The Storm Shadow missile is 'absolutely critical' to Ukraine's counter-offensive, say experts. But Ukraine needs to use it carefully.

• Ukraine has received powerful Storm Shadow missiles from the UK, and appears to be putting them to use.
• The missiles are giving Russian forces real problems in Ukraine, an expert told Insider.

Storm Shadow missiles provided by the UK to Ukraine are proving "absolutely critical" to its counter-offensive — but they must be effectively used to maximize its limited arsenal, experts told Insider.

Since the British government provided an undisclosed number of the air-launched missiles to Ukraine earlier this year they have been striking Russian targets "almost without fault," UK Defence Minister Ben Wallace said late last month.

The missiles, which are fired from a plane and have a range exceeding 155 miles, are designed to fly low after launch to evade detection. They also have an onboard infrared target-seeking system that allows them to recognize planned targets for a precision strike.

Defense analyst Michael Clarke, a former director of the Royal United Services Institute think tank, told Insider that the range and impressive precision of the Storm Shadow in Ukraine's hands heralds a "new dimension of air warfare," which Russia is struggling to counter.

"The Storm Shadow gives [Ukraine] a real edge in terms of destroying everything behind the lines that the Russians have got," he said, adding: "If they can see it, they can destroy it."

The weapon has also increased the relevance of Ukraine's air force, which seems to be using it to strike fuel and ammunition depots, key bridges, and headquarters well into Russian-held areas.

But Ukraine likely has only a limited number of aircraft capable of carrying them — and they are vulnerable, Marina Miron, a research fellow at the Defence Studies Department at London's King's College, told Insider.

'An absolute step change'

A gaping hole in a strategic bridge connecting Kherson to Crimea. A massive plume of smoke over the seaport of Berdyansk. Destroyed factories in Russian-occupied Luhansk.

While it's hard to confirm irrefutably that the Storm Shadow inflicted this damage, there are few other likely explanations at such a distance from the front line.

With strikes like this, "you think to yourself, 'Well, that can only have been a Storm Shadow,'" said Clarke.

The missile is equipped with inertial, GPS and terrain-referencing navigation, according to its manufacturer, and its pre-set target systems make it highly resistant to Russian jamming.

Its nearly 1,000-pound warhead is also capable of penetrating concrete bunkers.

The cruise missile's long range, meanwhile, allows Ukraine's jets to fire it beyond the reach of Russia's air defenses, which have largely restricted Ukraine's air forces to operations far from the battlefield.

"In practice it's an absolute step change in the range of a very capable missile," Clarke said.

Getting past Russian air defenses

Designed to fly low and packed with stealth aids, the Storm Shadow is effective at skirting air defenses.

Reports suggest they are being launched in conjunction with the US-made MALD decoy system, creating a false target that can confuse Russia's air defenses.

Once launched, the Storm Shadow hugs the terrain, just a couple of hundred feet above the ground. Meanwhile, much higher, a MALD takes the same route, acting as what Clarke describes as "an electronic shapeshifter."

"A MALD missile can make itself look like a flight of aircraft or it can make itself look like several missiles [...] when in reality there's one Storm Shadow several thousand feet below it, traveling fast towards the target," he said.

This means the strike is almost impossible to stop once launched, although Russia's Ministry of Defense claimed in late May that it had intercepted 29 of them that month.

"They might have managed to shoot a couple down, but we haven't seen any hard evidence," Clarke said. "As far as we know, they've all got through."

On Thursday, Russia claimed that it secured the intact parts of a Storm Shadow missile brought down in Zaporizhzhia, which could provide Moscow with insight into the weapon.

Aiding Ukraine's counter-offensive

Ultimately, Russia is likely to alter its tactics to adapt to the Storm Shadow threat in the same way it did to US-provided HIMARS, as Insider's Jake Epstein previously reported.

But in the meantime, the weapon spells headaches for Russia's command and control behind the front lines, Clarke said.

