Producing a jet engine used in fighter aircraft at a rate of hundreds per month is frankly an unprecedented (and quite unlikely) rate. The one per day rate might be closer to a (future) reality.
The most reasonable assumption is that Ukraine can use the large stock of these engines throughout Eastern Europe, especially since even a worn out engine can be used for a 4 hour flight.
Exactly. Russia has an economy the size of Spain. It has been depleting vast stocks of Soviet-era munitions, tanks, and planes at a pretty “wow!” clip and the yards, ammo dumps, etc. are left with stuff too broken to be sent to the front.
Europes much larger economic block can sustain pumping lots of money (on a far longer basis) into this war effort than Russia alone can.
Never mind the other issues, such as dealing with hundreds of thousands of dead / amputees, a central bank rate of 21%, etc.
If Flamingo brings the war home like the dropping of the bridges across the Danube did for the Serbs in 1992, the Russian oligarchs may decide it’s time to move on to a new leader that doesn’t endanger their lifestyle.
I think it is probably a downgraded version of the engine using lower level materials and machining. A planned time of operation of 4 hours in an unmanned airframe should call for less advanced heat durability etc. In the dawn of the jet age the engineers developing the Jumo 004 also had to manage with aluminium coated steel instead of alloys using cobalt or nickel... Just a speculation, but that would make the numbers a bit more feasible.
Scaling up production is merely a money and time problem. For example, Europe could scale production and deliver guts en masse to Ukraine even if final assembly happens there or in Poland.
The engines are fairly small and presumably the machining etc. can be somewhat crude compared to human-flight-certified operations. As others have pointed out, these engines only have to last four hours.
People have been repeating this line of arguments for 3.5 years now. Yet Europe has not been able to seriously scale up the production of (relatively simple) artillery shells, let alone more complicated weapon systems such as missiles, tanks etc.
Just repeating the same argument for yet another (relatively complicated) industrial input will not make anything magically happen.
Allow me to quibble - as slow as the process might be in the west to scale up artillery production (which is harder than you might think - lots of hard tooling with long lead times, high explosives, etc), the EU has the most important thing: lots of money. The Ukraine has tons of folk who are willing and able to convert said cash into drones. Ideally, much of it in Poland where the more expensive assets are safe from Russian attack.
People have been repeating the arguments about the EU being 20 trillion economy, Russia being the size of Italy and so on.
Well, all these years of war have actually proven that you don't just throw money at a problem and fix it. Profit driven companies do not magically scale up production because in order to do that they actually have to make investments, find and train personnel (which can take years) and be certain that the orders will be coming for years to come, not stop 3 months from now because Trump made a deal with Putin.
We've seen artillery shells scaled up only modestly, much lesser than Russia and with a multiple price tag per shell than Russian production. We've seen targets for an increase in Patriot missile production to +70% around... 2027 or 2029 and beyond.
Repeating the "we've got money" argument will not get you very far when the actual production history and numbers suggests that the actual bottlenecks are not "money" (or even if it was "money", you have to be able to provide industry with a semi-guaranteed stream of income for years to come which is not really happening).
So sorry, reporting that production will increase eight fold in a couple of months from 30 to 250 carries just zero credibility when the bottleneck is a .. jet engine.
Over 9000 of these engines were built since they were first brought to market in 1966. The first thing fire point likely did once it got its contract was to buy every even marginally serviceable copy and refurbish it for its final 4 hr flight.
That refurbishment doesn’t have to happen at fire point, it only has to happen somewhere where these medium bypass ancient designs were once serviced. Which is to say, all over what used to be the iron curtain.
I’d also argue that much of that engine will be trivial to machine today given the capabilities of the soviets in 1966 vs. what can be made today. Just like drones, I expect the Ukrainians will throw a bunch of mill’s, VMCs, etc. at the problem and get to work, as long as someone is around to finance it.
Unlike the west, they don’t seem to worry too much about holding the financial bag at the end of the war. They want to survive.
Ukraine has tremendously scaled up production of drones, artillery shells, etc. - more than the west. The west has scoured the planet instead for extant stocks of artillery shells from decent sources like South Korea, etc.
Money is what enables all those efforts, along with donations of fire engines, gensets, and like non-military equipment that helps the population live as normal a life as possible.
The Russian “war economy” in contrast has not been able to significantly scale up tank production, BMPs, or aircraft. Instead they have focused on restarting fallow artillery lines and ever-expanding drone production, including jet-powered Shaheed.
