The British Storm Shadow missile can hit targets more than 150 miles away with pinpoint accuracy.
The cruise missile is so precise that in its first use, during the 2003 Gulf War, one Storm Shadow punched a hole in the side of a building and then another one followed through the same hole.
The UK recently supplied Kyiv with an undisclosed number of the missiles, putting in range Russian military infrastructure that had been out of reach so far.
Meanwhile, the US is mulling supplying Ukraine with the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, which has a range of 190 miles. Washington has so far not sent the missiles to Kyiv out of fear that they may be used to hit targets inside Russian territory, thus escalating the war.
Ukraine’s heavy use of the Storm Shadow missiles over recent weeks has indicated it has lots of targets to hit within Russian-occupied parts of the country.
Before the British cruise missile, Ukraine’s missile offensive largely depended on US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (Himars). The truck-based weapon has a strike range of at most 50 miles.
An effective weapons system
While Himars forced Russia to pull supplies and bases back from front lines to avoid being hit, Storm Shadow has compelled Moscow to rethink its logistics, said the report in the Wall Street Journal.
In June, Ukraine used Storm Shadows to cripple a bridge that Russia relied on to supply its troops in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia region.
Days earlier, the missile destroyed a large Russian ammunition stockpile near the village of Ryokove.
Official Russian press and social-media channels have carried accounts of how Storm Shadow has struck buildings across occupied parts of Ukraine and even killed a Russian general.
The US Army’s acquisition chief Doug Bush said Ukrainian forces have been very good at linking intelligence data with high-precision, long-range strikes.
In May, Ukrainian defense minister Oleksiy Reznikov said Storm Shadow has a 100% success rate in hitting its intended target. A Russian-installed official in occupied Ukraine told Russian state news agency TASS that the missile is “hard to shoot down”.
Unequalled precision
- Storm Shadow and Scalp are produced by a British-French-Italian company, MBDA. They use a mix of guidance systems that help them evade enemy jamming, maneuver and reach their targets.
- Ukraine is launching the missile from Sukhoi fighter jets, the first time it has been carried by a non-Western aircraft.
- Unlike better known US Tomahawk cruise missiles, which are often fired in large salvos, Storm Shadow is designed to be fired in small numbers to hit very specific targets, such as the ones Ukraine has focused on.
- It can be set for delayed detonation, allowing it to penetrate a fortification or building and only explode once deep inside, providing a better chance of killing human targets such as soldiers or military officials.
- The capability is linked to a challenge that designers set for themselves, according to a person involved in the missile’s development: Letting military planners capitalise on potential intelligence, like word that Iraqi dictator Hussein was in a bathroom deep inside one of his palaces.
Not an endless supply
The UK has been in the forefront of supplying Ukraine with the weapons it needs to push back Russian forces.
It was the first to dispatch anti-tank missiles to Kyiv. The UK was also the first to send its Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine, which prompted the US and other allies to follow suit. The British Storm Shadow is the longest range missile that Ukraine currently has.
France, which produces a twin version of the missile called Scalp, said it is considering sending the longer-range missiles.
Germany continues to refrain from supplying long-range missiles because of concerns over Russian escalation.
Britain hasn’t said how many Storm Shadows it has sent. It had roughly 822 Storm Shadows in its arsenal before the start of the war. In 2011, the Royal Air Force told Britain’s Parliament that each Storm Shadow cost the equivalent of more than $1 million today.
Defense experts, though, say that its very existence in Ukraine’s arsenal, no matter how many, will have been enough to force Russia to move its supply chain further away from the front line.
“It holds a range of Russian critical dependencies at risk: fuel, ammunition dumps, command and control bunkers, and other high-value targets,” Jack Watling, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank in London, wrote in a paper on the weapon.
(With inputs from agencies)