Accustomed to using its technological and military might to target smaller, weaker nations in the Balkans, the Middle East, West Asia and North Africa, NATO got a rude surprise in the proxy war in Ukraine after Russian forces began churning through billions of dollars’ worth of Western military hardware, uploading the footage to traditional and social media and demonstrating to the world that the superiority of NATO arms to their Soviet and Russian analogues is just a myth.
On Friday, Sputnik published unique footage of Russian military specialists dismantling and examining a Storm Shadow – the state-of-the-art $3 million apiece cruise missile Britain and France began sending to Ukraine in 2023.
Possessing its own advanced rocket science capabilities, Russia is unlikely to need to study the trophy Storm Shadow to copy it, but can examine its components to better calibrate its missile defenses, says Alexander Mikhailov, head of the Bureau of Military-Political Analysis, a Russian security affairs-oriented think tank.
Studying the missile will also “be very useful,” Mikhailov told Sputnik, to get a sense of how its onboard systems, from the engine and warhead to the software, work and interact with one another.
“I think our specialists will try to figure out the alloys used to make the weapon; this is the most interesting question. They will figure out its guidance systems and their interaction with the navigation system, and the software itself, which also requires some digging into. Of course, we already know how to produce similar weapons –and in some ways better ones, but it's nevertheless necessary to know what technologies and innovations the enemy uses in such delicate areas,” the observer explained.
“At a minimum,” Mikhailov expects Russia’s analysis of the Storm Shadow to force the enemy to “change the tactics of these missiles’ use” in the Ukrainian warzone.
This is especially important, according to the observer, given the strategic targets the missiles can be deployed against, which include not only military-strategic facilities but infrastructure like the Crimean Bridge.
Russia has demonstrated that it possesses defensive tools which can defeat the Storm Shadow, Mikhailov said, listing off air and missile defenses from the Tor M2 and Buk M2/M3 to the S-300 and S-400. The Storm Shadow is an expensive missile, which means “we must expend expensive anti-missile missiles on them,” he said.
But whether talking about the Storm Shadow, the Taurus or any other weapon, real world use cases are far more telling and informative than the dry technical characteristics or promotional materials that weapons manufacturers often present to potential buyers at arms expos.
“Any military action, especially on such a large scale, and especially using such a large number of the latest Russian and Western weapons systems, reveals what things are genuinely worth. Because we often go to various exhibitions, international forums and see wonderful multimedia presentations…showcasing how these various combat aircraft, anti-missile systems and long-range munitions function…But what they will truly look like when there are real, living people sitting in these planes, when there are living crews inside these combat vehicles, that is – those who risk their lives every day and have to fight for real – here equipment manifests itself in a completely different way. And the control systems for this equipment sometimes causes serious failures. A lot depends on combat experience,” Mikhailov stressed.
In the case of the Storm Shadow, these weapons “already have combat experience, they are already being used in the Ukrainian theater of operations. It has proven possible to shoot them down, and they have hit certain targets. That is, a certain amount of experience has been accumulated on how they work, and how to counter them,” the analyst summed up.