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Ukraine’s Flamingo Cruise Missile: When Your Deep Strike Needs a Sense of Humor
Just when you thought the Ukraine war couldn’t get any weirder, along comes a cruise missile named after the world’s least-threatening bird.
Don’t let the pink branding fool you, though; the new Flamingo missile is the kind of long-range, heavy-hitting weapon that makes Russian arms factory managers wish they’d taken up goat herding.
In fact, this design is based on a US Cold War-era MGM-13B Mace cruise missile created to counter the Soviet Union. This gives the Flamingo missile a bit of poetry. It rhymes with history.
For months, the Flamingo was an internet rumor, a blurry concept floating through Ukrainian and Russian Telegram channels. Indeed, many analysts believe that Ukraine has already used the Flamingo on several occasions to strike deep inside Russia.
Now, thanks to a photo leaked by AP photojournalist Efrem Lukatsky from inside Fire Point’s “undisclosed” Ukrainian workshop (and trust me, if you find the place, don’t ask for directions), we know the missile is real, it’s huge, and it’s about to change the rules of the game.
Actually, I wrote about a rare moment of beauty early in the war. 1,000 real, rare flamingos nesting in Ukraine:
