Ukraine’s new Flamingo cruise missile appears to include older, cheaper and easy-to-acquire components. Leftover Soviet-made free-fall bombs as warheads. And, for propulsion, a simple jet engine borrowed from a military training plane.
The inclusion of off-the-shelf components that are readily available from manufacturers in Ukraine or allied countries is good news as the Flamingo’s builder, Fire Point, aims to ramp up production to as many as seven missiles a day by next month.
There’s still a lot we don’t know about the Flamingo, including its cost. Fire Point is under official investigation in Kyiv for possibly inflating the missile’s capability and price.
Regardless of the outcome of that probe, photos and videos of the massive, seven-ton missile hint at a reliable and affordable design. A close look at the fiberglass missile’s nose seems to indicate the warhead is actually two warheads: a pair of repurposed gravity bombs packed end to end.
The Flamingo seems to be based on the FP-5 missile design from U.K. firm Milanion. The firm claims the FP-5 ranges 3,000 km with a 1,000-kg payload. There isn’t a 1,000-kg Soviet-style gravity bomb in widespread use, according to missile expert Fabian Hoffmann. So “the payload could consist of two stacked FAB-500 unguided bombs,” each weighing 500 kg, Hoffmann wrote.
The evidence points to the FAB-500 M62, one of the most ubiquitous Soviet-era unguided dumb bombs. The Soviet air force left behind potentially thousands of the bombs when it left Ukraine in 1991. Many munitions companies continue to build new FAB-500s, including Bulcomers KS in Bulgaria.
Abundant bombs
It’s not for no reason that, when the Ukrainian air force recently developed a simple precision glide-bomb similar to the Russian UMPK, it used old FAB-500 M62s as the basis—and added pop-out wings and satellite guidance.
With end-to-end FAB-500s, a Flamingo should be able to strike with the equivalent of 550 kg of TNT, Hoffmann estimated. That “is substantially more than the long-range drones and mini-cruise missiles Ukraine currently employs.”
Satellite imagery from the aftermath of the first confirmed Flamingo raid, targeting a Russian intelligence and hovercraft base in occupied Crimea on Aug. 30, depicts a large crater and other damage that may confirm Hoffmann’s assessment.
The ramp-launched Flamingo depends on a simple rocket booster to get it off the ground—and, it seems, an Ivchenko AI-25TL turbofan engine to propel the giant missile as fast as 950 km/hr. The AI-25TL, which powers Aero L-39 jet trainers and other aircraft, produces 1,850 kg of thrust.
An L-39 weighs five tons, which is two tons less than a Flamingo weighs. But the L-39 must be maneuverable, where the Flamingo is expected to fly a simple course at steady speed under inertial and satellite guidance. The AI-25TL is more than adequate—and, more importantly, it’s in production in Ukraine with firm Motor Sich. It’s priced to move at around $40,000 per engine.
With a low-cost warhead and equally affordable engine, a Flamingo might cost less than $1 million. That’s quite low for a long-range heavy cruise missile. A Russian Kh-101 or American Tomahawk both cost several times as much.
The Flamingo could change the deep-strike math for Ukraine. The new missile “has so much range and such a big warhead that that’s one of the important ones that could really make a difference,” Finnish analyst Joni Askola said.
And if the missile really is as cheap as it appears to be, Fire Point may actually be able to ramp up production to seven missiles a day.
