With some regularity, we can hear reports that Ukrainian domestic Neptune cruise missiles were used for a new strike on russian military targets, "evolving from a naval weapon to a powerful tool for both maritime and ground strikes."
Against this background, it is logical to ask the question of how many publicly known cases of using the Neptune missile to hit russian ground targets in 2024. The answer to this question can be found in an interesting thread by UAVoyager Twitter profile.
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1/ A small THREAD about GREAT achievements.The upgraded "Neptune" missile enhances Ukraine's defense, evolving from a naval weapon to a powerful tool for both maritime and ground strikes.This thread contains cases of "Neptune" missile strikes on ground targets. pic.twitter.com/XiSLzoblr8— UAVoyager (@NAFOvoyager) January 15, 2025
In particular, this thread lists the following publicly known cases of the use of Neptune missiles against russian ground targets:
• On May 31, 2024, the ferry crossing and oil terminal in the Port of Kavkaz, located approximately 250 km from the controlled territory, were attacked for the first time. Significant damage was inflicted on part of the oil terminal and two ferries;
• On June 21, 2024, a base of Shahed-type UAVs near Yeysk, located 150 km away, was struck by a Neptune missile. Satellite images confirmed the destruction of drone storage and preparation facilities, training buildings, and control and communication points;
• On July 23, 2024, the ferry Slavyanin was hit at the Port of Kavkaz. The invaders' ferry sustained severe damage. It was an important element of the occupiers' military logistics. The ferry supplied groups in the occupied Crimea and the occupied territories of Ukraine;
• On July 31, 2024, military warehouses near Kursk, located 100 km from the border, were struck. The strikes targeted storage facilities for aviation weapons and equipment near the Khalyno military airfield, partially destroying at least one building at the military facility;
• On August 22, 2024 - the ferry Conro Trader which provided fuel to the russian invaders in Crimea met the Ukrainian missile at port Kavkaz. First, a large-scale fire broke out on the ferry with 30 fuel tanks, and later it sank..
Paradoxically, the next publicly known episode of the use of the Neptune missile against a russian ground target occurred on January 10, 2025, when this missile was used to destroy warehouse with russia’s reconnaissance drones in the Rostov region 170 kilometers from the current front line.
From Defense Express, we will give the following generalizations: during the four months (i.e. from the end of May to the end of August) of 2024, there were five publicly known and successful episodes of the use of the Neptune missile to destroy russian ground targets.
In these episodes, the following priority was observed:
– first of all, logistical communications to the temporarily occupied Crimea were destroyed,
– secondly, UAV storage sites were destroyed.
Finally, a russian military equipment storage base near Kursk was hit (apparently as part of the preparation by the Ukrainian Defense Forces for the Kursk operation, which began in early August 2024).
It can be assumed that the rate of combat use of Neptune missiles by the Ukrainian side to strike russian ground targets could have been influenced by three factors at the same time:
1) the current capabilities of the Ukrainian defense industry to produce missiles of this type,
2) the actual rate of arrival of long-range missiles of Western production, and at the same time
3) the ban by Western countries on the use of missile weapons to strike targets on the territory of russia, against the background of which the Ukrainian Neptune missile was the only possible tool of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to perform such tasks.
At the moment, data on the flight range of the modernized Neptune missile, as well as the real rate of production of missiles of this type, are absent in open sources.
As Defense Express reported earlier, Ukraine planned to fill arsenals with Neptune missiles in 2025 as well as to order two more corvettes for country’s Navy. We also wrote, that Ukraine ramped up production of Neptune and other missiles.
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