Ukraine will not be able to effectively use British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles for long-range attacks on Russia without targeting data provided by the US, The Times has reported.
In an article on Saturday, the paper cited five former UK defense secretaries and ex-prime minister Boris Johnson, who argued that London should unilaterally allow Kiev to use its munitions to target internationally recognized Russia territory instead of waiting for approval from Washington. “There is no conceivable case for delay,” Johnson insisted.
Ukraine has been pushing for such permission for months, while Russia has warned that it would amount to direct participation of the West in the conflict between Moscow and Kiev.
The Times noted that “Britain could fire Storm Shadows without US approval or assistance, but they might be intercepted by Russian air defenses or be diverted off-course.”
A UK defense source told the outlet that Storm Shadows, which were jointly developed by UK and France, “probably would not survive in the contested, electronically jammed environment that the Russians have.”
“Russian electronic warfare has rendered GPS useless. They jam it. So it has to use another type of data set instead, which is American-owned,” the source stressed. According to The Times, such data is classified, but it is likely linked to American ground-mapping capabilities.
During talks between US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Washington on Friday, the White House signaled that it would be going into a “holding pattern” on the issue of strikes deep inside Russia until Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky comes to New York later this month and presents his “victory plan.” The development “surprised” the UK officials, who suggested that the Biden administration was moving towards authorizing the attacks based on “hints” from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the White House insiders told the paper.
Russian President Vladmir Putin reiterated on Thursday that Ukraine lacks the capability to use Western long-range systems on its own, as targeting for such systems requires intelligence from NATO satellites and firing solutions that can “only be entered by NATO military personnel.”
The authorization of such attacks “will mean that NATO countries – the US and European countries – are fighting against Russia,” Putin said. Russia will “make the appropriate decisions based on the threats facing us,” he added.
In May, when London first spoke of allowing Ukrainian strikes with Storm Shadow missiles deep inside Russia, Moscow warned that it could target “any British military facilities and equipment on the territory of Ukraine and beyond” in response.