The 'carrier killer' missile Russia fired into a Ukrainian apartment building, killing dozens, is 'notoriously inaccurate' and unpredictable, intelligence and experts say

• Russia fired an anti-ship missile into an urban area in Dnipro, killing dozens of Ukrainians.
• Britain's defense ministry said the Kh-22 missile used in the attack is "notoriously inaccurate."

Russian forces recklessly fired a large anti-ship missile first introduced in the 1960s into a residential area in central Ukraine over the weekend, killing dozens of civilians in one of the single deadliest attacks on non-combatants in the war to date.

Western intelligence agencies and military experts say the weapon that Moscow used in the strike is unpredictable and "inaccurate" when used against targets on land.

On Saturday, Russian forces sent a Kh-22 missile — which NATO identifies as a AS-4 Kitchen missile — plummeting into a residential area in the major city of Dnipro, which had a pre-war population of nearly 1 million people. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 45 people were killed and 79 were injured in the strike that damaged or destroyed over 300 apartment units.

"We will definitely find everyone who caused this terror," he said on Tuesday. "Everyone involved in this and other missile attacks against Ukraine will be found and held to account." Ukraine's military said the Kh-22 that hit the apartments in Dnipro was one of five launched from Cold War-era long-range Tupolev Tu-22M3 Backfire bombers.

The Kh-22 used in the attack is a Soviet-era supersonic anti-ship missile equipped with a 2,000-pound warhead. Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesperson for Ukraine's air force, referred to it as an "aircraft carrier killer" and said it's designed to "destroy aircraft carrier groups at sea."

Big missile, lots of collateral damage

Ian Williams, deputy director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Insider that the Kh-22 is guided by an unsophisticated radar intended to detect a ship against the relatively simple backdrop of water. Over land, this radar seeker has trouble discriminating between targets, especially in an urban area where radar returns from structures like buildings and office towers can make it hone in on the wrong target.

And even if it hits the intended target, the destructive capacity of this missile is likely to cause a lot of extra destruction.

"It's a huge missile — it's really large," Williams said. "So any use of it in an urban environment like that, even if you happen to hit what you're hitting, there's going to be a lot of collateral damage."

Britain's defense ministry said in a recent intelligence update that the Kh-22 is "notoriously inaccurate" when fired at ground targets in urban areas, citing the radar issues. It's unclear if Russia was deliberately aiming at the apartment complex, a less practical target, or if this strike was intended for Ukraine's electrical grid as past missile barrages have been and simply missed.

With its ability to travel hundreds of miles, the Kh-22 can easily deviate from an intended target by hundreds of yards, Ukraine's military said.

And these missiles are difficult to intercept, Williams said. The rocket-powered weapon travels at a high altitude and at supersonic speed, making it a challenge for air defense systems — especially those that are shorter range, like the ones Ukraine has been using to fend off other missile and drone strikes.

"They're tough to intercept with traditional air defenses," he said, adding that "you almost need a ballistic missile defense interceptor."

Ukraine's military said its forces do not have the capability to down the Kh-22 — hundreds of which have been fired by Russian forces since they started the war last February. These weapons have also been used in other strikes with high civilian death tolls, such as an attack on a shopping mall in Kremenchuk in late June.

The UK defense ministry said at the time that Russia's Kh-22, when used in this way, "are highly inaccurate and therefore can cause severe collateral damage and casualties."

The use of the Kh-22 appears to be part of an effort to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses, which have been bolstered in recent months by military aid provided by NATO countries. One Russian strategy has been to fire a bunch of different missiles together, like cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, or air defense interceptors on a ballistic trajectory, Williams said.

This method poses a challenge to air defense systems because radars focus on certain sectors of the sky, he explained. So if attention is on the horizon, defenses might be neglecting threats at a higher altitude, and if the attention is focused up high, threats could approach from a lower level. "Diversity of missile types and flight profiles can help you overcome a stiff air defense," he said.

'Cruelty is the point right now'

Russia's use of the Kh-22 also calls into question Russia's stockpiles of precision munitions, which Western officials and experts have previously characterized as dwindling and in low supply. Though that may be the case, the Kremlin may also still have hundreds of these missiles left in its arsenal, according to a report by Ukraine's state-run news agency Ukrinform.

Missiles like the Kh-22 "are unsuitable for precision strike," Britain's defense ministry said this week, adding that "evidence from the Ukraine war suggests that dysfunction of Russia's long-range strike capability is more profound. It highly likely struggles to dynamically identify targets, and to access rapid and accurate battle damage assessment."

"This type of missile leads to the greatest human casualties, because the missile is extremely inaccurate," Ukraine's prosecutor general's office said, according to The New York Times. "Therefore, the use of such weapons for targets in densely populated areas is clearly a war crime."

Firing the Kh-22 into Ukraine is "certainly indicative of their lack of caring about the potential effects of the munitions that they use," Williams said of Moscow, which has not shied away from carrying out attacks on densely population centers in urban areas, and has constantly put Ukrainian civilians in harm's way.

"I think cruelty is the point right now for the Russians," he said.