High-end Russian cruise missiles could malfunction and miss their targets, according to new intelligence from the UK Ministry of Defence.
THE UK MODEL said on Tuesday it had analyzed open source footage taken on March 31, 2024, showing missile wreckage in a field in southern Russia’s Saratov Oblast.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said the debris was initially believed to be the remains of a “possible Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle.” However, their analysis concluded that the pieces were likely “fragments of a Russian AS-23a KODIAK air-launched cruise missile.”
“It is very likely that the debris is the result of a malfunction of a KODIAK missile launched towards Ukraine earlier this morning,” the British Ministry of Defense said.
“The very likely malfunction of such a prestigious missile indicates problems in its production, likely impacted by sanctions and its rushed production to meet the demands of the conflict,” the department added.
The AS23a Kodiak is one of the best Russian precision-guided munitions and was designed to attack major military targets such as airfields and warships. Also known as the Kh-101, it carries a payload of 992 pounds that can be equipped with high-explosive or fragmentation warheads, depending on the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Russia uses these missiles not only to strike military targets, but also to destroy Ukrainian grain silos. and “harm global food markets,” British intelligence said in October.
Russia’s blockade of Black Sea ports has also destabilized Ukrainian food production and driven up food prices around the world, even in countries like Kenya and Egypt, which rely heavily on Ukrainian wheat imports and Russian.
As Russia continues to lose hundreds of troops every month, Ukraine struggles to prevent further Russian advances on the front. It took a beating from the massive barrage of missiles Russia launched at it this winter.
In March, Russia also pounded Ukraine with glide bombs, a tactic Ukraine can only counter by eliminating the planes that drop them. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said at a press briefing on March 27 that Russia had dropped about 700 glide bombs on Ukraine over six days, regularly bombing targets from March 18 to 24.
With U.S. aid still blocked in Congress, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is now calling for more Patriot air defense systems to defend cities like Kharkiv against Russian missile and bomb attacks. Ukraine is also seeking to build drones capable of tracking Russian unmanned aerial vehicles instead of burning through their stockpiles of surface-to-air missiles to prevent aerial harassment.
Representatives of the Russian and Ukrainian defense ministries did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s requests for comment.
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