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By replacing Soviet-era AI-25TL powerplants with British-made turbojet engines, Ukraine has effectively eliminated the primary production bottleneck for its long-range FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile. Sporting a massive 1,150 kg warhead and low-altitude flight profile, the modular missile can now be mass-produced to deliver larger saturation salvos deep into Russian territory. As strikes target critical defense nodes—such as ballistic missile assembly plants and air defense component factories—the engine upgrade not only streamlines serial manufacturing but also potentially extends the Flamingo's operational reach beyond its reported 3,000-kilometer range.
⏱️ CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Russian Air Defense Intercepts 6 FP-5 Flamingo Missiles
01:25 - British Engine Upgrade Solves Soviet AI-25TL Bottleneck
02:50 - FP-5 Flamingo Carries 1,150kg Warhead Across 3,000km
04:15 - External Fuselage Mount Enables Rapid Missile Engine Swaps
05:40 - Fuel Efficient Turbojets Provide 450km Range Extension
07:00 - Low Altitude Flight Profile Evades Russian Ground Radar
08:30 - FP-5 Flamingo Strikes Volgograd and Kirov Factories
10:00 - Mass Salvo Production Overwhelms Russian Air Defense
11:30 - Russian A-50U AWACS Aircraft Detects Low-Flying Missiles
13:00 - Ukraine Scales Domestic FP-5 Flamingo Production Capacity
14:30 - Will FP-5 Flamingo Missiles Defeat Russian Defense?
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SOURCES: https://pastebin.com/1JVmv38K
By replacing Soviet-era AI-25TL powerplants with British-made turbojet engines, Ukraine has effectively eliminated the primary production bottleneck for its long-range FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile. Sporting a massive 1,150 kg warhead and low-altitude flight profile, the modular missile can now be mass-produced to deliver larger saturation salvos deep into Russian territory. As strikes target critical defense nodes—such as ballistic missile assembly plants and air defense component factories—the engine upgrade not only streamlines serial manufacturing but also potentially extends the Flamingo's operational reach beyond its reported 3,000-kilometer range.
⏱️ CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Russian Air Defense Intercepts 6 FP-5 Flamingo Missiles
01:25 - British Engine Upgrade Solves Soviet AI-25TL Bottleneck
02:50 - FP-5 Flamingo Carries 1,150kg Warhead Across 3,000km
04:15 - External Fuselage Mount Enables Rapid Missile Engine Swaps
05:40 - Fuel Efficient Turbojets Provide 450km Range Extension
07:00 - Low Altitude Flight Profile Evades Russian Ground Radar
08:30 - FP-5 Flamingo Strikes Volgograd and Kirov Factories
10:00 - Mass Salvo Production Overwhelms Russian Air Defense
11:30 - Russian A-50U AWACS Aircraft Detects Low-Flying Missiles
13:00 - Ukraine Scales Domestic FP-5 Flamingo Production Capacity
14:30 - Will FP-5 Flamingo Missiles Defeat Russian Defense?
Support us directly as we bring you independent, up-to-date reporting on military news and global conflicts by clicking here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMilitaryShow/join
#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis
#themilitaryshow
SOURCES: https://pastebin.com/1JVmv38K
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NewsTranscript
00:01At the start of August 2026, Ukraine reportedly launched six FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles out of Kharkiv Oblast and
00:09pointed them at targets deep inside Russia.
00:12According to Russian sources, all six were shot down. Two over Belgrade, one over Voronezh, two over Lipetsk and one
00:19over Penza.
00:21That six launched, six intercepted, nothing on target.
00:24Now, if you were reading Russian telegram that morning, the Wonder Weapon was a dud and Russian air defense had
00:30it solved.
00:31But in the same week, Russian technicians pulling part the wreckage found something they weren't expecting.
00:37The engine of the Flamingos had changed.
00:39For roughly a year, recovered Flamingo debris appeared to show the same Soviet-era AI-25TL engine.
00:47That engine was arguably the single biggest thing holding the entire program back.
00:51But according to an analysis of recovered fragments, newer Flamingos appear to be flying with a British-made engine instead.
00:58On paper, that sounds like a simple part swap.
01:01But if this reporting holds up, Ukraine has just removed the ceiling on how many of these things it can
01:06build,
01:07and depending on which engine it uses, may have added several hundred kilometers of operational range to a weapon that
01:13had already reportedly reached 3,000.
01:16Let's start with the engine bottleneck.
01:18The FP-5 Flamingo is a genuinely strange weapon by cruise missile standards.
