Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s official website shared images of the recently acquired Ukrainian Navy equipment, including NSM cruise missiles from Norway.
Ukraine officially disclosed its acquirement of NSM cruise missiles from Norway’s Kongsberg for the first time, showing the launcher truck with canisters.
So far, Ukraine has utilised its indigenously produced Neptune and provided RGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship cruise missiles, both of which are identical in layout and performance. Both have been deployed for coastal defence, and the former was occasionally used to strike land targets.
NSM, on the other hand, stands out as a multi-role cruise missile thanks to the EO/IR seeker. This might allow Ukraine to perform precise strikes on relocatable targets in addition to Russian warships. On the other hand, NSM can exceed the range of the aforementioned cruise missiles in specific cruise profiles that have higher altitudes. The missile’s range for low-altitude cruise is rated as 185 km, while high-altitude cruise extends the range towards 300+ km.
While Ukraine already possesses a variety of long-range cruise missiles/kamikaze UAVs like FP-1 and FP-5, NSM possesses better survivability with lower RCS and terrain-following capability, alongside the advantages of having a dual-use optical seeker. This would bring the advantages provided by the air-launched Storm Shadow cruise missiles to land-based use.
Author: Kaan Azman
Editor: Özgür Ekşi
