Russia still has plenty of missiles to spare, expert warns
Military expert Mykhailo Zhyrokhov is convinced that it is too early to say that the Russian army has reached a critically low limit of cruise missile stockpiles (Photo:DR)
Despite having spent over a thousand
long-range missiles of various types to bombard
Ukraine over the course of the war, Russia still has more than enough to
continue attempting to strike targets all across the country, military expert
Mykhailo Zhirokhov said in an interview with NV on May 24.
The cruise missiles that Russians are using to attack Ukraine, namely the Kh-55, Kh-555, and Kh-22, are all Soviet-era munitions, no longer in production, asserts Mykhailo Zhirokhov, a military expert and aviation history researcher.
"Currently, they [Russians] have mass production of the Kh-101/Kh-102, Kalibr [cruise missiles], and that’s basically it," said Zhirokhov.
"They are also planning to launch mass production of the Kh-50 Orion cruise missile."
As for the stock of Soviet-made missiles, according to the expert, they are still quite large.
"Remember, in 1999 alone, Ukraine transferred about 600 Kh-55 cruise missiles [as a gas debt payment] to the Russians," he emphasized.
He also mentioned that Russians are currently trying to independently manufacture Kh-55 missiles using components from decommissioned Soviet equipment. However, these are rather isolated cases and not mass production.
Meanwhile, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russians have been producing several dozen cruise missiles annually, and this production has become stable after 2008.
"Now they are working in three shifts, adapting electronics to Chinese components and increasing production," says Zhirokhov.
He adds that despite the problems with the production of the Kalibr missile, the Kh-101s are being assembled stably and in much larger quantities than they were before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
"Therefore, considering the already used cruise missiles, I would now talk about a total stock of about 1,500 missiles," the expert concludes, suggesting it is too early to say that the Russian army is nearing the depletion of its missile arsenal.
"Moreover, there is still an untouched reserve, perhaps 10-20% [of missiles], which the Russians keep in stockpiles in case of a conflict with NATO, which they constantly talk about," notes Zhirokhov.
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