01:23It's enormous, coming in at about 12 to 14 meters long with a 6-meter wingspan, roughly 6 tons at
01:29launch,
01:30and carrying a warhead weighing 1,000 to 1,150 kilograms.
01:34For scale, a conventional Tomahawk carries a warhead of roughly 450 kilograms out to a reported range of about 1
01:42,600 kilometers.
01:43The Flamingo purportedly has more than double the warhead and nearly double the range.
01:49But hauling that one-tonne warhead over 3,000 kilometers is not something you do with the small engines you
01:55find on cheap long-range attack drones.
01:57Physics demands a full-sized turbojet.
02:00Firepoint's first answer was the AI-25TL.
02:03The most important part, apart from its specifics, is that Ukraine had an existing supply of them in the Soviet
02:10Union's L-39 Albatross trainers.
02:13Firepoint's CTO and current CEO, Irina Terek, specifically said the engines came from decommissioned Soviet aircraft.
02:21The company's whole design philosophy was built around recycling.
02:25It used Soviet-era aviation bombs for warheads, discarded jet engines for propulsion, and a fiberglass and carbon composite airframe
02:33you can wind on a machine instead of machining out of titanium.
02:37That's how you get a missile that reportedly costs roughly half a million bucks per copy, when a Tomahawk costs
02:42around $2 million.
02:44But there's a problem with building your strategic strike capability out of the scrap heap of a dead empire.
02:49The scrap heap of Soviet engines won't refill.
02:52Some analysts flagged this problem even before the Flamingo had ever been fired, identifying the AI-25 supply as a
03:00potential issue.
03:01Back then, the thinking was that there were thousands of engines available that could be fitted onto the FP-5.
03:07Once more designs got baked in and the range of engines narrowed, the FP-5 got partially locked into the
03:12supply of scrapped L-39s.
03:15This meant when Firepoint ran out of airframes to strip, they might as well have run out of missiles.
03:20And even the thousands' estimate wasn't bulletproof.
03:24Firepoint talked publicly about 13 missiles a month, rising toward over 200 of them per month, which could easily break
03:30through that number.
03:31Now, this is where some clever design principles come into play.
03:35If you look at a photograph of a Flamingo, you'll notice the engine sits in its own socket on top
03:40of the fuselage, rather than buried inside the airframe, the way it is on most cruise missiles.
03:44While it looks crude, that's exactly the kind of modular design that allowed for the breakthrough in the first place.
03:50Mounting the engine externally means you can swap in a different one with only minor modifications to the missile itself.
03:57So when the A-25 supply started running dry, Firepoint didn't need to redesign the Flamingo.
04:03It just needed to find a different engine in roughly the same weight and thrust class and bolt it on.
04:08And it turns out that class is not exotic.
04:11When you try to find engines that produce roughly 17 kilonewtons of thrust, which is what the A-25 does,
04:18you find several non-afterburning Western turbojet engines in a broadly comparable thrust class.
04:24And most of them are even smaller than the original.
04:26Russian analysts either haven't identified which British engine is now flying on the Flamingo,
04:31but it's equally likely they already know and haven't said simply because the pool of options is small.
04:37Because the actual engine hasn't been publicly identified,
04:40we can use the Honeywell TFE-731 family only as a hypothetical comparison.
04:46Depending on the variant, the TFE-731 puts out 15.6 to 19.1 kilonewtons of thrust,
04:53while weighing in at 380-ish kilograms.
04:56It's about a metre shorter than the AI-25TL and 15 centimetres narrower.
05:01That means the socket needs to be slimmed, which is arguably easier to accomplish.
05:06Most importantly, over 9,000 of these engines have been built, and it's actually currently in use.
05:11That's the number still in service across a global business aviation fleet,
05:15with the mature parts and overhaul industry around it.
05:18Rather than using a scrap heap, Ukraine might actually get a supply chain
05:22to back one of its most ambitious projects to date.
05:25This is the main benefit, but it might not be the only one,
05:28as Western Turbojet in this class are generally more fuel-efficient than the AI-25TL.
05:34One review notes that the TFE-731-3, while having thrusts comparable to the AI-25TLs,
05:41burns up to 15% less fuel in similar conditions.
05:44If you apply an improvement like that to the Flamingo with the same fuel load
05:48and the same payload, the declared 3,000 kilometre range could theoretically stretch by about 450 kilometres.
05:56That's an extremely rough theoretical projection using a stand-in engine,
06:00and it might depend on what kind of engine actually got strapped into the missile.
06:04Now, let's talk about what this missile actually is,
06:07because to understand what 450 extra kilometres and an unclogged production line can accomplish,
06:12you need to understand how the Flamingo fights.
