Context: The United Kingdom will provide long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine which could bolster the country’s counter-offensive capabilities.
Storm Shadow Cruise missile:
- Storm Shadow is a long-ranged, air-launched, conventionally armed, deep-strike supersonic missile, which is manufactured by the France-based MBDA Missile Systems.
- Range: More than 250 km
- It is capable of being operated day and night in all weathers and is designed to destroy high-valued stationary targets such as airbases, radar installations, communications hubs and port facilities.
- It is equipped with fire-and-forget technology and offers high-precision deep strike capability as it features a sophisticated navigation system that includes inertial navigation (INS), a global positioning system (GPS) and terrain reference navigation for better control over the path.
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.
