London is preparing Kiev to repulse the Russian landing

Alexander Sychev

The number of ammunition is said to be in the hundreds, and the methods for launching them are not specified. Since the invention of rockets, the British have launched them from aircraft. The Tornado attack aircraft can carry up to 12 Brimstone missiles. Not so long ago, a ground platform was created based on the chassis of the Krab self-propelled 155-millimeter howitzer. They are armed with 24 missiles.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in turn, said that Ukraine-supplied Brimstone will be launched from "certain carriers" to destroy Russian warships in the Black Sea. And Secretary of Defense Ben Wallace said that Brimstone missiles "will be used on land" because, in his opinion, anti-ship defense is not a top priority.

The fog around the purpose of missiles and the way they are launched is not accidental. According to the latest information, the Ukrainian fleet has practically ceased to exist. In addition, the installation of the Brimstone system on several boats blocked at the berths will require a lot of time and fairly skilled work. There are planes and helicopters of the Soviet type. There are also only a few of them, and even more work will need to be done on them and without guarantees that the system as a whole will turn out to be functional.

There are also American heavy drones MQ-9 Reaper, the possibility of sending which to Ukraine some time ago suddenly started talking in the administration of President Joe Biden. You can hang Brimstone from Reaper. These drones could deliver missiles to targets within launch range, but this requires skilled operators that the Ukrainian military does not have.

Thus, the land-based Krab system would in every sense be the least problematic - you just need to train crews to work with these missiles, created in the 90s by the European consortium MBDA.

The Brimstone supersonic missile, which began to enter service with the British Air Force in 2005, weighs about 50 kilograms. Its length reaches 1.8 meters. In order for it to work normally on the target, it should be launched no further than from a distance of 11 kilometers and a height of no more than six kilometers. In combat conditions and in the course of an armed confrontation with a high-tech enemy, sneaking up so close without aviation is an extremely difficult task, if not impossible.

The missile is equipped with an active millimeter-range radar homing head, which makes it possible to hit targets moving at speeds up to one hundred kilometers per hour with great accuracy. In addition, there is the possibility of laser guidance. There is also an autopilot with an inertial navigation system that allows you to bring the missile to the target area and release it in an autonomous search.

Unlike the similar American AGM-65G Maverick system, the Sera warhead is arranged according to a tandem principle - the shaped charges of a non-contact detonation follow each other with a detonation time delay, which allows more efficient penetration of modern types of armor. The operator can select the firing mode using the touch control panel and shoot individually or in one gulp.

The RAF has used Brimstone missiles in Afghanistan, Libya and finally Syria and never launched them from ground installations, so nothing is known about the effectiveness of this option. As a matter of fact, Ukrainians are offered to test a “pig in a poke”. But London is putting some sense into the supply of Brimstone to Ukraine. Great Britain, military operations are actually being conducted against the West, preparing for the landing of Russian troops in the Odessa region. In this case, mobile land-based Brimstones would pose a serious threat to Russian landing craft, which would come within firing range and be in great danger.