06:15First, it's subsonic, cruising at around 850 to 900 kilometres per hour,
06:20with a reported endurance of more than four hours.
06:23The big part of its improvement is the launcher, or lack thereof,
06:27as it uses an open-trailer-mounted rail.
06:29This removes a lot of the manufacturing necessity,
06:31like folding wings, specialised vehicles or ramps,
06:34and drastically improves set-up time and possible operational parameters.
06:38At the missile's brain, the navigation runs on GPS and GNSS backed by inertial navigation.
06:45Reportedly, it even has AI-assisted route planning designed to steer around high-risk areas.
06:50And then there's the part that makes it genuinely dangerous.
06:54The Flamingo flies extremely low.
06:56A video assessment showed that the missile cruises at around 30 metres or lower,
07:00following the contours of the terrain.
07:02Firepoint's own director, Denise Stielermann, has said it can fly below 20 metres.
07:07Why does that matter so much?
07:09Because of the curvature of the Earth.
07:11Radar technically works only within line of sight.
07:14A ground-level radar, trying to see an object flying at an altitude of only 30 metres,
07:19can only detect it out to roughly 21.6 kilometres before the planet itself gets in the way.
07:25And that's before you account for hills, forests and buildings along the route.
07:29In order to build a continuous detection and interception belt against a threat flying that low,
07:34Russia would need radar stations roughly every 30 kilometres at ground level,
07:38or every 40 kilometres if they put them on towers.
07:41Along a front line that runs the length of Ukraine and a Russian interior that spans 11 time zones,
07:46that's simply impractical and out of anyone's budget.
07:50Secondly, a one-ton warhead arriving at 950 kilometres per hour,
07:54the FP5's reported top speed, hits with enormous terminal energy.
07:58The combination of high terminal velocity and sheer mass means the warhead buries itself
08:03deeper into a structure before detonating, which is what turns an explosion into a demolition.
08:09When Ukraine hit the Titan-Barricade plant in Volgograd,
08:12OSIN analysts examining the damage described collapsed girders, flattened walls,
08:17and wrecked heavy machinery consistent with about half a tonne of high explosive
08:21detonating inside the building.
08:23On paper, this is a nightmare weapon.
08:25It's got an enormous warhead, range approaching that of some intermediate-range cruise missiles,
08:30terrain-hugging flight profile, jamming-resistant navigation,
08:34and a price tag a quarter of a tomahawk's.
08:36So, let's get into the weapons track record.
08:39Ukrainian sources claimed the first combat use in late August 2025,
08:43when at least three flamingos reportedly crossed the Black Sea from the Odessa area
08:47and struck an FSB base near Amiensk in occupied Crimea,
08:51killing one Russian serviceman and damaging six hovercraft.
08:55That one comes with an asterisk, as the independent Russian outlet Astra confirmed the attack,
09:01but suggested the weapon might actually have been a long Neptune rather than a flamingo.
09:05From there, the missile went quiet, then reappeared.
09:08Ukraine's general staff said flamingos were among the systems used in January 2026
09:13against a hangar complex at the Kapustin Yard test range in Astrakhan Oblast.
09:19And in February 2026, six flamingos went out against targets in Russia and Crimea,
09:25and the general staff confirmed a strike on the Votkhinetsk machine building plant.
09:29This was a core node of Russia's ballistic missile industry, roughly 1,400 kilometers from Ukraine.
09:35This was the first time this type of target has been hit by Ukraine,
09:39indicating just how important the range-power combination was.
09:42After that, the FP5 hit a bit of a slump,
09:45with a few reports of its use suggesting they were either being taken out by Russian defences or veered off
09:51target.
09:52Then came June.
09:53Five flamingos were used to hit the Titan Barricade Federal Research and Production Centre in Volgograd.
09:58This was the site that included final assembly of ballistic missile launchers and missile carriers,
10:04among them launchers and components for the Iskander-M.
10:07One outlet rated it one of the most successful missile attacks Ukraine had conducted in the entire war.
10:12A month later, a flamingo struck the Vyatka machine building enterprise Avitek in Kirov,
10:18more than 1,200 kilometers from Ukraine.
10:21Firepoint itself posted a promotional video of the launch.
10:24Avitek is a part of the corporation that develops and builds essentially every major Russian air defense system,
10:30including surface-to-air missiles and TOR components.
10:34According to Ukrainian Defense Intelligence,
10:36it also produces the starting gas generators required to light the turbo jets used in Russia's own cruise missiles.
10:43Sit with that for a moment.
