Not for the reason that first salvos of Russia’s 2022 invasion has Ukraine’s protection trade sounded so enthusiastic a couple of weapon manufactured on its soil. The successes of Ukrainian protection know-how are well-known; as The Cipher Transient reported final month, the nation is now broadly believed to have the world’s most revolutionary protection sector. Its drone know-how specifically continues to earn rave opinions from consultants and western protection firms alike.
However the Flamingo is one thing completely different – a missile with a reported vary of 1800 miles and the power to hold greater than 2,000 kilos of munitions, that means that in a single strike it might trigger larger injury than even a swarm of drones. In comparison with the top-class American Tomahawk cruise missile, the Flamingo is believed to be much less correct however with an analogous vary and a a lot heavier payload. And since it’s manufactured in Ukraine, the Flamingo could be launched in opposition to Russian targets with out Western-imposed restrictions.
“The Flamingo may very well be a sport changer,” Gen. Petraeus mentioned on the Cipher Transient’s annual Menace Convention final month. “You add that functionality to what Ukraine has already completed,” he mentioned, referring to the latest drone marketing campaign in opposition to Russia’s oil sector, “and [the Flamingo] will lengthen this dramatically.”
Zelensky mentioned final month that the Flamingos had carried out their first missions, together with a three-missile assault on a Russian safety base in northern Crimea. Final week, Ukraine’s Normal Workers mentioned it had used Flamingos as a part of a strike that focused “a number of dozen” army and infrastructure websites inside Russia and in occupied Crimea.
The Flamingo’s producer, the Ukrainian agency Hearth Level, claims to be producing between 1-2 missiles per day, with plans to scale to 7 per day by yr’s finish, for a 2026 projected whole of greater than 2,500. “By December we’ll have many extra of them,” Zelensky instructed reporters in August. “And by the top of December or in January–February, mass manufacturing ought to start.”
Consultants say each a type of missiles will dwarf the facility of a drone weapon.
“With the drone-strike marketing campaign, you have got the problem that they principally carry pretty small warheads,” John Hardie, Deputy Director of the Russia program on the Basis for Protection of Democracies (FDD), instructed The Cipher Transient. “The injury is much lower than you could possibly do with a one-time warhead that’s carried by the Flamingo.”
All of which raises the query: Would possibly the Flamingo change the course of the battle?
How the Flamingo was born
Even by the lofty requirements of Ukraine’s latest defense-tech achievements, the Flamingo’s origin story is an inspiring one. And it dates to the final days of the Chilly Conflict.
Within the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, Ukraine agreed to surrender not solely its nuclear weapons but in addition its appreciable arsenal of Kh-55 cruise missiles. And after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, whereas Zelensky and different Ukrainian leaders pressed continually – and with blended success – for western weaponry and safety ensures, in addition they started turbocharging their home protection trade.
“Ukrainians had been authors of the Soviet area program and rocket program,” Oleksiy Goncharenko, a member of Ukraine’s Parliament, instructed The Cipher Transient. “When you have got a variety of expertise and when your persons are good sufficient, then the result’s apparent. You’ve gotten applied sciences which different international locations respect.”
For greater than three years, nonetheless, Ukraine remained largely depending on Western international locations for high-end, long-range strike capabilities. That led to the creation of a made-in-Ukraine cruise missile program.
The result’s the FP-5 Flamingo, developed by Hearth Level, a former casting company that spun itself right into a protection agency in the summertime of 2022. In 2023, Hearth Level produced its first FP-1 assault drones, finally turning out 200 FP-1s that yr; this yr the determine is anticipated to hit 20,000. Its cruise missile mission has moved at an analogous warp pace: in August, lower than a yr after it started work on the cruise missile, the corporate was exhibiting off the prototype; quickly after that, the primary Flamingos had been flying.
“We got here up with it fairly quick,” Iryna Terekh, the corporate’s 33-year-old Chief Technical Officer, instructed Politico. “It took lower than 9 months to develop it from an thought to its first profitable exams on the battlefield.”
