What if Ukraine didn’t need American Tomahawk missiles? An investigation carried out by The Independent with Fire Point, the manufacturer of the Flamingo, warns that the new weapon, introduced last August, simply presents better performance than the American weapon.
On paper, the Flamingo outperforms the Tomahawk in terms of range and warhead weight: 3,000 km versus 1,500 km and 1,100 kg versus 500 kg. Not to mention the top speed of 950 km/hour which is also higher.
“We don’t care about respect for NATO standards”
Performance was tested on a full scale by the Ukrainian army nine times during “real operations”. Enough to make it the “most powerful” missile ever produced by Ukraine according to Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Flamingo, with a unit value of $500,000, was also cheaper to produce than the Tomahawk, which was estimated at less than $2 million. Powered by Soviet rockets and turbojets, the missile’s engine was assembled from select elements recovered from scrap yards.
To be able to install this 6 meter long weapon, Ukraine has freed itself from NATO rules. “When there’s a gun pointed at your head, we don’t think about the standards, we just say to ourselves: This should work. We don’t care about respect for NATO standards. What matters is only the effectiveness of our weapons in the field, not the paperwork. This is what allows us to design highly effective weapons,” explained Fire Point technical director Iyna Terekh.
But most importantly, the biggest advantage of Flamingo is that it is 100% controlled by Ukrainian forces without American influence. “Kyiv can fire Flamingos at any target. It is not limited by what Ukraine’s allies say it can – or cannot – do when fighting invading Russian forces,” The Independent reported.
But “is Flamingo too good to be true?” », as asked by the Kyiv Independent at the end of October. According to experts, it will take between 10 and 20 years to develop an effective cruise missile. Fire Point, an antebellum film casting company, unknown to its battalions before this summer, needed only two.
So how can we compete with an experienced Tomahawk that has been used nearly 2,000 times in combat? While Flamingo’s impressive development has been validated through front-line testing, its actual usefulness will depend on Fire Point’s ability to mass-produce it. The manufacturer now claims to produce 50 units per month with the ambition to reach more than 200 units by the end of 2025.