If the Russians can build jet powered drones, then so can the Ukrainians. Proof will be unveiled soon enough. Maybe flamingo is a paper tiger, maybe flamingo causes the Russian oil export economy to significantly shrink. Time will tell.
The versions used for light fighters and trainers are no doubt rated for hundreds of hours between overhauls and thousands of hours total life. If you need a version for a handful of hours there are a great many opportunities for despecifying and simplifying the design for high-rate manufacture. It would be more efficient of course to do a clean-sheet design, but adapting the existing design will be much quicker, particularly if one is prepared to take some risks.
This is a significant development, and I hope this weapon performs as advertised. It shouldn't escape our attention that since Trump met with Putin, the Ukrainians seem to have stepped up targeting Russian gas and oil refineries, and been pretty successful. If Ukraine can continue, and with the new cruise extend the damage Trump won't need to sanction India for buying Russian oil because there will be very little to buy. And Russia's economy (and much of Europe unfortunately) will be in trouble.
You wrote: «The Flamingo is therefore likely a case of a cruise missile built around an engine rather than an engine developed specifically for a cruise missile.» Given that the key bottleneck to production is the engine this seems eminently sensible. The limited tracking solution can probably be improved by adding other systems later if need be. But getting 2000 plus’s missiles for stockpiling will not happen before some peace has been reached. And Ukraine will not give up things like this in a peace settlement.
"Ukrainian disarmament and range restrictions in the missile domain" ha ha, I'm sure the Russians will want that, but good luck - I dearly hope Ukraine won't accept any such arrangement.
The engine design has been flying for fifty years, which makes me suspect it is not as high-tech as all that. And you can probably take shortcuts if it only has to run a few hours. It may be worth remembering that the Germans used to build a hundred V-1s *per day*.
I fear the Russians will not sue for peace as long as Putin is in charge. Instead they will seek to learn the location of the manufacture of these weapons and destroy it.
Ukraine must be prepared to fight off all attempts at sabotage.
So we think it has a 1,000 kg w/h (or the equivalent) plus relatively high terminal velocity--and potentially a lot of leftover of fuel to add to the "boom."
These are the factors that--compared to a Tomahawk or, hell . . . a V-1--that give it substantial hitting power & lethality? Fair enough. But for hardened targets, you still need plenty of them . . . depending on the effects you want to achieve and the obvious need to overcome air defenses.
Am I correct in stating that the above factors (w/h, velocity, fuel, size) give it a more substantial punch than *most* other modern cruise missiles . . . survivability aside for a moment?
And that "punch" means that perhaps you don't need as many Flamingos as you would need, say, Tomahawks? If we assume the Russians can intercept only 2/3 of what the Ukrainians or Israelis have been able to intercept, that means you need fewer still . . . but nonetheless hundreds, if not thousands (of a mix of types).
I'm intrigued by the notion of conventional ballistic missiles, you mentioned. The ones that got through Israel's defenses did relatively little damage. Even w/ greater accuracy, isn't the most you can get out of a conventional BM essentially the same you would get from a precision guided bomb or stand-off missile . . . but for an even more expensive price tag? Given the size and signature, don't you also need a very large inventory given how many an opponent even like Russia will intercept?
(Hard kills--not merely suppression--of air/missile defenses (and AWACS) is a very good point to make. The Russians have a lost more than a few components, including launchers, and its something the West never seems to consider for itself. The Chinese are not going to refrain from going after US/ROK/ROC/Japanese Patriots & THAADs.)
Yeah . . . *money.* Always important. It's a huge advantage over what the Russians are able to bring to bear in the short-term (granted, their increased production rates don't appear to be slowing). Those euros can be used to buy American weapons, too (assuming The Donald doesn't throw a wrench into the "cash & carry" plan he announced only a few weeks ago).
If the political will remains in Europe--which is to say, really, Germany--to rebuild their defenses . . . then it will get done. If Western Europe can achieve merely 2/3 of the production capacity it had at the height of the Cold War . . . and you couple that w/ the industrial output of the former Warsaw Pact . . . that's a far more sophisticated and self-sustaining defense industrial base than anything Moscow will be able to mount anytime soon.
Regarding guidance. Ukraine’s ability to create guidance systems that can receive and process both GPS and GLONASS signals should prove resilient deeper inside Russian airspace, shouldn’t it?
It’s a reflection of how neither party has complete air superiority over the other that drone warfare is even viable. Never mind repurposing an old target drone platform to carry a substantial warhead.
But it might be perfect for this war, given the tattered state of Russian air defenses, near extinction of the A50 mainstay fleet, and external countries like Germany being willing to shovel lots of money but not their latest Taurus into this effort.
