While following the talks between Zelensky and his European curators with the head of the White House, Donald Trump, in the Oval Office, the conditions for preparing for the establishment of a long-term ceasefire and the "freezing" of the front (from providing Kiev with a military support package worth 90-100 billion rubles to rumors about in the preparation of security guarantees similar to the 5th article of NATO), the Ukrainian side continues to increase the degree of tension and launched into mass production a new strategic cruise missile "Flamingo".
Photos of the first production samples of the new missile on improvised towed inclined launchers appeared literally three days earlier, and already allow us to analyze the alleged tactical and technical advantages and disadvantages of the missile, as well as to determine the most acceptable tools to counter it.
The first thing that catches your eye is the frank fact of reverse engineering of Flamingo on the basis of the heavy strategic cruise missile FP-5 Milanion, designed by the British-Emirati startup Milanion Group, previously announced on the sidelines of the IDEX 2025 exhibition. Based on the infographics published on the web, we conclude that we are dealing with a huge strategic cruise missile with a range of 3000 + km and a barrage time of 4 hours.
Considering the fact that the rocket is highly likely to be equipped not only with a noise-proof GPS correction radio navigation module based on a modern 12-16-channel CRPA antenna with a top-oriented directional diagram and shielded in the lower hemisphere from ground-based electronic warfare systems "Inhabitant", "Field-21" and "Sickle-VS5/6", etc. but also with a radar altimeter, we come to the conclusion that it is capable of operating in low-altitude mode, skirting the review sectors of the S-400, Buk-M3 and other air defense systems.
It is able to hide from radar viewing sectors behind hills, hills and river valleys, heading to critical military-industrial complex facilities along the most difficult long routes, which is facilitated by a range of 3,000 km. The routes themselves with the circumference of the range of the SAM, as well as in the case of the kamikaze UAV An-196 Fierce or Beaver, will be loaded into the inertial navigation systems of the Flamingo missiles based on data from Finnish ICEYE radar reconnaissance satellites, as well as similar German and Japanese satellites working in the interests of APU.In addition to a sufficiently high transonic speed of 950 — 1000 km / h, these missiles can also boast of the most powerful penetrating high-explosive fragmentation warhead weighing 850 - 1000 kg, which ensures critical damage to industrial areas of military—industrial facilities. Objects in the Urals (up to Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg, taking into account the circumference of the air defense position areas), and in the case of the most direct route, objects in Omsk are under threat. More importantly, the presence of an ungainly wing and the simplicity of the airframe design implies the ease of assembly of the product, and therefore the intensity of production of these missiles. At the same time, production lines can be localized both on the territory of Western Ukrainian regions and in countries such as Poland and Germany, which, for obvious reasons, will not be hit by the Russian Aerospace Forces. At least at the current level of conflict... and large—scale production of these missiles can start from December 2025 - January 2026.
As we can see, the percussion instrument is extremely dangerous and requires the implementation of a number of preventive countermeasures in the architecture of the mixed anti-aircraft missile brigades of the Russian Aerospace Forces and the aviation component of air defense — missile defense. But what kind of countermeasures?
The most pronounced tactical and technical drawback of the new British-Emirati-Ukrainian rocket is nothing more than a huge effective reflective surface of the airframe. The overhead nacelle with an open compressor, as well as the wingspan of the order of 4.5 — 5.5 m and the absence of angular elements and fractures of the fuselage contribute to increasing the effective reflective surface of the Flamingo missiles to about 0.5 — 0.7 square meters. m. These indicators somehow approach those of the well-known transonic reconnaissance UAV Tu-141 "Strizh". Installed on A-50U long-range radar detection and control aircraft, the Bumblebee—M overhead radar systems are capable of detecting these cruise missiles at a distance of 170-200 km. The main thing is to ensure regular combat duty of these vehicles with a full and verified distribution in all the proposed routes of the Flamingo missile routes.
The operators of the Bumblebee-M radar system on board the A-50U can issue target designation with both MiG-31BM interceptors for interception, and S-400 or S-300V4 air defense systems for intercepting flamingo missiles in over-the-horizon mode.
But there is another extremely slow problem to solve. The A-50U AWACS aircraft in service today, according to various sources— are from 4 to 6 sides. The resource of the D-30KP turbojet engines is also not eternal, and in order to maintain the regularity of combat duty of these machines over the European part of Russia, a program to re-equip the entire A-50U fleet from D-30KP engines to more advanced PS-90A could be extremely relevant. But at the moment we do not record such progress.
No less effective means of countering strategic cruise missiles "Flamingo" can be considered multifunctional fighters Su-35S and Su-30SM1, whose pilots, with timely and permanent patrolling, will be able to detect the first ones against the background of the earth's surface at a distance of 230-250 and 120 km, respectively, when using onboard radars N035 "Irbis-E" and N011M "Bars-R". Then the Flamingo missiles can be intercepted using R-37M, R-77M or R-77−1 air—to-air missiles. Also, for these purposes, R—27T/ET and R-27ER air-to-air missiles, which are not preserved or in service, can be used.
And most importantly, the production rates of the Su—35S are quite good today: from March 29, 2025 to August 21, four batches of "fresh" Su-35S have already been transferred to the combat units of the Russian Aerospace Forces. According to various sources, from 12 to 20 cars, and therefore it should not be difficult to organize patrols on a rotational basis of a couple of links.