Ukrainian Cruise Missile Development and Deployment

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Good points. They are clearly going for the big dumb , unsophisticated approach; probably inspired by drone thousands production runs. They have a big stock of bombs and the engine is well known. Almost 3000 L-39 have been built, and 9000 engines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aero_L-39_Albatroshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivchenko_AI-25
https://www.politico.eu/article/fla...putin-donald-trump-volodymyr-zelenskyy-drone/
That is Ukraine’s strongest security guarantee. If it can field 3,000 to 5,000 of these (and similar) missiles, ready within 24 to 48 hours to destroy upward of 25% of Russia’s economic output, further Russian aggression becomes untenable.
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timmymagic said:
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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Wow, that warhead size is growing, 1,150kg (~2,530lb) now.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1958788689720385750
View: https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1958788689720385750
 
Defense Updates has put out a video about Ukraine's new Flamingo cruise-missile:


As we all know, several moves are being made to end the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
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President Donald Trump has met Russian President Putin in Alaska and has held follow-up discussions with several key European leaders, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But Ukraine is not letting its guard down and is continuing to develop new weapons.
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A Ukrainian defense company has unveiled the nation’s latest long-range cruise missile, the “Flamingo,” which is reportedly moving into serial production. The development was revealed through photographs taken on August 18 by Associated Press photographer Efrem Lukatsky and circulated on social media.The images, captured inside the production facility of manufacture - Fire Point, show the missile in the assembly phase.
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According to Lukatsky, the Flamingo is designed to strike targets at ranges exceeding 1,864 miles— almost twice the range of the latest Tomahawk Block 5 cruise missile with its 1000 mile range.

In this video, Defense Updates analyzes why Ukraine’s new Flamingo missile is an alarming prospect for Russia?
#defenseupdates #flamingo #ukrainerussiawar
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Chapters:
0:00 TITLE
00:11 INTRODUCTION
01:26 SPONSORSHIP - NordVPN
02:00 BACKGROUND
03:12 FLAMINGO
05:53 ANALYSIS
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The Ukrainian military changes their tactic on cruise missiles.
Instead hitting infrastructure and factory from time to time.
Now they do daily bombardment of Oil refinery, pipeline pump stations and oil loading port.
This disrupt seriously Russia inland gasoline distribution and export of Gas & Oil by Ship or pipeline.
Since Oil and Gas export is only income for Russian state in moment.

Will be this Russian "Achilles tendon" a turning point in this war ?
hard to tell, but the Russians standing in long lines at Gas station for Petrol, will question their Leader...
How this will evolve once Flamingo fly in September gonna be interesting.
 
Michel Van said:
The Ukrainian military changes their tactic on cruise missiles.
Instead hitting infrastructure and factory from time to time.
Now they do daily bombardment of Oil refinery, pipeline pump stations and oil loading port.
This disrupt seriously Russia inland gasoline distribution and export of Gas & Oil by Ship or pipeline.
Since Oil and Gas export is only income for Russian state in moment.

Will be this Russian "Achilles tendon" a turning point in this war ?
hard to tell, but the Russians standing in long lines at Gas station for Petrol, will question their Leader...
How this will evolve once Flamingo fly in September gonna be interesting.
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This will probaly also evolve into attacking any possible production facility within its range after some time.
 
Michel Van said:
The Ukrainian military changes their tactic on cruise missiles.
Instead hitting infrastructure and factory from time to time.
Now they do daily bombardment of Oil refinery, pipeline pump stations and oil loading port.
This disrupt seriously Russia inland gasoline distribution and export of Gas & Oil by Ship or pipeline.
Since Oil and Gas export is only income for Russian state in moment.

Will be this Russian "Achilles tendon" a turning point in this war ?
hard to tell, but the Russians standing in long lines at Gas station for Petrol, will question their Leader...
How this will evolve once Flamingo fly in September gonna be interesting.
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I think they'll wait until they have a large number and launch large scale attacks infrequently to ensure the quantity is sufficient to get through and do major damage, probably aiming to destroy the most expensive things possible.
 
Hi,

I'd wish to share one of Col (ret) Michel Goya's latest blog articles.
Michel GOYA is a well-known French military historian, aclaimed author, and expert, etc.