Question is how the Chinese will respond. They love a weak, contiguous Russia that will continue to feed them raw materials at sub-world prices. A defeat is likely to lead to further splintering and distraction from the prize they really want, Taiwan.
Not sure how you define a victorious or "defeated" Russia, but whatever the state in Moscow . . . I would think it becomes an attractive customer for Chinese weapons. If the Russians can get over their pride, the obstacle is really the political will in Beijing to sell to a "pariah."
But once the war ends--especially if by Trump's rehabilitation & appeasement of Russia--then that "pariah" status may come to an end. Frankly, I've been surprised since Day 1 that Beijing has refrained from selling Moscow advanced weapons, even they like the idea of a relatively weak Russia. After all, they (Beijing) would be controlling the output.
The thing about cruise missiles is you need a lot of them. As long as Russia has access to Chinese chips, they can do that. The Ukrainians are going to face significant production limitations until the war ends.
Agree. The "how" it ends is a big question. Part of the reticence of China to sell more to Putin besides stuff that has plausible dual-uses (i.e. large tires that might happen to fit a BMP) likely has to do with the trade to Russia being a lot less meaningful than the west in general.
The EU has a lot of playing room here - they can still stop the Russian shadow fleet from passing into / out of the Baltic Sea, the Bosphorus Strait, etc. They can also continue to ban Russia from using SWIFT, increase embargos on German machine tools, PLC logic, etc.
The US can do a lot of damage but Trump ultimately has to tread somewhat carefully since the EU is such a large export market to the US services industry.
A bold prediction indeed. They must have great confidence that their employees and manufacturing chain is robust from infiltration/ sabotage/ destruction.
Two things this conflict showed clearly are that conventional deterrence doesn't work as pundits imagine, and that deep strikes vs infrastructure are ineffective. If anything they act as free PR for the recipient. They universally provoke retaliation in kind.
Europeans who view Ukraine as disposable may cheer such developments - as they have cheered previous rounds of escalation.
Producing a jet engine used in fighter aircraft at a rate of hundreds per month is frankly an unprecedented (and quite unlikely) rate. The one per day rate might be closer to a (future) reality.
The most reasonable assumption is that Ukraine can use the large stock of these engines throughout Eastern Europe, especially since even a worn out engine can be used for a 4 hour flight.
It is something the rest of free Europe can help with though.
Exactly. Russia has an economy the size of Spain. It has been depleting vast stocks of Soviet-era munitions, tanks, and planes at a pretty “wow!” clip and the yards, ammo dumps, etc. are left with stuff too broken to be sent to the front.
Europes much larger economic block can sustain pumping lots of money (on a far longer basis) into this war effort than Russia alone can.
Never mind the other issues, such as dealing with hundreds of thousands of dead / amputees, a central bank rate of 21%, etc.
If Flamingo brings the war home like the dropping of the bridges across the Danube did for the Serbs in 1992, the Russian oligarchs may decide it’s time to move on to a new leader that doesn’t endanger their lifestyle.
I think it is probably a downgraded version of the engine using lower level materials and machining. A planned time of operation of 4 hours in an unmanned airframe should call for less advanced heat durability etc. In the dawn of the jet age the engineers developing the Jumo 004 also had to manage with aluminium coated steel instead of alloys using cobalt or nickel... Just a speculation, but that would make the numbers a bit more feasible.
Scaling up production is merely a money and time problem. For example, Europe could scale production and deliver guts en masse to Ukraine even if final assembly happens there or in Poland.
The engines are fairly small and presumably the machining etc. can be somewhat crude compared to human-flight-certified operations. As others have pointed out, these engines only have to last four hours.
People have been repeating this line of arguments for 3.5 years now. Yet Europe has not been able to seriously scale up the production of (relatively simple) artillery shells, let alone more complicated weapon systems such as missiles, tanks etc.
Just repeating the same argument for yet another (relatively complicated) industrial input will not make anything magically happen.
Allow me to quibble - as slow as the process might be in the west to scale up artillery production (which is harder than you might think - lots of hard tooling with long lead times, high explosives, etc), the EU has the most important thing: lots of money. The Ukraine has tons of folk who are willing and able to convert said cash into drones. Ideally, much of it in Poland where the more expensive assets are safe from Russian attack.
People have been repeating the arguments about the EU being 20 trillion economy, Russia being the size of Italy and so on.
