New Flamingo cruise missile will allow Ukraine to strike key Russian assets from 3,000 km away.

On August 17, 2025, Associated Press photographer Efrem Lukatsky published a picture from a Fire Point defense facility showing Ukraine’s new Flamingo cruise missile in a production workshop, accompanied by the claim that the system had already entered serial manufacturing. Lukatsky specified that the Flamingo had a range of more than 3,000 kilometers, which, if verified, places it beyond the reach of earlier Ukrainian-produced long-range missiles. The image was published at a time when Kyiv is relying increasingly on domestic production to supplement shrinking foreign deliveries and counter sustained Russian attacks.
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The Flamingo bears strong similarities to the FP-5 cruise missile developed by Milanion Group, an Emirati-British defense company that displayed a scale model at IDEX 2025 in Abu Dhabi. (Picture source: Army Recognition)

Visual examination of the images and technical comparisons suggest that the Flamingo corresponds closely to the FP-5 cruise missile produced by Milanion Group, a British–Emirati company that introduced the system at IDEX 2025 in Abu Dhabi. The FP-5’s declared data include a 3,000-kilometer range, a one-ton warhead, a maximum takeoff weight of six tons, a wingspan of six meters, and a speed envelope of 850 to 900 km/h in cruise with peaks of 950 km/h. The guidance system combines inertial navigation with a satellite-based CRPA package designed to resist electronic warfare. Milanion advertised a production rate of more than 50 missiles per month, achieved by simplifying structural features such as removing folding wings and containerized launch, which results in a pre-launch preparation requirement of 20 to 40 minutes. Milanion is headquartered in the UAE, maintains its NTGS subsidiary in the UK, and signed a cooperation agreement with a Ukrainian defense company in 2021, providing industrial ties that may underpin the Flamingo’s manufacture in Ukraine.

Several analytical comparisons also frame Flamingo in relation to the U.S. Tomahawk, which in Block IV and Block V forms has an approximate range of 1,600 kilometers and a payload capacity of 450 kilograms. On this basis, if the Flamingo’s FP-5 link is correct, Ukraine now possesses a subsonic cruise missile with similar speed but a larger warhead and roughly double the range. The Tomahawk has undergone decades of integration into naval and land-based launch systems and continues to evolve through maritime strike and hard-target penetration variants, whereas Flamingo has not yet been confirmed in operational use. Reports in Defense Express described the FP-5 and Flamingo as twice as powerful as Tomahawk due to the larger payload. However, no Ukrainian official data confirm these attributes, leaving the open-source link to FP-5 as the primary basis for technical assumptions.

Concerns regarding survivability in heavily defended airspace have also rapidly arisen. The Flamingo’s large size, long wingspan, and subsonic speed make it potentially easier to detect and intercept than smaller or faster weapons. Some observers argue that gaps in coverage, low-altitude routing, and the use of decoys or drones could compensate for these limitations, while others point out that Ukraine has previously managed to penetrate more than 1,000 kilometers into Russian airspace with modified aircraft (like the A-22 Foxbat) and legacy Soviet drones (such as the Tu-143). Online discussions also included attempts to estimate dimensions from transport trailers, with assessments suggesting a total missile length of 6 to 7 meters, a diameter of 80 to 90 centimeters, and a wingspan of around 5.2 meters. Analysts further debated whether the publication of images before the first operational use could allow Russia to adapt its defenses, although others noted that Russian intelligence services are now aware of the program.

The emergence of Flamingo aligns with a wider Ukrainian missile development program that has expanded since 2020. The Neptune cruise missile, originally developed as an anti-ship weapon, gained prominence after its role in the 2022 sinking of the Russian cruiser Moskva and has since been adapted for land-attack missions. The Grim-2, also known as Hrim-2, is a tactical ballistic missile project with a range of around 500 kilometers. In 2025, Ukraine tested a new ballistic missile that flew approximately 300 kilometers with a warhead exceeding 400 kilograms, which has already been used against Russian command positions. Ukraine has also revealed the Palianytsia, described as a hybrid missile-drone with a 500 to 700 kilometer range and a warhead estimated at 20 to 50 kilograms, which has been manufactured domestically and employed in combat. These systems demonstrate an expansion of strike options, from short-range drones to long-range cruise and ballistic missiles.

A 3,000-kilometer missile launched from Ukrainian territory could reach Moscow, extend beyond the Ural Mountains, strike Novaya Zemlya, and even target regions as distant as Spain or southern Egypt. These assessments stressed that the timing of Lukatsky’s publication, just before President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Washington to meet U.S. President Donald Trump, suggests political as well as military motivations in revealing the system. Other sources highlighted that Ukraine had previously declared the production of its first 100 missiles in November 2024, and by April 2025, Zelensky stated that over 40 percent of all weapons used at the front were produced locally, including 95 percent of drones. The disclosure of Flamingo was thus consistent with broader statements on scaling domestic arms manufacture. The announcement also coincided with continued discussions on Ukrainian air defense acquisitions, including potential SAMP/T NG systems from France and Italy, which are expected to counter Russian ballistic and hypersonic threats.

Some people pointed out that the Flamingo shows certain external similarities with the German V-1 flying bomb used during the Second World War, a parallel that Russian state media are expected to use in their recurring disinformation campaigns portraying a "neo-Nazi regime" in Ukraine. However, this comparison requires context. The resemblance is mainly related to the airframe’s overall shape, its dorsal engine placement, and the relatively straightforward design intended for ground launch, which are relatively common for cruise missiles. The historical V-1 was the first operational cruise missile, extensively used by Germany against London and Antwerp, with more than 30,000 units manufactured between 1944 and 1945. It carried a warhead of approximately 850 kilograms and had an effective range of about 250 kilometers, reaching subsonic speeds near 640 km/h. Its advantages lay in the simplicity of its pulsejet engine, the relatively low production costs compared to conventional aircraft, and although it was slow and vulnerable to interception by fighters and anti-aircraft guns, it still managed to cause large-scale damage in London and Antwerp and forced the Allies to divert significant manpower and military assets to defensive measures. In discussions about the Flamingo, the similarity with the V-1 is used as a visual analogy, while the context reminds us that even relatively unsophisticated cruise missiles, when manufactured in quantity, could produce substantial operational and strategic effects despite their technical limitations.