During the first day of the NATO summit in Vilnius, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the decision to transfer SCALP-EG long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine. Macron separately emphasized that these missiles will be handed over to the Ukrainian military so that they can strike deep into the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine against the military logistics facilities of the russian occupiers. The French president also announced that Ukraine has undertaken not to use French SCALP-EG for strikes on the territory of the russian federation.
How many SCALP cruise missiles France plans to transfer to Ukraine is not disclosed. Here we can only add that according to the French Le Monde, the French armed forces have only 400 cruise missiles of this type.
Read more: A Video Made Public in Ukraine May Be Evidence That the AFU's Aircraft are Using American JDAM-ER 'Smart Bombs'
The SCALP-EG cruise missile can be called the French "sister" of the British Storm Shadow missile, especially since both cruise missiles were created on the basis of the same project and have a visual similarity. In general, Defense Express talked about the characteristics of missiles of this type in a separate publication.
In the case of the French SCALP-EG, we add that there is indicated in particular the flight range of "approximately 250 km", and also the possibility of equipping with either a BROACH concrete-breaking penetrating part or a cluster warhead for hitting airfields and other military objects of the enemy with a large area is also stated .
There are references in open sources that the French Air Force used its SCALP-EG cruise missiles during the operation against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 in Libya (at least 15 missiles were used), for strikes against ISIS in 2015 and for strikes against of the chemical program of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria in 2018. One of the SCALP-EG use episodes can be seen in the video below.
Against this background, the question naturally arises as to how it will be possible to adapt the French SCALP-EG missiles to be launched from Ukrainian aircraft of the Su-24M type. It is possible that the same constructive solutions will be used for this purpose, which were used during the adaptation of the Ukrainian Su-24M to the use of the British Storm Shadow cruise missiles.
In particular, according to one of the OSINT analysts, pylons from decommissioned Tornado strike aircraft are used to mount Storm Shadow missiles under the Ukrainian SU-24M.
It will be recalled that Defense Express previously reported that the Air Force of Ukraine first demonstrated the JDAM-ER under the wing of Soviet aircraft. As it turned out, the MiG-29 can act as a carrier, and the Mark 82 bomb with a mass of 230 kg is used as the base, which corresponds to the FAB-250 in terms of its power.
Read more: Ukraine’s Air Force Spokesman Says Storm Shadow Missiles are Working, But Ukraine Needs ATACMS
