Ukraine negotiates SCALP cruise missile production license with France for deep strike strategy.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov confirmed that Ukraine and France have advanced into detailed negotiations to secure a domestic manufacturing license for French SCALP-EG long-range cruise missiles. The strategic initiative follows a direct bilateral framework established between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President Emmanuel Macron during a recent diplomatic visit to France. Securing local production rights would transition the Ukrainian military from reliance on irregular Western supply batches toward a sustainable, domestic deep-strike capability capable of independently replenishing specialized ordnance inventories.

The ongoing bilateral negotiations between Kyiv and Paris focus on navigating industrial bureaucracy, intellectual property rights, and complex subsystem integration required to establish localized SCALP-EG infrastructure under potential MBDA supervision. Concurrently, Ukraine is maintaining high-level dialogue with the United States regarding manufacturing licenses for advanced air defense assets following a broad G7 defense localization agreement.

Related topic: Ukraine requests US authorization to produce Patriot PAC-3 MSE missiles to solve air defense crisis

The SCALP-EG was developed after the 1991 Gulf War, when coalition air forces demonstrated both the effectiveness of precision stand-off weapons and the risks faced by strike aircraft penetrating dense integrated air defense networks. (Picture source: UK MoD)

On June 29, 2026, Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov confirmed that Ukraine and France started negotiations on licensing domestic production of SCALP-EG long-range cruise missiles, following President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's June visit to France, where he raised the SCALP license directly with President Emmanuel Macron. MBDA is likely involved because Fedorov said the discussions had progressed, but he also indicated that the process remained complex because SCALP production involves sensitive subsystems, protected industrial know-how, and issues that cannot be transferred through a normal procurement contract.

Simultaneously, Ukrainian talks with the United States continue for selected missile and air defense licenses, including Patriot PAC-3 MSE missiles, after G7 leaders agreed to consider allowing Ukraine to manufacture Western military equipment needed for its defense. If the SCALP license is concluded, it would mark a shift from periodic missile deliveries toward a controlled production model in which Ukraine could replenish part of its deep-strike inventory while France and MBDA retain authority over the missile's design, software, quality standards and export-controlled components. The SCALP-EG is the French designation of the Franco-British Storm Shadow missile, developed after the 1991 Gulf War exposed the need for weapons able to destroy hardened command bunkers, airfields and infrastructure without requiring aircraft to penetrate dense air defense zones.

The requirement took shape through the British CASOM program and a parallel French need for a long-range conventional stand-off weapon, with Matra and British Aerospace selected in the mid-1990s before their missile activities became Matra BAe Dynamics and later MBDA. France ordered 500 SCALP-EG missiles in January 1998, while the United Kingdom procured Storm Shadow for the Royal Air Force. The weapon entered operational service in 2003-2004, first with fighters such as the Tornado GR4, Mirage 2000D and Rafale, and was later integrated on Typhoon and other carriers. The missile was designed for operational-level interdiction, which means its intended targets are fixed, high-value and often protected: headquarters, hardened aircraft shelters, underground command facilities, port infrastructure, ammunition depots, bridges, air bases and strategic military buildings.

Before its transfer to Ukraine, the missile had already been used in Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, Syria in 2015-2018 and Iraq again against ISIS bunker complexes. The SCALP-EG weighs 1,300 kg, is 5.1 m long, has a 480 mm body diameter, a 3 m wingspan and uses a Microturbo TRI 60-30 turbojet producing 5.4 kN of thrust. It flies at subsonic speed, generally near Mach 0.8, along a low-altitude route selected before launch to reduce radar exposure and exploit terrain masking. The missile carries a 450 kg BROACH tandem penetrating warhead, built around a precursor charge that opens a path through soil, concrete or hardened cover before the main charge detonates inside the structure after a programmable delay. Guidance uses inertial navigation, GPS, TERPROM terrain-reference navigation and an imaging infrared terminal seeker.

Mission planners must load the missile with terrain data, waypoints, altitude profile, threat avoidance routing, target imagery, impact angle and fuze timing before takeoff as, once released, the missile cannot be redirected. Near the target, it climbs to improve the seeker field of view, exposes its infrared sensor, compares the target scene with stored imagery, selects the programmed aim point, and dives onto the target. The United Kingdom announced the supply of Storm Shadow missiles on May 11, 2023, after months of Ukrainian requests for weapons exceeding the 80 km class range of GMLRS rockets. France followed on July 11, 2023, when Macron confirmed at the NATO summit in Vilnius that Paris would supply SCALP-EG missiles. At that time, Ukraine chose the Su-24M as the carrier because it was the only available combat aircraft with enough structural capacity and payload margin to carry a 1,300 kg cruise missile under each wing.

The Su-24M had been designed for low-level strike missions and was therefore closer in operational role to the Tornado GR4 than the MiG-29 or Su-27. Integration used adapter hardware derived from former British Tornado launch equipment, fitted to the Su-24M's inboard wing stations. The more difficult work involved aircraft wiring, release authorization, cockpit procedures, mission-data loading, ground planning tools and the interface between a Soviet-era bomber and a NATO cruise missile. This adaptation gave Ukraine its first air-launched deep-strike weapon of NATO origin and allowed the Air Force to hold at risk targets in occupied Crimea, southern Ukraine and later selected military sites inside Russia without flying the Su-24M deep into contested airspace.

