PINPOINT STRIKE
Ukraine unveils mysterious new ‘flawless’ super missile after blowing up Putin’s £200m air defence battery in Crimea
UKRAINE has unveiled its mysterious new "super-missile" that is boasted to give a "flawless performance" in attacking Russian forces.
The weapon is believed to have taken out one of Vladimir Putin's prized £200million Triumf air defence systems during a spectacular strike deep behind enemy lines in annexed Crimea last week.
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Footage shows the shocking moment the S-400 launcher explodes into a huge fireball following the pinpoint strike.
A huge plume of smoke rose into the air after the state-of-the-art weaponry was blitzed.
Initial speculation was that Kyiv had used a British or French supplied Storm Shadow missile to carry out the deadly attack at Cape Tarkhankut in northwest Crimea.
But it is now clear Ukraine deployed its own sophisticated new cruise missile.
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"The missile was a new one, absolutely modern," said Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine.
He then praised its “flawless performance” on the battlefield.
However, Ukrainian TV added that there is “no clarification of whether it is an absolutely new missile or a modified one”.
One suspicion is that Ukraine has adapted the low-flying, subsonic Neptune anti-ship missile which famously sank the 12,490 ton Moskva flagship of Putin’s Black Sea Fleet last year.
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The new missile appears designed to hit ground targets.
The hit on the S-400 was highly significant since the advanced Russian air defence system and associated radar should detect and nullify missiles over some 200miles.
The Cape Tarkhankut deployment gave Russia control over a swathe of strategic land and water in the western Black Sea.
There were earlier claims that the Ukrainians were tweaking Neptune with not only GPS but other advances to enable it to strike land targets potentially at a distance of 225 miles.
The S-400 strike by Ukraine last week destroyed air defence missiles in a giant explosion and also took out Russian troops.
";As a result of the explosion, the installation itself, the missiles and personnel installed on it were completely destroyed,” said Ukrainian official Anton Gerashchenko.
In the wake of the strike, some Russian sources suggested the attack was by Storm Shadow.
And yet, Ukraine is developing its own missiles as well as relying on Western munitions such as Storm Shadow and US-made HIMARS.
It has also adapted the S-200 air defence missile into an attack option which has been used on annexed Crimea and Russia.
It comes as Russia's defence ministry claimed to have destroyed a Ukrainian cruise missile today in the air off the coast of Crimea.
Moscow also said today that it had scrambled two fighter jets to intercept two US reconnaissance drones near Crimea.
The Russian defence ministry said on Telegram that it mobilised the two jets after it "detected a flight in the direction of the Russian state border".
According to the ministry, the two US drones, a Reaper and a Global Hawk, were "carrying out aerial reconnaissance in the region of the Crimean peninsula", near the Black Sea.
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Meanwhile on Friday, three Ukrainian fighter pilots were killed in a horror mid-air crash between two L-39 aircraft over Zhytomyr region, west of Kyiv.
The victims included a prominent ace, Andriy Pilshchikov, who was desperately keen to be an F-16 pilot but was killed in northern Ukraine before the long-awaited US warplanes arrived.
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