As the premiers gather in Washington and the exhausted armies struggle on the front line, Ukraine has brought out another new weapon – a cruise missile reportedly dubbed the “Flamingo”, which might finally give Kyiv the reach and striking power to carry the war deep into Russia’s heartland.
Pictures of the Flamingo were released yesterday by Associated Press photojournalist Efrem Lukatsky, who is Ukrainian, along with the assertion that the missile is in series production by the company Fire Point. The Flamingo appears to be closely modelled on the FP-5 design exhibited by Milanion, a UAE-headquartered defence contractor which has supplied the Ukrainian forces before and which often sets up local manufacturing of its products in customer nations.
If the Flamingo is indeed FP-5 based it is a cruise missile: essentially an unmanned jet aeroplane which flies to its target at high subsonic speeds. The Flamingo is a big beast, with a six-metre wingspan and weighing in at six tonnes including a one tonne warhead. With a reported range of 3,000km it could strike anywhere in central Russia – easily reaching Moscow or St Petersburg, or even some distance into Siberia.
Vladimir Putin’s continued hold on power has been enabled in significant part by the fact that he has been able to shield the more privileged Russians – often residents of Moscow and St Petersburg – from the worst impacts of the war. The soldiers being killed and injured in such huge numbers on the Ukrainian lines have often been Tatars, Chechens or other non-Russian ethnic groups from poor rural areas – or outright foreigners from North Korea and other places. The use of conscripts in combat has mostly been avoided, and only small numbers of relatively low-powered Ukrainian drones have struck Moscow, with the main effect being disrupted flights.
The Flamingo could potentially change that, and visit the same sort of destruction on Putin’s core cities as Russian weapons have on those of Ukraine. Blowing up civilians on purpose is a war crime, but there would doubtless be plenty of genuine military targets to be found.
The trouble is that the Flamingo, as a cruise missile, is essentially just a faster drone. Like all drones it will be relatively easy to shoot down, and Russian air defences – particularly those of Moscow – are formidable. To defeat them, the Ukrainians will need to send in large numbers of Flamingos, accompanied by as many decoys as possible. To be realistic and convince the Russians, the decoys will need to be fast and jet-powered as much as possible. The main known example of a fast, jet-powered decoy is the American-made Miniature Air-Launched Decoy (MALD), which Ukraine can launch from its Mig-29 Soviet-era fighters or its Western supplied F-16s. The MALD has 900km plus range, and so could reach Moscow.
If the Ukrainians can muster enough Flamingos, MALDs, other drones and electronic warfare assets – and perhaps ease their path with other ploys such as special-ops raids against Russian air-defence radars – they may be able to strike deep and carry the war to Putin’s privileged elite. The history of the war so far is a testament to Ukrainian aggression and ingenuity.
And if the pampered Muscovites start to suffer, Putin’s support base may weaken. Many commentators remember how the end of the Soviet regime’s war in Afghanistan was hastened by the organised, grieving mothers of the fallen, and have been puzzled that no such movement has emerged in response to Putin’s hugely bloodier war in Ukraine.
But that’s a lot of “ifs”, and it would be bold to say the Flamingo alone could change the course of the war. It’s really more significant as an example of Ukraine building its own high-technology weapons, not needing them to be donated by other nations, and not needing to use low-tech workarounds like the petrol-engined propellor drones which have managed to hit Moscow in small numbers in the past.
When Ukraine can send out hundreds of Flamingos and locally-made MALDs, backed by modern electronic warfare assets in numbers – and decent numbers of hard-to-stop ballistic weapons – then things will look very different.
The war is changing for the better. The question is, is it changing fast enough?
As the premiers gather in Washington and the exhausted armies struggle on the front line, Ukraine has brought out another new weapon – a cruise missile reportedly dubbed the “Flamingo”, which might finally give Kyiv the reach and striking power to carry the war deep into Russia’s heartland.
Pictures of the Flamingo were released yesterday by Associated Press photojournalist Efrem Lukatsky, who is Ukrainian, along with the assertion that the missile is in series production by the company Fire Point. The Flamingo appears to be closely modelled on the FP-5 design exhibited by Milanion, a UAE-headquartered defence contractor which has supplied the Ukrainian forces before and which often sets up local manufacturing of its products in customer nations.
If the Flamingo is indeed FP-5 based it is a cruise missile: essentially an unmanned jet aeroplane which flies to its target at high subsonic speeds. The Flamingo is a big beast, with a six-metre wingspan and weighing in at six tonnes including a one tonne warhead. With a reported range of 3,000km it could strike anywhere in central Russia – easily reaching Moscow or St Petersburg, or even some distance into Siberia.
Vladimir Putin’s continued hold on power has been enabled in significant part by the fact that he has been able to shield the more privileged Russians – often residents of Moscow and St Petersburg – from the worst impacts of the war. The soldiers being killed and injured in such huge numbers on the Ukrainian lines have often been Tatars, Chechens or other non-Russian ethnic groups from poor rural areas – or outright foreigners from North Korea and other places. The use of conscripts in combat has mostly been avoided, and only small numbers of relatively low-powered Ukrainian drones have struck Moscow, with the main effect being disrupted flights.
The Flamingo could potentially change that, and visit the same sort of destruction on Putin’s core cities as Russian weapons have on those of Ukraine. Blowing up civilians on purpose is a war crime, but there would doubtless be plenty of genuine military targets to be found.
The trouble is that the Flamingo, as a cruise missile, is essentially just a faster drone. Like all drones it will be relatively easy to shoot down, and Russian air defences – particularly those of Moscow – are formidable. To defeat them, the Ukrainians will need to send in large numbers of Flamingos, accompanied by as many decoys as possible. To be realistic and convince the Russians, the decoys will need to be fast and jet-powered as much as possible. The main known example of a fast, jet-powered decoy is the American-made Miniature Air-Launched Decoy (MALD), which Ukraine can launch from its Mig-29 Soviet-era fighters or its Western supplied F-16s. The MALD has 900km plus range, and so could reach Moscow.
If the Ukrainians can muster enough Flamingos, MALDs, other drones and electronic warfare assets – and perhaps ease their path with other ploys such as special-ops raids against Russian air-defence radars – they may be able to strike deep and carry the war to Putin’s privileged elite. The history of the war so far is a testament to Ukrainian aggression and ingenuity.
And if the pampered Muscovites start to suffer, Putin’s support base may weaken. Many commentators remember how the end of the Soviet regime’s war in Afghanistan was hastened by the organised, grieving mothers of the fallen, and have been puzzled that no such movement has emerged in response to Putin’s hugely bloodier war in Ukraine.
But that’s a lot of “ifs”, and it would be bold to say the Flamingo alone could change the course of the war. It’s really more significant as an example of Ukraine building its own high-technology weapons, not needing them to be donated by other nations, and not needing to use low-tech workarounds like the petrol-engined propellor drones which have managed to hit Moscow in small numbers in the past.
When Ukraine can send out hundreds of Flamingos and locally-made MALDs, backed by modern electronic warfare assets in numbers – and decent numbers of hard-to-stop ballistic weapons – then things will look very different.
The war is changing for the better. The question is, is it changing fast enough?