Signal No. 130 · The data behind the missile

Prime Minister Andy Burnham used his first foreign trip, to Kyiv on Ukraine's Independence Day, to announce that the government "has agreed that defence firm MBDA can release classified information on UK components for the long-range missile, SCALP, as Ukraine and France look to establish local assembly lines in Ukraine." Downing Street describes SCALP as the French-produced version of Storm Shadow, both built on shared French and British technology, and says the decision "will allow the French and Ukrainians to move forward with the Ukrainian assembly of the missile". At the Coalition of the Willing session, Burnham put it as a request answered: "Now Volodymyr has asked us to share our Storm Shadow technology so Ukraine can build up this capability on its own. I'm pleased to confirm today that I have approved that request". The release names no components, no site, no date and no quantity. Douglas Barrie of the International Institute for Strategic Studies told the Kyiv Independent that standing up production would take "a number of years rather than a number of months"; Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow viewed the decision "extremely negatively," that Britain was adding "fuel on the fire," and that Russian forces were gathering information on potential production sites in order to target them.

The same day the Commission approved EUR 6.1 billion from the EUR 90 billion Ukraine Support Loan for "air and missile defence systems, missiles, ammunition and radars," most of it to be bought from European companies — an approval, not yet a transfer, which the Commission says complements previously approved plans worth EUR 16 billion, of which EUR 8.35 billion has been paid out; President von der Leyen: "As Russia intensifies its attacks, we are stepping up to help Ukraine protect its people and defend its skies," and Commissioner Andrius Kubilius: "We are enabling Ukraine to procure the missiles and air-defence systems it urgently needs." The Commission counts 376 Russian missile strikes on Ukraine in July. On the demand side of the same file, Opex360 relayed on Saturday Politico's account of internal defence-ministry documents under which Berlin would spend about EUR 12 billion on long-range strike from 2027, subject to the Bundestag: Tomahawk for the near term, a low-cost cruise missile to be qualified in 2027 — the candidates named are Anthem, the Ukrainian BARS and Fire Point's Flamingo — and roughly EUR 9 billion for the British-German deep-precision-strike line of stealth cruise missiles and hypersonic gliders in the 2030s. The letter of intent's window for US export approval of the German Tomahawk purchase, recorded here as running to the end of August, closes in a week with nothing announced.

President Zelenskyy gave the Coalition of the Willing an annual series for Patriot interceptors, PAC-2 and PAC-3 together: "Over the entire of 2023, Ukraine received 675 missiles, and over all of 2025 – 364, even though Russian missile strikes have increased. For 2026, as currently projected, it is 264." He gave no figure for 2024. He asked for a package of at least 300 for the winter, and put Russian ballistic-missile output at about 100 a month. To journalists on Sunday he had given the air force's own request as 360, the observation that "when only 600 are produced a year, 360 is not easy to come by," the expectation that American output rises "in the second half of 2027 and beyond," and an agreement with Chancellor Merz for 600 PAC-2 rounds over 2027–28 — older rounds that engage ballistic targets, he noted, but in greater numbers than PAC-3. No German confirmation of the 600 has appeared. The meeting itself — about 35 states, Burnham and European Council President Costa in Kyiv, Macron and Merz remote, no US representative identified — put air defence first on its agenda; Norway had proposed NOK 85 billion for 2027 on Saturday; Burnham spoke for Fire Point's Freyja as a cheaper anti-ballistic round.

At Mesko's plant in Skarżysko-Kamienna on Monday, the Agencja Uzbrojenia (Armaments Agency), represented by its head, Major General Artur Kuptel, signed a framework agreement with the manufacturer for Piorun man-portable air-defence sets worth more than PLN 8 billion (about EUR 1.9 billion). More than 80 per cent of the missiles and launch sets go to the Polish armed forces; the rest to Lithuania, Latvia and Norway, which form the purchasing consortium with Poland, a grouping Rzeczpospolita traces to the EDIRPA very-short-range air-defence framework. The purchase is financed largely through the EU's SAFE loan, whose condition sets completion by 2030; the quantity is undisclosed — Rzeczpospolita estimates well over 5,000 missiles, and Defence24 describes several thousand missiles and hundreds of launch mechanisms — against a Mesko capacity of 1,500 missiles a year, to rise above 2,000. The first executive contract under the framework is expected at the MSPO exhibition in Kielce in early September. Deputy Prime Minister and defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz: "This is Polish technological know-how. It is the first agreement in which the consortium is formed not by companies but by states." Deputy minister Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka called Piorun "our export hit" and the agreement the first for joint purchases under SAFE.