GOYA Michel, "Le pouvoir égalisateur des flamants roses," lavoiedelepee (blog), Aug. 25th 2025, https://lavoiedelepee.blogspot.com/2025/08/le-pouvoir-egalisateur-des-flamants.html

In this blog article, Goya details why the new kid on the block, Pink Flamingo (PF), might be the game-changer in this war. Should it be successful, and Goya explains why he thinks so, this cruise missile might renew the debate on the use of tactical nuclear weapons by the Russian goverment.

This article is worth reading in this perspective.

Automated translation extracts (cherry picks) :

For the price of a single American Tomahawk Block IV or V missile, one could in fact obtain perhaps five Flamingos – providing twelve times more explosive payload, launched a thousand kilometers farther, with somewhat less precision but still more than sufficient. With a production rate of 200 units per month – more than the combined output of all ballistic and cruise missiles by Russia – and possibly even more if European allies contribute, the leap in Ukraine’s deep-strike capability could be as significant as Russia’s short-range boost with their thousands of glide bombs.
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Ukraine’s strike power is already substantial up to about 500 km, with Ukrainian systems such as the modified R-360 Neptune or the HRIM-2 ballistic missile, as well as the air-to-surface and surface-to-surface weapons supplied by the Allies when their use is authorized. Beyond that range, Ukrainians have had to rely on drones converted into quasi-cruise missiles. This was effective, but limited by the payload capacity of those drones, far smaller than that of a missile or a fighter-bomber. Nearly as important as the FP-5 Flamingo, the Ukrainian company Fire Point – likely partnered with the British-Emirati Milanion – had already developed, by spring 2025, the FP-1 drone, capable of carrying a 60 to 120 kg warhead over 1,600 km, at low cost, with an announced production capacity of 3,000 per month. Adding 200 Flamingos on top of that would mean, with just these two types of munitions, every two weeks, a deep-strike capacity equivalent in explosive power to the smallest American nuclear bomb model, the B-61 (mod 12 at 0.3 kt), but more effective thanks to its precision and dispersion.
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Currently, Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign has already been painful for Russia since 2022. It damages the economy, particularly by hitting refineries, and slows down the Russian war machine – but it has not been decisive in the sense of fundamentally altering the overall balance of power. With this new strike force, if it indeed lives up to its promises, Ukraine – a country whose defense budget in 2021 represented only 10% of France’s – would be capable of truly devastating all of the strategic infrastructure of a country as vast as Russia. The consequences could be considerable if Russia fails to find a countermeasure.
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(…)
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It is important to understand that such an effective deep-strike campaign would be a first for Russia. In terms of the sheer volume of explosives deliverable, Ukraine’s strike force is likely inferior to that of the Luftwaffe engaged in the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1944, but it far surpasses it in both range and precision. More importantly, most of the Soviet Union’s strategic infrastructure was out of reach for German medium bombers, whereas 70% of present-day Russia’s infrastructure lies within the Flamingo’s strike envelope. German aviation could not achieve decisive effects, but Ukrainian drones and missiles can – and thus could trigger reflection on the potential use of nuclear weapons.
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Strictly speaking, such a large-scale conventional deep-strike campaign could indeed justify Russia’s first use of nuclear weapons, provided it is deemed to “threaten the existence of the State” – a notion not so different in essence from that of vital interests. Can the destruction of a large portion of the energy infrastructure, military production complexes, air bases, command centers, etc., be considered a threat to the State’s existence? Perhaps. It would be more evident if such an attack came in one blow, as a surprise, causing a major shock – but there will not be one massive Flamingo strike, only many smaller ones, none of which alone would justify a nuclear response. Thus, one could remain, like the slowly boiling frog, unable to react. The use of nuclear weapons, probably for the sake of de-escalation, will nonetheless almost certainly be considered – and, in any case, publicly suggested in order to frighten the enemy and its allies. The problem is that it will frighten everyone, except perhaps North Korea, including powerful allies such as China, or near-allies like the United States. Would it be worth becoming an international pariah? That is far from certain – but nobody really knows.
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All this also means that a country ranked 50th in the world in GDP in 2021 (29th in purchasing power parity) will have managed to develop a conventional deep-strike force capable of very seriously threatening a country like Russia. It is not the same as a nuclear force in terms of deterrence, but ultimately, it is not very far from it.
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etc.