Terekh and different Ukrainian protection entrepreneurs converse usually about how the Russian invasion has motivated their work – what Goncharenko calls “the unlucky inspiration of battle.” Terekh fled a Russian-occupied village close to Kyiv within the early days of the battle, and says her automotive nonetheless has a gap from a Russian bullet. She joined FirePoint as a companion in June 2023.
Ralph Goff, a former Senior Intelligence Govt on the CIA, calls the Flamingo manufacturing story “fight Darwinism at its greatest.”
“If the West is not going to provide them the long-range weaponry that they wish to perform their strategic assaults, they’re going to develop them themselves,” Goff instructed the October Cipher Transient convention. The Flamingo, he mentioned, “is a severe piece of offensive weaponry.”
As for the missile’s uncommon identify, that traces to an in-house story at Hearth Level, in regards to the day when somebody painted a strong rocket booster prototype pink, in a nod to the ladies concerned within the male-dominated world of weapons manufacturing. Later, when the missiles had been prepared for testing, the corporate wanted a brilliant coloration to assist find post-launch particles. Pink paint was out there – and that led to the Flamingo moniker. The Pink has gone – missiles utilized in precise strikes are coloured much less conspicuously – however “Flamingo” caught.
“You don’t want a scary identify for a missile that may fly 3,000 kilometers,” Terekh mentioned. “The primary aim is for a missile to be efficient.”
Want a each day dose of actuality on nationwide and world safety points? Subscriber to The Cipher Transient’s Nightcap e-newsletter, delivering skilled insights on right now’s occasions – proper to your inbox. Join free right now.
Actuality test
If Hearth Level’s claims are borne out, the Flamingo may have a attain and energy on par with western cruise missiles, and an arsenal to match any European nation’s apart from Russia.
Consultants warn that behind that “If” lie a number of issues – most of them attributable to the truth that there was minimal impartial verification of the corporate’s claims.
“Within the protection trade, it’s simpler to make statements than to truly implement them,” Ukrainian lawmaker Roman Kostenko mentioned of the Flamingo’s potential, talking to Radio NV final month.
One problem includes accuracy, which consultants say Hearth Level needed to sacrifice to a level in its push for a low-cost, fast-to-market weapon. Within the Crimea strike, one missile reportedly landed some 100 meters from its goal.
“As a result of it is low-cost, you type of skimp on a number of the extra high-end options you may see in a extra beautiful missile, steering and accuracy being one in every of them,” Hardie mentioned. “It is a comparatively inaccurate missile at the least by fashionable requirements.” However he added that if the tempo of producing finally yields the excessive numbers Hearth Level has promised, then “that tradeoff [high volume for accuracy] is sensible.”
Balazs Jarabik, a former European Union diplomat and analyst for RPolitik, has studied the Flamingo mission since its early days. He doubts that Hearth Level can attain its manufacturing targets.
“The Flamingo is actual, however the manufacturing capability is overstated, at the least to date,” Jarabik instructed The Cipher Transient. He famous that an earlier Ukrainian-made missile, the Neptune, has but to achieve its promised scale, and that for all its defense-sector successes, Ukraine should cope with wartime supply-chain points that might bedevil any weapons producers. He and Hardie mentioned that scaling to a whole bunch of Flamingos per 30 days would require constant provides of all the things from engines to warheads to electronics for steering methods.
“I am just a little skeptical, but it surely’s attainable the Ukrainians will get there,” Hardie mentioned, and Gen. Petraeus mentioned that the Ukrainians “actually need to double down” on the tempo of the Flamingo manufacturing. “They’re making an attempt to get that into full manufacturing.”
Hearth Level should achieve this whereas Russia targets Ukraine’s younger protection firms in addition to the nation’s vitality infrastructure. The latter is important, given the protection sector’s excessive demand for vitality. For one piece of the Flamingo provide chain, the corporate has already discovered a workaround: in September, Hearth Level introduced that Denmark had agreed to produce gas for the Flamingo, successfully eradicating a key manufacturing facility from the battle zone. The announcement provoked a warning from the Kremlin, which referred to as the Danish plans “hostile.”
