sling this at a factory, or a munitions depot.
 
Look at the size of this thing....called the Flamingo as due to an error in the factory it came out pink at first...

They're currently making 1 per day with the aim of hitting 7 per day in October this year!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1958491939210166634
View: https://x.com/ChungTzuW/status/1958491939210166634

More details below. The FP-5 Flamingo is built by Fire Point, who already make the FP-1 OWE at a rate of 100 per day, reportedly responsible for 60% of Ukraine's long range drone strikes.

Lots of photos in AP's article, including a photo of production with at least 6-7 FP-5 under construction/assembly, with 3-4 mounted on trailers ready to go (or so it appears).

Over 3,000km range, 14m CEP with a warhead of 1,150kg....that covers a lot of targets...

To note...the Shahed production lines at Alabuga, Uralgavonzavod at Nizhny Tagil, Gunpowder factory at Perm, Tank factory at Omsk...are all easily in range of this....with a further range extension of 500km it would reach Tomsk and Novosibirsk...

Unfortunately, the aircraft factories at Irkutsk, Ulan Ude and Komsomolsk on Amur are not in range...

And this thing will wreck refineries....

Things are going to get very interesting....

https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-drones-weapons-industry-russia-7201ab851544c394ee454407058b10ba
 
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MihoshiK said:
Milanion Group FP5 cruise missile.... I wonder who is behind the Flamingo cruise missile here. DAMN YOU PERFIDIOUS BRITAIN
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https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mila...unch-cruise-activity-7298629645388660737-gLDG
https://armyrecognition.com/news/ae...-magia-swarm-intelligence-system-at-idex-2025
From 6 months ago...

Genuinely never heard of them before....an odd set up....they are registered at Companies House though...but they look like some sort of UAE based start up that markets others products...
 
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timmymagic said:
Who knows for sure with numbers...for what its worth I don't think these are the 479th and 480th made...with a production rate of 1 per day that would mean they've been in production for 16 months...and the Ukrainian's have no signs to date of hoarding weapons to use en masse later...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1958468672810324417
View: https://x.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1958468672810324417
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Agree broadly, but Ukraine has on occasion mounted huge strikes. Those three ammunition depots last year involved nearly a hundred missiles each, to hear the Russians tell it. Probably a lot of that is decoys and Russian inflation of numbers, but there were enough impact points that it seems low dozens were involved in each attack, with the total at least approaching a hundred.
 
The warhead looks like something from the FAB series but I’m not familiar enough with Soviet bombs to say definitely. But it would make sense to use off the shelf free fall bombs that were not otherwise useful. I think the engine is probably canibalized from an existing supply as well. That would handle some of the major sub assemblies for the weapon.
 
Josh_TN said:
The warhead looks like something from the FAB series but I’m not familiar enough with Soviet bombs to say definitely. But it would make sense to use off the shelf free fall bombs that were not otherwise useful. I think the engine is probably canibalized from an existing supply as well. That would handle some of the major sub assemblies for the weapon.
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Looks like you weren't off the mark on the Ukrainian usage of FABs...
https://twitter.com/x/status/1958562813699309817
View: https://x.com/John_A_Ridge/status/1958562813699309817
 
That explains the claimed production times - they are grabbing a preexisting bomb and pre existing engine and building and aero shell around it. Guidance electronics are probably easy to build from commercial components and the wings are probably fixed with no moving parts. The tail surfaces and guidance section are probably the only mildly complicated assembly.

The external shots look more like aluminum than carbon fiber to me, by I’m just glancing at small pics on twitter.
 
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