A.
 
Things don’t add up with the Flamingo. Anyone seriously believes they can source and refurbish so many Jet engines per week is dreaming. Of all components jet engine is the choke point and near imposible to scale production refurbishment in any quantity.



"We did not want to go public with this one, but it seems to be the right time. Flamingo is the long-range cruise missile that can carry a 1,150 kilogram warhead and fly into Russia for 3,000 kilometers,” Iryna Terekh, the company's CEO and technical director, told POLITICO in an interview from her office.

Well, a Tomahawk missile weighs around 1,500kg, with a warhead weighing 450kg. Its Williams 407-415 engine only weighs about 45-65kg, and it measures roughly 6.2 meters with a booster.

If Ukraine is to use the IVECHENKO AI-25TL, we’re talking about a 300kg engine.

From the photos and videos released, the missile doesn’t seem to be less than 8-12 meters long, which would mean a fuselage weight of around 600kg for 5T.

With a warhead of 1,150kg, the total weight would be over 2,000kg. An old, high-thrust engine like the IVECHENKO would probably consume quite a bit of fuel. I asked AI to estimate the fuel consumption of the IVECHENKO AI-25TL for 1,000km at cruise speed with a 5-ton payload. The estimate was about 900kg of fuel for that distance.

Considering the 3,000km mentioned by the CEO and including fuel weight, we’re talking roughly 2,700kg of fuel alone, which puts the missile at around 5-5.5 tons and at least 10 meters long, flying at about 0.6-0.8 Mach.

There’s nothing on the market besides anti-ship missiles that fits this description and that’s exactly because such a missile would be ineffective. It would make the missile expensive, big, slow, and easy to intercept.

Could the missile use a more modern engine? Possibly. But the most abundant engine the Ukrainians likely have is this one, even if the external turbine, implied by this engine, increases drag and fuel consumption.

Things just don’t add up with the announced missile. There’s more involved that hasn’t been disclosed, or perhaps the whole story is a well-crafted bluff by Ukrainian intelligence, which has been working very effectively in this war.''
 
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I question Ukraine’s cost per missile and build rates for both the FP-1 and -5. The published numbers seem quite fantastical, dare I say made up. I have little doubt they can be made in relevant numbers for less money than typical western missiles - they seem to make a lot of trade offs in performance for the sake of simplicity. But if the quantity claimed were achieved, it is hard to imagine there would still be a working refinery inside FP-1 range.

An additional problem I see is that if if Al-25s are used as an off the shelf power plant, the inventory is likely very finite. Are these even produced anymore?
 
Josh_TN said:
I question Ukraine’s cost per missile and build rates for both the FP-1 and -5. The published numbers seem quite fantastical, dare I say made up. I have little doubt they can be made in relevant numbers for less money than typical western missiles - they seem to make a lot of trade offs in performance for the sake of simplicity. But if the quantity claimed were achieved, it is hard to imagine there would still be a working refinery inside FP-1 range.

An additional problem I see is that if if Al-25s are used as an off the shelf power plant, the inventory is likely very finite. Are these even produced anymore?
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Flamingo size and engine requirements suggest its an expensive missile , numbers are with 100% certainty made up , for a moment take a look at how many Tomahawks can be built per year in production line by worlds only super power a production line that is not stressed by a bombing campaign ,they are claiming more produced per month.
 
Mr.T said:
Things don’t add up with the Flamingo. Anyone seriously believes they can source and refurbish so many Jet engines per week is dreaming. Of all components jet engine is the choke point and near imposible to scale production refurbishment in any quantity.
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Engine is indigenous from Motor Sich ,and still in production apparently.

