Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
Ukraine struck the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant on Saturday night with a new domestically produced cruise missile. The target, nearly 800 miles into Russia, was a factory responsible for manufacturing the Iskander ballistic missiles that have been killing Ukrainian civilians for three years now. The Ukrainian cruise missile was assembled in part from engines using a missile built from Russia’s own junked planes, which is the kind of supply chain efficiency MBA programs can only dream about
That DOES look like some industrial duct tape holding it together… (CEPA)
The missile is called the Flamingo, because apparently, when you build a cruise missile from scrapped Cold War trainers in under nine months at a startup called Fire Point, you can name it whatever the hell you want. The FP-5 carries a 1,150-kilogram warhead over 3,000 kilometers, more than twice the range of an American Tomahawk, and costs roughly $500,000 per unit. A Tomahawk costs three times as much but isn’t normally assembled from an aircraft graveyard, which until Saturday was considered an advantage.
The Russian Votkinsk plant is the single production facility for Iskander short-range ballistic missiles, Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, and components for Russia’s intercontinental ballistic missiles. Describing it as “strategically significant” is like describing the sun as “warm-adjacent.” Russia put its entire missile manufacturing spine in one building, which is the kind of decision that seems brilliant until the whole single-point-of-failure thing comes up.
The Russian regional governor acknowledged the attack caused “damage and injuries” but provided no further details, which we’ll interpret as “it’s bad.”
Peace talks in Geneva ended on Wednesday. No agreement was reached. The war enters its fifth year next week, and the diplomatic track remains exactly where it has been since 2022, which is nowhere. But on Saturday night, a missile named after a wading bird, built from engines Russia threw away, flew 800 miles into the country that threw them away and set fire to the factory that builds the missiles named after Alexander the Great. If there’s a metaphor in there somewhere, it’s on fire too.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