10:44A Ukrainian cruise missile burned down a factory that makes the ignition hardware for Russian cruise missile engines.
10:50Ukraine's engine problem and Russia's engine problem were being solved by the same thing.
10:56So what would the new engine actually change about those missions?
11:00Now, before we go on, make sure to subscribe to the military show to stay in touch with all the
11:05latest events
11:05concerning Ukraine's long-range weaponry and more.
11:08Back to FP5 improvements, first and most importantly, there's the salvo size.
11:14Several reported strikes have involved five or six missiles.
11:17All Russian air defense has to do is shoot down at least four out of five.
11:21But if an engine supply chain lets firepoint churn out substantially more missiles per month,
11:27salvo stop being five and start being 15 or 20.
11:30And air defense is a saturation problem.
11:33Every interceptor a battery fires is one it doesn't have for the next salvo,
11:37and radars have a limited number of targets they can track in real time.
11:40The difference between five inbound and 20 inbound isn't just four times possible damage,
11:46but the possibility of actually landing a hit.
11:49Second, the increased range translates into different targeting vectors,
11:53which means more targets become available.
11:55It's tempting to hear 450 extra kilometers and think about hitting targets that much farther east.
12:01Sometimes that's true, but the more valuable use is spending that range sideways.
12:05If we look at one of the failures, such as the six missiles launched from Kharkiv Oblast in early
12:10August at the start of the show, Russian authorities reported that all six were intercepted over
12:15Belgorod, Voronezh, Lipetsk and Penza.
12:19The flight path passed straight through known concentrations of Russian air defense.
12:23That's what happens when you fly the short way.
12:25Extra range means you have extra fuel to fly the long way and take unexpected axes.
12:30It also means launchers can sit further back from the border,
12:33out of reach of Russian counter-battery drones and Iskanders hunting for them.
12:37Third, there's another problematic pattern that showed up in how flamingos were used so far.
12:43Starting in 2026, Ukrainian planners shifted flamingo targeting from southern Russia and Crimea
12:48toward facilities deep inside the Russian Federation, specifically along the Volga and the Kama.
12:54All confirmed flamingo attacks by July 2026 hit a target on the shore of a major waterway.
13:01One read is that Ukrainian planners figured out the missile does best over water, where it can drop
13:06to its lowest operating altitude without hills or towers in the way. That's an elegant solution,
13:11but it means the current flamingo is effectively a river weapon, and Russia can work that out too,
13:16and angle its defenses to match. More range and more fuel margin for aggressive terrain following
13:21means the flamingo might just shed its namesake's necessity for rivers and start threatening targets
13:26that aren't conveniently located on a shoreline. Fourth, the flamingo might overcome one of its biggest
13:31hurdles, the A-50U. The reason Ukraine's flamingos keep dying isn't ground radar,
13:37as that's taken care of by the design. Instead, it's the radars on aircraft that are tracking these
13:42missiles. To push that point further, the Institute for the Study of War suggested that Ukrainian
13:48targeting of Russian AWACS, or Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft, had opened gaps in
13:54air coverage precisely during the Volgograd strike. Similarly, the July interception of five flamingos
14:00was attributed primarily to a timely A-50U launch, where the aircraft went up and patrolled exactly
14:06the areas where ground radar can't see low-flying targets. As for August, Ukrainian assessment suggested
14:12that increased A-50U activity made the pivotal 6-for-6 downing possible.
14:17There's an important caveat here for this topic in particular, where there are only five to seven
14:22A-50Us in the Russian fleet, with one of them being fresh out of the shop for upgrades. And the
14:27base A-50 is over 40 years old at this point and has not been produced since the breakup of
14:32the Soviet
14:32Union. So Russia's counter to the flamingo depends on putting a handful of practically irreplaceable
14:38aircraft in the sky at exactly the right time and place. Even the more optimistic count of seven
14:43aircraft isn't enough to cover 11 time zones. If the flamingo output triples, Russia can't
14:49triple its AWACS fleet in response. The replacement for the A-50 is the A-100, which hasn't even entered
14:56serial production, and most outlets suggest a single working aircraft while Ukraine destroyed one
15:01radar-less prototype. Which brings us to the strategic picture, and to the reason this story is bigger than
15:07one missile. For most of this war, Ukraine's ability to hit anything far away was due to somebody else.
