What Is The Uniqueness Of The First Strike Of The Ukrainian Flamingo Missile?

• 3.09.2025, 12:59

An analysis of the Ukrainian officer.

Ukrainian Flamingo missiles have hit Russian targets in temporarily occupied Crimea. On August 30, the missiles struck a border outpost run by the Russian Federal Security Service and a patrol boat base near Armyansk.

Russian air defense was powerless - not a single missile was intercepted. How significant is the first successful Flamingo strike on the FSB base in Crimea?

For a comment, Charter97.org contacted military expert, Ukrainian National Guard reserve major Alexei Getman:

-Russians did not expect us to attack with such missiles. Nevertheless, we should hardly expect that the Flamingo is some kind of special missile that cannot be intercepted by air defense systems. It is quite large in size - 6 meters. I don't think it is qualitatively better than Storm Shadow, Scalp or Tomahawk, but as practice shows, the Russians have a hard time fighting cruise missiles.

If the attack was on Crimea, it can be assumed that these missiles flew to the target low over the water, approaching from the sea, and when the missile flies at a low altitude ("Neptune" can fly at a height of three meters above the water), there are big waves, it is almost impossible to notice such a target by radar.

I should say that I do not want to be fascinated and then be disappointed. There are not some super capabilities of the Flamingo missile. It's not a bad cruise missile. It is simple enough, compared to the Storm Shadow, for example. It is quite effective, not worse than the Neptune.

So we will use such missiles, taking into account the terrain. If we compare it to ballistic missiles, it will hide on the terrain. Let's see what the shootdown rate will be, because there is no weapon that can reach the target 100% of the time.