Well, all these years of war have actually proven that you don't just throw money at a problem and fix it. Profit driven companies do not magically scale up production because in order to do that they actually have to make investments, find and train personnel (which can take years) and be certain that the orders will be coming for years to come, not stop 3 months from now because Trump made a deal with Putin.
We've seen artillery shells scaled up only modestly, much lesser than Russia and with a multiple price tag per shell than Russian production. We've seen targets for an increase in Patriot missile production to +70% around... 2027 or 2029 and beyond.
Repeating the "we've got money" argument will not get you very far when the actual production history and numbers suggests that the actual bottlenecks are not "money" (or even if it was "money", you have to be able to provide industry with a semi-guaranteed stream of income for years to come which is not really happening).
So sorry, reporting that production will increase eight fold in a couple of months from 30 to 250 carries just zero credibility when the bottleneck is a .. jet engine.
Over 9000 of these engines were built since they were first brought to market in 1966. The first thing fire point likely did once it got its contract was to buy every even marginally serviceable copy and refurbish it for its final 4 hr flight.
That refurbishment doesn’t have to happen at fire point, it only has to happen somewhere where these medium bypass ancient designs were once serviced. Which is to say, all over what used to be the iron curtain.
I’d also argue that much of that engine will be trivial to machine today given the capabilities of the soviets in 1966 vs. what can be made today. Just like drones, I expect the Ukrainians will throw a bunch of mill’s, VMCs, etc. at the problem and get to work, as long as someone is around to finance it.
Unlike the west, they don’t seem to worry too much about holding the financial bag at the end of the war. They want to survive.
Ukraine has tremendously scaled up production of drones, artillery shells, etc. - more than the west. The west has scoured the planet instead for extant stocks of artillery shells from decent sources like South Korea, etc.
Money is what enables all those efforts, along with donations of fire engines, gensets, and like non-military equipment that helps the population live as normal a life as possible.
The Russian “war economy” in contrast has not been able to significantly scale up tank production, BMPs, or aircraft. Instead they have focused on restarting fallow artillery lines and ever-expanding drone production, including jet-powered Shaheed.
If the Russians can build jet powered drones, then so can the Ukrainians. Proof will be unveiled soon enough. Maybe flamingo is a paper tiger, maybe flamingo causes the Russian oil export economy to significantly shrink. Time will tell.
The versions used for light fighters and trainers are no doubt rated for hundreds of hours between overhauls and thousands of hours total life. If you need a version for a handful of hours there are a great many opportunities for despecifying and simplifying the design for high-rate manufacture. It would be more efficient of course to do a clean-sheet design, but adapting the existing design will be much quicker, particularly if one is prepared to take some risks.
Excellent analysis.
The announcement of this missile is pitch perfect timing. Leverage and future proofing in one. 👍
This is a significant development, and I hope this weapon performs as advertised. It shouldn't escape our attention that since Trump met with Putin, the Ukrainians seem to have stepped up targeting Russian gas and oil refineries, and been pretty successful. If Ukraine can continue, and with the new cruise extend the damage Trump won't need to sanction India for buying Russian oil because there will be very little to buy. And Russia's economy (and much of Europe unfortunately) will be in trouble.
Very good news. This will be interesting to follow. Thank you so much!
You wrote: «The Flamingo is therefore likely a case of a cruise missile built around an engine rather than an engine developed specifically for a cruise missile.» Given that the key bottleneck to production is the engine this seems eminently sensible. The limited tracking solution can probably be improved by adding other systems later if need be. But getting 2000 plus’s missiles for stockpiling will not happen before some peace has been reached. And Ukraine will not give up things like this in a peace settlement.
"Ukrainian disarmament and range restrictions in the missile domain" ha ha, I'm sure the Russians will want that, but good luck - I dearly hope Ukraine won't accept any such arrangement.
Oops. Could you change course a little? There is a place called Mar-a-Lago.
The engine design has been flying for fifty years, which makes me suspect it is not as high-tech as all that. And you can probably take shortcuts if it only has to run a few hours. It may be worth remembering that the Germans used to build a hundred V-1s *per day*.
I fear the Russians will not sue for peace as long as Putin is in charge. Instead they will seek to learn the location of the manufacture of these weapons and destroy it.
Ukraine must be prepared to fight off all attempts at sabotage.
So we think it has a 1,000 kg w/h (or the equivalent) plus relatively high terminal velocity--and potentially a lot of leftover of fuel to add to the "boom."
These are the factors that--compared to a Tomahawk or, hell . . . a V-1--that give it substantial hitting power & lethality? Fair enough. But for hardened targets, you still need plenty of them . . . depending on the effects you want to achieve and the obvious need to overcome air defenses.
