Appearance in the hands of the Ukrainian military of the "grounded" version of the Brimstone missiles provided by the United Kingdom has become one of the most unpleasant surprises for the russians in the war they started themselves.
To make it happen, British engineers from MBDA created the most simple and efficient solution on how to use one of its best air-launched missiles from the ground: a Brimstone is fired off pylons mounted on an ordinary pickup truck, the fire controls of the launcher are not disclosed.
Read more: Britain Сonfirms Sending Ukraine Brimstone II Missiles
The Armed Forces of Ukraine then started doing their own share and so far have launched many successful strikes with the Brimstones on russians. That is why in November 2022, the British Ministry of Defense decided to supply even more advanced Brimstone 2 Dual Mode missiles to make the strikes more effective.
Usually, the lifecycle of weapons works as follows: first, the advanced western countries invent novelties, and then less developed countries pick up the trend or a design solution.
However, the situation was reversed with guided aerial missiles on the pickups. When British engineers were working on how the take them "to the ground", they were looking up to the experience of warfare in Africa or the Middle East.
For example, among the materials published by the Oryx website, we can find a mention that in August 2014, forces of the "National Salvation Government" of Libya fired Kh-29T guided air missiles from pickup trucks, and it was quite successful, as we can judge by the photos from social media.
The Kh-29T missiles were drawn from the Libyan Ghardabiya air base, where the Libyan Air Force once kept its Su-24s, purchased in the late 1980s from the USSR. The aircraft was destroyed, though, during the NATO operation against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. Since the NSG forces had no other Kh-29T carrier aircraft available, they came up with the idea of "grounding" these air-launched missiles.
For sure, the adjustment of these missiles for the ground launch was made by competent people, most probably former military engineers. They managed, for example, to calculate the required configuration for the pylon and "hack" the missile's guidance system which is bound to the aircraft.
We are pointing this out because such experiments do not always end in success. For reference, there was a video from the same Libya from 2020 which depicts one of the conflict's sides trying to fire off a P-15 "Termit" missile this way, but it exploded mere seconds after the launch.
But there is a possibility Libya wasn't the very first proving ground for practicing the options of "grounding" guided aerial missiles, and it was western engineers after all who developed the necessary design solutions.
There is another example in the world's military history when during the Falklands War in 1982, Argentinian servicemen adjusted a sea-launched Exocet MM38 anti-ship missile to be fired from a custom ground launcher taken off the warship. This way, British HMS Glamorgan was destroyed overnight June 12, 1982.
As Defense Express earlier reported, the British MBDA company has already started implementing the experience of the application of Brimstone in Ukraine into its new projects. These missiles, mounted on a Boxer armored vehicle, were presented at an exhibition. Another promising development is a Brimstone launcher attached to a drone. Find the photos and more information here.
Read more: Exceptional Inventiveness of Ukrainian Military: RBS-17 Anti-Ship Missile Takes Down a Ground Target (Video)