The weakness of the system is the launch fleet: Ukraine has only a small number of surviving Su-24Ms, limited trained crews and maintenance teams, and aircraft that Russia has repeatedly tried to locate and destroy through missile strikes on airfields. The first phase of Ukrainian employment in 2023 focused on operational isolation of Russian forces in the south. The Chongar road bridge was struck on June 22, 2023, and the Chongar railway bridge was struck on July 29, 2023, affecting routes that connected occupied Crimea to Russian forces in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Damage to spans, approaches and rail alignment forced repairs, slowed movement, concentrated traffic on fewer corridors and made Russian logistics more dependent on Armyansk and other routes.

During the same period, Ukrainian pilots used Storm Shadow and SCALP against command posts, ammunition depots and rear-area headquarters supporting the defense of occupied southern Ukraine. The second phase, beginning in September 2023, concentrated on the Black Sea Fleet's infrastructure in Sevastopol. On September 13, 2023, cruise missiles hit the Sevastopol dry docks, seriously damaging the Kilo-class submarine Rostov-on-Don and the Ropucha-class landing ship Minsk. On September 22, 2023, the Black Sea Fleet headquarters was hit, disrupting a major command node in Crimea. On December 26, 2023, the landing ship Novocherkassk was hit at Feodosia. These attacks contributed to Russia's decision to move a larger share of its naval activity from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk and other locations farther from Ukrainian strikes, reducing the freedom of the Black Sea Fleet in western waters and increasing the burden on Russian port, repair, and air defense infrastructure.

Ukrainian employment has since expanded into a layered strike method in which SCALP and Storm Shadow are used against targets that cheaper systems cannot reliably destroy. Typical targets include brigade or fleet headquarters, air defense command posts, aircraft shelters, ammunition depots, railway logistics nodes, communications facilities, naval repair infrastructure, underground command rooms and hardened buildings. The missile is rarely used for routine interdiction because stocks are limited and each launch consumes an expensive weapon requiring detailed pre-mission planning. The normal planning cycle involves target confirmation, fresh imagery, assessment of Russian radar coverage, route calculation, electronic warfare conditions, weather, likely interceptor positions, and the terminal image used by the seeker.

Ukrainian strike windows often include one-way attack drones to trigger Russian radars, decoys to create additional tracks, reconnaissance UAVs for target confirmation, electronic warfare to degrade sensors, and sometimes AGM-88 HARM anti-radiation missiles carried by MiG-29 or Su-27 fighters to threaten radar operators. Russian systems such as S-300, S-400, Buk, Tor and Pantsir can engage cruise missiles under favorable conditions, but their effectiveness drops when operators face drones, decoys, anti-radiation threats and low-flying missiles approaching from different directions in the same time window. After repeated strikes on Crimea and rear-area facilities, Russia dispersed aircraft across more airfields, reinforced shelters and revetments, increased camouflage, placed decoy aircraft and equipment at selected locations, strengthened point defenses around Sevastopol, Saky, Belbek, Feodosia and other military sites, and shifted some naval assets away.

Command posts and ammunition depots have had to move farther from the front or operate in a more dispersed layout, which increases transport distances, complicates communications, and reduces the convenience of centralized storage. Bridges and rail nodes require additional repair resources and air defense coverage, while ports need layered protection against both cruise missiles and naval drones. In that sense, the SCALP has become the high-end component of Ukraine's long-range strike complex, used where a 450 kg penetrating warhead and autonomous terminal guidance justify expenditure, while domestically produced drones and other missiles handle softer, more numerous or more distant targets. The licensing negotiations with France therefore matter because they concern the sustainment of a capability that Ukraine has already integrated into its operational method.

A license could take several forms, and each would have different industrial and security implications. The lowest-risk option would be maintenance, inspection, and refurbishment of missiles in Ukraine under MBDA supervision. A second model would involve final assembly from French-supplied kits, allowing Ukraine to build industrial familiarity while sensitive components remain controlled by MBDA and partner governments. A third model would localize selected structural parts, wiring, mechanical assemblies or test procedures while guidance, seeker, warhead and software elements remain imported. The most ambitious model would involve deeper licensed production, but that would require transfer of manufacturing data, certification authority, specialized tooling, secure software handling, trained personnel, supply chain protection and strict quality assurance.

A small defect in navigation calibration, seeker alignment, wing deployment, turbojet integration, warhead safety, fuze timing, or mission data loading can cause a failed launch or an inaccurate impact. For France, the decision also intersects with its own stockpile and industrial constraints. French SCALP inventories were reduced by deliveries to Ukraine, while the French Air and Space Force still needs a viable long-range conventional strike inventory until successor programs mature. MBDA must balance Ukrainian needs with French and British replenishment, ongoing support for existing users, production restart costs, and future work on the next generation of deep-strike missiles.

For Ukraine, the value of a license would be strongest if it reduces dependence on irregular foreign batches and creates a domestic replenishment path for a weapon potentially adaptable to future fighter jets. It would also support Ukraine's broader industrial policy: scaling domestic missiles and long-range drones while selectively absorbing Western technologies for guidance, mission planning, quality control, and systems integration. A realistic outcome is more likely to begin with controlled workshare, maintenance, final assembly, or component-level manufacturing before expanding if quality, security, and export-control conditions are satisfied. Over the long term, such a model would make Ukraine's deep-strike force less dependent on emergency transfers, while allowing the SCALP to remain the specialized weapon for hardened command posts, aircraft shelters, bridge nodes, naval infrastructure, and protected depots.

Written by Jérôme Brahy

Jérôme Brahy is a defense analyst and documentalist at Army Recognition. He specializes in naval modernization, aviation, drones, armored vehicles, and artillery, with a focus on strategic developments in the United States, China, Ukraine, Russia, Türkiye, and Belgium. His analyses go beyond the facts, providing context, identifying key actors, and explaining why defense news matters on a global scale.

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