15:13When Kyiv started building a real long-range strike arsenal around mid-2023, it was almost entirely
15:19dependent on Western partners. Storm Shadow and Scalp EG deliveries from Britain and France were
15:24basically it. And donated weapons came with donated strings, as it took months before Ukraine was even
15:30allowed to use them inside its own occupied territory, let alone Russia. And even then,
15:35there's a possibility that an election turns the tap off. The flamingo is the answer to that,
15:40and its significance is that nobody has to approve it. Ukraine can build it, fuel it, target it, and fire
15:46it
15:47without asking anyone's permission, waiting on an export license, or a foreign parliament debating
15:52escalation. But the strongest strategic effect is one of division of labor, which is where the
15:57flamingo touches something like the Patriot. Ukraine's air defense math right now is brutal.
16:03In normal months, Ukraine burns through 60-70 Patriot interceptors. During concentrated Russian
16:08attack waves, that jumps to between 150 and 180, which is nearly three times the entire global production.
16:15Russia, meanwhile, builds something on the order of 40-50 Iskander-M's and around 10 Kinzals every month.
16:21In early August, when Ukraine failed to intercept any Russian missiles at all,
16:26RFE-RL went to Ukraine's European partners and got a wall of polite refusal.
16:31Germany declined to comment, Remain called it a matter of national security,
16:35and the Netherlands said it had already given everything it could spare.
16:38In late July, President Donald Trump declined Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky's request
16:43for 300 Patriot missiles to protect Ukraine's energy grid through winter,
16:48citing US stockpile shortages and the ongoing Iran crisis.
16:52But there's another way to stop an Iskander from hitting Kyiv.
16:55You can destroy the factory before it becomes an Iskander.
16:58That's exactly what a flamingo did at the Titan Barricade and in Kirov.
17:03Every launcher that never gets finished is a salvo that never gets fired,
17:06and every salvo that never gets fired is a stack of Patriot interceptors that never gets spent.
17:11So, offense is the best defense, and critically, the offense side is the one Ukraine can scale
17:17domestically with the proposed FP5 improvements. And there's a version of this that goes further.
17:23Firepoint is also developing the FP7.X interceptor as part of its missile defense project,
17:30explicitly aimed at reducing Ukraine's dependence on scarce Patriot Pact-3s.
17:34That one has done controlled flight testing, but hasn't demonstrated repeated ballistic missile
17:39intercepts. And its advantages are cost and production capacity, not performance.
17:44It follows the same principle as the flamingo, where the cost and the ability to field something
17:49are better than running out of the crucial resource when you need it.
17:52And the flamingo itself is going across borders, which is important for Ukraine's defenses.
17:58Ukrainian company Firepoint plans to start producing solid rocket fuel at its own facility
18:02in Denmark in 2026. Deal Defense in Germany has open talks about producing flamingos.
18:09Firepoint is also working in close partnership with the UK's Millennium Group,
18:13and the UAE's Edge Group at one point tried to buy the company outright.
18:17If these plans go through, and Firepoint can be built better and outside Ukraine,
18:22there are two main benefits. One, flamingo factories located in Europe can't be targeted by Russian
18:27missiles. To do so would be tantamount to political suicide, as Russia would essentially
18:32declare an open war on NATO itself. In fact, social media conspiracies include one where
18:37Ukraine has already been manufacturing parts out of the country, and just importing them
18:41back in for the finishing touch. Secondly, if flamingo does reach international cooperation,
18:47it means it can reach the international market. Suddenly, it's no longer just a Ukrainian
18:51offense-defense system, but a viable long-range strike tool that NATO can use,
18:56instead of its domestic options. If Ukraine's manufacturing capabilities increase,
19:01it can export yet another system to reduce its own spending or reallocate funding elsewhere.
19:06Now, the entire story about the engine has some caveats. Everything about the engine change comes
19:11from Russian analysis of recovered wreckage, relayed through a Ukrainian telegram channel.
19:16Nobody has publicly identified the engine. The range improvement is based on a hypothetical
19:21using a stand-in engine. And Firepoint had already developed a fully domestic turbo
19:26jet and assembled the first 10 test prototypes specifically to avoid import dependence.
19:31So, we may be watching two parallel efforts, buy Western now, build Ukrainian later. Or we may
19:38be watching a company saying different things to different audiences. What we do know is that the
19:43flamingo spent its first year as a weapon that missed more than it hit, and Ukraine kept firing it anyway,
19:48and kept fixing it. The guidance got better, the routing got smarter, the targeting got more
19:54disciplined, and now the one remaining constraint appears to have been engineered around by having
19:59the foresight to bolt the engine on the outside. Russia's answer to the flamingo is just several
20:04airplanes. Ukraine's answer to those may be a factory. But beyond that, Russia's aircraft woes keep
20:11piling on. To read more, check out this video and make sure you're subscribed to The Military Show for daily
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