Mr.T said:
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Honestly Ukraine's greatest strength is its parasite economy, the host is outside Ukraine , so tic for tac attacks can be sustained even while Russians can always hit back and cause substantially more damage, this does not affect the host on which parasite feeds , so Ukraine can effectively be reduced to Gaza like landscape and sustain some operations ,while host for weapons and money remains whole. Well question is how much ordinary Ukrainians are willing to take for the benefit of Highly Enriched Ukrainian elites' bank accounts and how much Euro elites are willing to tax their populations and wreck our economies to sustain it.
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Well so far they've shown they are willing to take a lot not to benefit the highly enriched one in Moscow whom they have not voted for, kuddo to them.
 
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galgot said:
Engine is indigenous from Motor Sich ,and still in production apparently.


Well so far they've shown they are willing to take a lot not to benefit the highly enriched one in Moscow they have not voted for, kuddo to them.
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Moto Sich is is very close to front lines, was bombed out already 3 years ago so production capacity what is left of it is likely small to nonexistant , much more sensible option for missile building is restoring engines from the boneyard than new production , end of the day they need to last 3-4 working hours but still lots of work needed to get them up and running and no one is refurbishing hundreds of them

Well its not like they have much of a say in it , google their polls
 
The Flamingo is pretty close in overall specs from the MGM-13 MACE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM-13_Mace
Their jet engines are comparable, and that Mk.28 thermonuclear warhead weighed a ton.
(I knew that one of the many 1950's US cruise missiles would be similar enough - there were so many of them !)
 
The Economist reports details on Ukraine’s new “Flamingo” cruise missile: developed in just 9 months after the U.S. declined to provide Tomahawks, it is now in serial production. Built 90% domestically with a fiberglass body and AI-25 engine, production runs at 1 missile per day, expected to rise to 7 daily by October.
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So 200/month or 1,200/year by October for FP-5s.
https://twitter.com/x/status/1961330634963439871
View: https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1961330634963439871
 
When it comes to numbers Ukrainan claims numbers are absolute bull , Flamingo , if the stats in terms of warhead are real its a massive 5 tone missile , with 3000L of fuel and an engine only available from a scrapyard. No they are not making even now revised 1 per day engines are just not there . AL-25 might have been built en masse but that does not equate to them being available in working order to Ukraine in any numbers.
 
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For 150mio ,a local 'entrepreneur' will sell you a modified S-200 missile

Ukraine is developing a space program with the Boy Launcher launch vehicle, created at Yuzhmash for the British company Orbit Boy.
The rocket will launch from an Il-76 aircraft using a parachute system, capable of launching up to 200 kg of cargo into orbit.
The first launch is possible in 2025, provided that $150 million in investments are attracted.
Ukrainian industry can also create a more powerful rocket for loads up to 700 kg in 3–4 years.

79268af406332eac.png


Ukrainan Space program
2025-08-29_18h17_31.png
 
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Mr.T said:
When it comes to numbers Ukrainan claims numbers are absolute bull , Flamingo , if the stats in terms of warhead are real its a massive 5 tone missile , with 3000L of fuel and an engine only available from a scrapyard. No they are not making even now revised 1 per day engines are just not there . AL-25 might have been built en masse but that does not equate to them being available in working order to Ukraine in any numbers.
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It requires only 1700 liters of fuel to cover a distance of 3000 km, based on the SFC of the AL-25 engine.
And the declared MTOW is 6 tons.
 
Mr.T said:
When it comes to numbers Ukrainan claims numbers are absolute bull , Flamingo , if the stats in terms of warhead are real its a massive 5 tone missile , with 3000L of fuel and an engine only available from a scrapyard. No they are not making even now revised 1 per day engines are just not there . AL-25 might have been built en masse but that does not equate to them being available in working order to Ukraine in any numbers.
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The published datasheet (post #17) put MTOW at 6 tons.
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/th...-development-and-deployment.43094/post-822940
Mr.T said:
Well its not like they have much of a say in it , google their polls
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If they lose they'll never have a say in anything.
 
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Mr.T said:
When it comes to numbers Ukrainan claims numbers are absolute bull , Flamingo , if the stats in terms of warhead are real its a massive 5 tone missile , with 3000L of fuel and an engine only available from a scrapyard. No they are not making even now revised 1 per day engines are just not there . AL-25 might have been built en masse but that does not equate to them being available in working order to Ukraine in any numbers.
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I believe the stated launch weight is in fact six tons, which I find believable. Production numbers I do question, unless there is an external source for engines, not necessarily limited to the L-39s. I wonder if a J85 would suffice, or some other western equivalent. The U.S. would be awash in the former, especially as it retires T38.