By all indications, Ukraine's counter-offensive hasn't kicked into high gear yet, he said. Clarke estimates that Ukrainian forces are currently testing the front lines and holding the majority of their firepower in reserve for a big push.

When that happens, "Storm Shadow will be absolutely critical in making it difficult for the Russians to react," he said.

Clarke envisages strikes on Russian command and control centers, ammunition dumps, storage facilities, strategic locations like bridges, and concentrations of troops.

Russia is particularly vulnerable to this because of its slow, centralized organizational systems in the field, he said.

"If they're there for more than a couple of hours, they can be hit," he said.

A precious and limited resource

On June 23, Russia claimed to have destroyed an entire cache of Storm Shadows in retaliation for the strike on the Chonhar Bridge, which connects Crimea with the southern Kherson region also under its occupation.

Whether or not that can be confirmed, the missile is clearly a valuable and finite resource. It's also uncertain how many Ukraine received from the UK.

At around $1 million each, they're expensive. Before Russia's full-scale invasion, the UK was generally thought to have held between 700 to 1,000 of them, Clarke said. What proportion of that stockpile was transferred to Ukraine is unknown — "probably some hundreds," he estimated.

On Tuesday, France also announced the delivery of an undisclosed number of SCALP missiles — the French name for the Storm Shadow — to boost Ukraine's supply, Reuters reported.

But Miron told Insider, before the French announcement, that "Ukrainians have to be very, very mindful for two reasons."

Their stockpile is limited, she said, and in the face of superior Russian ground-based air defenses the delivery aircraft is highly vulnerable.

Getting Storm Shadow in the air

It's Storm Shadow's air launch that gives it real reach. But there is still an open question of how many aircraft Ukraine actually has that can carry the missile.

Being heavy, it's not well-suited to Ukraine's main Soviet-era fleet of Mig-29s and SU-27s. It has been seen on both variants of its Su-24, according to Forbes.

But it's not clear how many of those Ukraine has left — and only one unit, the 7th Bomber Regiment, flies it, the outlet reported.

"[UK Defence Minister] Ben Wallace privately has said that there were quite a lot of tests to make sure that they could put Storm Shadow onto something that the Ukrainians had flying," Clarke told Insider.

One possible delivery vehicle, per Miron, is an F-16, which was only given the nod for distribution to Ukraine by the US in May. Ukraine is yet to receive any of the planes.

Celebrity weapons

There's no doubt that when wielded effectively, the Storm Shadow is a major piece of the counter-offensive puzzle.

But from Miron's perspective, the really important point about the UK handing over Storm Shadows is the fact that it signals an unprecedented level of trust in Ukraine.

The West has long hesitated in giving Ukraine long-range weapons, given their ability to potentially hit targets in Russia — a much-emphasized red line.

But that implicit vote of confidence from the UK should "open the floodgates," politically, for all the other weapons Ukraine needs, Miron said, including F-16s to carry the Storm Shadow.

(The UK's Ministry of Defence has declined to specify if the Storm Shadow has been modified for Ukraine's use, in the same way the US limited the range of HIMARS launchers.)

On June 29, it emerged that the US is once again discussing the possibility of sending Ukraine ATACMS, a much-desired long-range missile also fired from HIMARS launchers, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The French SCALP announcement also appears to show the influence of the UK's decision-making.

Moves like this are why, Miron said, Ukraine makes such a big deal of its Western-sent weapons being put to use — not only because they're effective in battle, but also because they make for great PR.

Brute force versus superior weapons

"There's no such thing as a war-winning weapon," said Miron. And the Storm Shadow is no exception.

As Clarke points out, the West helping Ukraine bring state-of-the-art weaponry to the field is only one part of the equation. While Ukraine has been getting to grips with the Storm Shadow, Russia has re-engineered crude Soviet-era bombs to be guided to target, albeit much less precisely.

"Western weapons systems now are proving themselves to be technically superior, really superior, but they're much more expensive," Clarke said.

"The old basic is repeating itself," he added. "Western weapons are far superior to the Russian weapons, but the Russians have got a lot more of them."