Exclusive: Britain has delivered long-range ‘Storm Shadow’ cruise missiles to Ukraine ahead of expected counteroffensive, sources say | CNN Politics

17 comments

  1. “The Storm Shadow has the range to strike deep into Russian-held territory in Eastern Ukraine such as Crimea”.

    “We must help Ukraine to shield its cities from Russian bombs and Iranian drones,” Sunak said at the Munich Security Conference on February 18. “And that’s why the UK will be the first country to provide Ukraine with longer-range weapons.”

    Personal opinion, if the long range weapons had been delivered months prior to now, then many more Ukrainian cities would still be intact and also more civilians would still be alive today.

  4. I wonder how many, these are not inexpensive missiles. Definitely ideal for hitting strategic targets ahead of any offensive operations though.

  5. If true, I’ll be absolutely fascinated to see what the heck the launch platform would be. It’s an air launched missile, currently only certified for British and French jets. Have they hacked it onto a MiG-29 like with the HARMs? Or have they rigged together a ground launcher like with the Brimstone missile technical? Or even secretly delivered Typhoons? (probably not)

    Edit: Confirmed now. Had a quick listen to Ben Wallace’s statement in parliament. It has been integrated onto an unspecified Ukranian aircraft

  8. For those not familiar with it Storm Shadow is a really impressive missile. According to a display at the RAF Museum on one occasion the RAF apparently fired two Storm Shadow missiles at a bunker. Aerial reconnaissance after the attack appeared to show only a single impact hole, which led to quite a bit of concern as to what had happened to the second missile. It eventually came to light that the first missile had penetrated the bunker and exploded inside, the second missile was so accurate that it flew down the hole punched by the first missile, buried itself into the floor of the bunker and then exploded.

    In addition the missile is also a low-observable (stealth) design and flies to the target at very low level, making use of terrain masking to hide from known enemy threats. Making it very hard to shoot down.

    It uses a combination of GPS and terrain profile matching to navigate to the target (so is resistant to GPS jamming) and when on final approach to the target it jettisons it’s nose cone and uses a high resolution infrared camera to visually recognise its target and guide towards it, allowing for the exceptional accuracy described above.

    As an added bonus the warhead is twice the size as ATACMS.

  10. Hopefully it wont be too long until these missiles start blowing up Russian shit. With a range of 300 kilometers this puts the entirety of occupied Ukraine, including Crimea, within range.

  11. The UK seems to be the only non-Baltic state that really wants Ukraine to unambiguously kick Russia’s ass and win the war. I wish other nations would follow their lead, including my own.

  16. Thank you Great Britain, you are my best friend,

    You are the peacekeeper, you are the legend.

  17. Proud to be living in the UK. The first country to unequivocally support Ukraine in their defence against fascist invaders, first to give tanks and now long range missiles.

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