Am I correct in stating that the above factors (w/h, velocity, fuel, size) give it a more substantial punch than *most* other modern cruise missiles . . . survivability aside for a moment?
And that "punch" means that perhaps you don't need as many Flamingos as you would need, say, Tomahawks? If we assume the Russians can intercept only 2/3 of what the Ukrainians or Israelis have been able to intercept, that means you need fewer still . . . but nonetheless hundreds, if not thousands (of a mix of types).
I'm intrigued by the notion of conventional ballistic missiles, you mentioned. The ones that got through Israel's defenses did relatively little damage. Even w/ greater accuracy, isn't the most you can get out of a conventional BM essentially the same you would get from a precision guided bomb or stand-off missile . . . but for an even more expensive price tag? Given the size and signature, don't you also need a very large inventory given how many an opponent even like Russia will intercept?
(Hard kills--not merely suppression--of air/missile defenses (and AWACS) is a very good point to make. The Russians have a lost more than a few components, including launchers, and its something the West never seems to consider for itself. The Chinese are not going to refrain from going after US/ROK/ROC/Japanese Patriots & THAADs.)
Yeah . . . *money.* Always important. It's a huge advantage over what the Russians are able to bring to bear in the short-term (granted, their increased production rates don't appear to be slowing). Those euros can be used to buy American weapons, too (assuming The Donald doesn't throw a wrench into the "cash & carry" plan he announced only a few weeks ago).
If the political will remains in Europe--which is to say, really, Germany--to rebuild their defenses . . . then it will get done. If Western Europe can achieve merely 2/3 of the production capacity it had at the height of the Cold War . . . and you couple that w/ the industrial output of the former Warsaw Pact . . . that's a far more sophisticated and self-sustaining defense industrial base than anything Moscow will be able to mount anytime soon.
Regarding guidance. Ukraine’s ability to create guidance systems that can receive and process both GPS and GLONASS signals should prove resilient deeper inside Russian airspace, shouldn’t it?
It’s a reflection of how neither party has complete air superiority over the other that drone warfare is even viable. Never mind repurposing an old target drone platform to carry a substantial warhead.
But it might be perfect for this war, given the tattered state of Russian air defenses, near extinction of the A50 mainstay fleet, and external countries like Germany being willing to shovel lots of money but not their latest Taurus into this effort.
Question is how the Chinese will respond. They love a weak, contiguous Russia that will continue to feed them raw materials at sub-world prices. A defeat is likely to lead to further splintering and distraction from the prize they really want, Taiwan.
Not sure how you define a victorious or "defeated" Russia, but whatever the state in Moscow . . . I would think it becomes an attractive customer for Chinese weapons. If the Russians can get over their pride, the obstacle is really the political will in Beijing to sell to a "pariah."
But once the war ends--especially if by Trump's rehabilitation & appeasement of Russia--then that "pariah" status may come to an end. Frankly, I've been surprised since Day 1 that Beijing has refrained from selling Moscow advanced weapons, even they like the idea of a relatively weak Russia. After all, they (Beijing) would be controlling the output.
The thing about cruise missiles is you need a lot of them. As long as Russia has access to Chinese chips, they can do that. The Ukrainians are going to face significant production limitations until the war ends.
Agree. The "how" it ends is a big question. Part of the reticence of China to sell more to Putin besides stuff that has plausible dual-uses (i.e. large tires that might happen to fit a BMP) likely has to do with the trade to Russia being a lot less meaningful than the west in general.
The EU has a lot of playing room here - they can still stop the Russian shadow fleet from passing into / out of the Baltic Sea, the Bosphorus Strait, etc. They can also continue to ban Russia from using SWIFT, increase embargos on German machine tools, PLC logic, etc.
The US can do a lot of damage but Trump ultimately has to tread somewhat carefully since the EU is such a large export market to the US services industry.
A bold prediction indeed. They must have great confidence that their employees and manufacturing chain is robust from infiltration/ sabotage/ destruction.
Marketing is always marketing…
The mass of the missile upon arrival at the target is probably considerably lower, as it will have burned off its fuel.
One more reason for the Russian Federation to pursue demilitarization and denazification.
Of itself.
Two things this conflict showed clearly are that conventional deterrence doesn't work as pundits imagine, and that deep strikes vs infrastructure are ineffective. If anything they act as free PR for the recipient. They universally provoke retaliation in kind.
Europeans who view Ukraine as disposable may cheer such developments - as they have cheered previous rounds of escalation.