At a guess: more than one engine type is probably in play, in order to tap multiple sources domestic and foreign.
 
Josh_TN said:
I am pro Ukraine in this conflict, but I think their numbers for any given metric should be treated with about the same level of distrust as Russian sources.
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Same, Ukraine is at war with, and propaganda is part of it, from both side. One shouldn't be surprised if everything, capabilities/productions/ranges of things are inflated anyway.
Still good for them if they can make any number of long range heavy fast drones/cruise missiles.

As for Ukrainians having no say... just recently their own government backpedaled on a law about independence of anti-corruption offices when people went to the street. Would love to see that happening in Moscow.
 
Seems like the whole Fire Point (company behind the Flamingo) thing is ultimately a scam run by associates of the Ukrainian president, according to Kyiv Independent. I'm honestly less surprised that this alleged wunderwaffe and it's company are a way to siphon off government funding than I would have thought.

https://kyivindependent.com/exclusi...mingo-cruise-missile-facing-corruption-probe/
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau, or NABU, is also looking into the co-owner of President Volodymyr Zelensky's former film studio as the alleged ultimate beneficiary of the company, sources said.
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As part of the investigation, NABU is probing concerns that Fire Point inflated either the value of its components or the number of drones it delivers to the military, or both, according to the sources, who include current and former government officials and industry representatives, all of whom agreed to speak on condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation and company details.
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The two industry sources allege that within a short time after formation in 2023, the company was turning out barely functional drones while receiving massive preferential funding from the government.
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Note that the construction material is fiberglass, which doesn't cost much, is abundant and easy to work with. Somewhere I red that the ukrainians bet Shahed production cost by manufacturing drones out of plywood - like goddamn RCS models.
 
Nothing in the missile is hard or expensive to make other than the engine. It's a fiberglass fuselage, arduino and ardupilot for controls, an old soviet aerial bomb for warhead, and an off-the shelf jet engine. If they had a limitless supply of engines, they should be able to make a dozen a day or more without breaking a sweat.

The big question is then the engine supply. They are absolutely not making 7 new engines a day. Or even one. But a total of something like 10k AI-25:s have been built, the type being in service in jet trainers in like 30 air forces and popular for civilian aviators. If they are sourcing engines that are old enough to be kind of iffy for flying people but still usable for a single missile flight, and not giving them full overhauls but just a little tune-up, I can believe in high production rates until the supplies run out.

When will that happen? Who the fuck knows. I suspect a lot depends on whether the engines that got end-of-lifed were mostly trashed, parted out, or just stored somewhere, and in what conditions.

Mr.T said:
for a moment take a look at how many Tomahawks can be built per year in production line by worlds only super power a production line that is not stressed by a bombing campaign ,they are claiming more produced per month.
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That's a really bullshit comparison. A Tomahawk is a high-end weapons platform that is dramatically more sophisticated in so many different ways. This is just a civilian engine and avionics bolted to a frame you can turn out like sausages.

Like a modern V-1, as alluded to above.
 
I'm no expert but to me Flamingo doesn't look expensive to make. Its sophistication, complexity, reliability and 'pushing the envelope' tech that costs. For sure turbojets are the bit that can't be tooled up for production in a hurry, and in that respect the Ukrainian missile production numbers look like propaganda. It would be interesting to put a figure on the total number of turbojets they have rather than a production rate.
In a war situation I would say that weapons development proceeds at ten times the pace of a peacetime program. Flaws are tolerated as 'the better is the enemy of the good enough'.
 
I suspect the cost is higher than claimed but far below what a western cruise missile costs. If it uses end of life turbofans and off the shelf bombs, then that is two major subassemblies right there. The electronics are peanuts. The aero shell and tail control surfaces are probably the biggest expense, depending and money/work requirements for the engines.

I still doubt the production figure however; just making a missile body that large has to take some time.
 
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