CRUISE MISSILES – SCI & TECH
News: UK gives cruise missiles to kyiv
What is in the news?
● The
United Kingdom will provide long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine,
which it has been requesting in a bid to push back invading Russian forces,
British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told Parliament on Thursday.
● The
weaponry is the latest addition to the long list of military aid given to Kyiv
by its Western allies.
Details of storm shadow cruise missiles:
● Storm
Shadow is a long-ranged, air-launched, conventionally armed, deep-strike
missile, which is manufactured by the France-based MBDA Missile Systems.
● It
was first produced after the “UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) placed a €1.13bn
contract with MBDA Systems for the development and production of the Storm
Shadow long-range missile in 1997.
● Range:
○ With
a range of more than 250 km, Storm
Shadow weighs 1,300 kg and is 5.10m long. It’s capable of being operated day
and night in all weathers and designed to destroy
high-valued stationary targets such as airbases, radar installations,
communications hubs and port facilities.
○ The
report by Airforce Technology mentioned that what makes this missile a stealthy
weapon is the combination of its
long-range, low altitude and supersonic speed.
● Technologies:
○ Storm
Shadow, equipped with the fire and
forget technology, also offers high precision deep strike capability as it
features a sophisticated navigation system that includes inertial navigation
(INS), global positioning system (GPS) and terrain reference navigation for
better control over the path.
● Avoidance of detection:
○ After
launch, the weapon descends to terrain
hugging altitude to avoid detection. On approaching the target, its onboard
infrared seeker matches the target image with the stored picture to ensure a
precision strike and minimal collateral damage.,” the datasheet of Storm Shadow
said.
● BROACH Warhead:
○ The
missile features the BROACH (Bomb
Royal Ordnance Augmented CHarge) warhead — a high-technology warhead, which
first cuts the surface of the target, penetrates into it and then explodes.
Back to the basics:
About Cruise missiles:
● Cruise
missiles are unmanned vehicles that
are propelled by jet engines, much like an aeroplane.
● They
can be launched from ground, air, sea or submarine platforms.
● Cruise
missiles remain within the atmosphere
for the duration of their flight and can fly as low as a few metres off the
ground.
● Flying
low to the surface of the earth expends more fuel but makes a cruise missile very difficult to detect.
● Cruise
missiles are self-guided and use
multiple methods to accurately deliver their payload, including terrain
mapping, global positioning systems (GPS) and inertial guidance.