How many Storm Shadow/SCALPs are there in Britain, France and other countries: Defense Express analyzed

How many Storm Shadow/SCALPs are there in Britain, France and other countries: Defense Express analyzed Irina Martsiyash

There have been reports in the media that Great Britain or France are transferring a new batch of Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles to Ukraine. It is important to understand how many of these missiles our partners have.

This is important to know, because the number of these missiles, as well as the rate of their production, dictate how many of them the Ukrainian Air Force can receive. The relevant issue was analyzed in Defense Express, writes 24 Kanal.

How many Storm Shadow/SCALPs do Great Britain, France and other countries have

To answer this question, Defense Express noted that it is necessary to raise the order history for these missiles.

The first contracts for them in 1997 were concluded by Great Britain, which ordered 900 Storm Shadow missiles, and France – 500 SCALP. Also, another 200 units of such missiles were ordered by Italy in 1999.

In addition, such missiles were ordered by countries that are unlikely to supply them. We are talking about the United Arab Emirates, which in 1997 ordered a separate sub-version of this cruise missile called Black Shaheen in the amount of 600 units. Greece – 90 units ordered in 2000 and 2003.

“Unconfirmed purchase of 200 missiles in 2006 by Saudi Arabia. Qatar, which ordered 140 in 2015. It is believed that a certain number of missiles could have been ordered by India in 2016 along with the Rafale. And the last customer was Egypt, which also received them along with the French fighters ordered in the second half of the 2010s,” the publication writes.

In general, if we add up all the known contracts, we are talking about more than 2,600 units “plus” an unknown number for India and Egypt. At the same time, as Defense Express writes, the manufacturer of Storm Shadow/SCALP, the European conglomerate MBDA, as of 2017 officially reported that about 3,000 missiles were produced and ordered in total, and the number of existing and future operators is 9. Thus, the number of operators, including Saudi Arabia, coincides, as well as the estimated total number of ordered cruise missiles.

For Ukraine, only the existing reserve is available from what is in the arsenal of Great Britain, France and Italy, that is, up to 1,600 missiles. Of these, a small number, perhaps as many as 100, have been used in various operations since 2003 in Iraq.

But there are two other factors that need to be taken into account.

The first is the refurbishment and servicing of existing missiles. France and the UK ordered “midlife” refurbishments in 2017, with plans to receive the first refurbished cruise missiles in 2020. Clearly, even if the initial plans did not cover all the missiles, they were certainly to be expanded after 2022.

The second is additional production of the missiles themselves. And most likely, as Defense Express writes, all customers received the new missiles, because otherwise, especially France, which supplied them with Rafale, would have been left without SCALP at all. And this means that “the Storm Shadow/SCALP production lines at MBDA are most likely, at the very least, “warm” and the production of these cruise missiles may well be underway.” Although neither London, nor Paris, nor MBDA reported additional orders for them. The topics of their production are also unknown.