That response raises the query of Russian retaliation – a priority that has accompanied the supply of just about each new weapons system to the Ukrainian facet. Some consultants concern that any profitable, high-impact Flamingo strike in opposition to Russia, carried out with assist from Western intelligence – the destruction of a weapons manufacturing unit deep in Russian territory, for instance – would danger a NATO-Russia combat that the West has been determined to keep away from. Others doubt that Vladimir Putin has any curiosity – at the least not within the present second – in any escalation that may result in battle with the West.
“The Russians have been constantly extra bark than chew,” Hardie mentioned. “They know that attacking a NATO nation in an overt army method – not the type of gray-zone, below-the-threshold-of-war stuff they have been doing, however an overt army missile strike – that is an act of battle. And Putin would not need any a part of a direct standard combat with america and NATO allies.”
Are you Subscribed to The Cipher Transient’s Digital Channel on YouTube? There isn’t any higher place to get clear views from deeply skilled nationwide safety consultants.
What to look at for
Even analysts who’re skeptical in regards to the Flamingo’s future word that it will take only some profitable strikes to inflict extreme injury, and that if Hearth Level can get wherever near its 2500-missile-per-year pledge for 2026, the battlefield influence might be profound. Past the Russian oil refineries and different vitality services the Ukrainians have attacked currently, the Flamingo will put extra army targets in vary as nicely. The holy grail may be the joint Russia-Iran manufacturing facility in Tatarstan that’s turning out the lethal Shahed drones, at a scale that the Ukrainians should envy.
Consultants say that with a whole bunch of Flamingos on the prepared, Ukraine may obtain what Jarabik refers to as “mass saturation,” a capability to deliver a heavy and various drone-and-missile risk to army and vitality targets throughout all of European Russia.
“When you’re Ukraine,” Hardie mentioned, “you need to have the ability to mix these missiles and drones into a fancy strike bundle a lot because the Russians are presently doing, and preserve the Russian air protection on its toes.”
“The Flamingo is heavy, and it’s additionally comparatively straightforward to shoot down,” Jarabik mentioned. “And they also will want mass saturation – a variety of these missiles, however with drones or different weapons too, to get by to the targets. They will have to provide sufficient that they’ll have a sustained influence, …and I do not suppose we’ll be there anytime quickly.”
Then Jarabik added: “All that mentioned, it’s important to acknowledge Ukraine’s innovation and talent. And I feel [the Flamingo] is an enormous factor. Completely.”
As for the accuracy issues, Ukrainian officers famous that whereas one of many Flamingos fired at Crimea did miss its mark, the 2 others leveled a barracks and introduced a “large harmful energy,” with craters measuring 15 meters in diameter.
Nobody is touting the Flamingo as a alternative for the array of Western missiles which were delivered to Kyiv. The Ukrainians will nonetheless covet the German Taurus, and the British-French Storm Shadow/Scalp cruise missiles, that are extra correct, although they arrive with situations hooked up to their use. The range and quantity of weapons methods, consultants say, are what might make an actual distinction. And the Flamingo provides a robust new ingredient to the Ukrainian arsenal.
“Nobody system or weapon goes to be the decisive sport changer,” Hardie mentioned. “I do not suppose there’s any such factor as a surprise weapon. That being mentioned, for a supporter of Ukraine, it is actually encouraging to see Ukraine with the ability to transfer out by itself extra by way of long-range strike capabilities. They’re taking these steps ahead and actually taking it to the Russians proper now with this marketing campaign in opposition to vitality infrastructure. That is been spectacular to see and I feel it type of augurs extra to return. So if I had been the Russians, I’d be nervous about that.”
Learn extra expert-driven nationwide safety insights, perspective and evaluation in The Cipher Transient as a result of Nationwide Safety is Everybody’s Enterprise.
