VIENNA — With the United Kingdom passing classified blueprints for British-made components of the SCALP cruise missile to Ukraine, the country is now in possession of the intellectual property and permissions needed to build the high-tech European weapon domestically.
France had already provided Ukraine with a production license for the Franco-British weapon, called Storm Shadow in its U.K. variant, back in July.
New U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced his decision to allow sharing the sensitive design details with Ukraine during his first visit to Kyiv on Monday. The two countries are bound by close military cooperation and strong British support for Ukraine’s defense, and signed a 100-year bilateral partnership agreement in 2025.
However, despite the highly symbolic and strategic nature of the SCALP move, it is unlikely that Ukraine will be able to produce large numbers of Storm Shadows in the near future, as it lacks specialized, high-precision manufacturing equipment at scale, complicated by the fact that the country is at war.
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France and Ukraine are seeking to set up a joint SCALP production line in Ukraine, but the effort has so far stalled due to a lack of authorization for British-made components.
“The move follows the U.K. being the first to gift long-range strike weapons for defensive purposes to Ukraine in 2023 and will allow the French and Ukrainians to move forward with the Ukrainian assembly of the missile,” the British Prime Minister’s office said in a press statement ahead of Burnham’s public announcement.
The British government said the decision came alongside Project Brakestop, which aims to quickly develop effective and cheap long-range weapons for Ukraine’s use.
Moscow has not taken kindly to the announcement, with former Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and current Kremlin advisor Andrei Fedorov telling the BBC that the U.K. could see its factories involved in support for Ukraine face a “semi-military” response, “not by Russia, but from unknown sources.”
Long-range strike abilities for Ukraine have been a sore point for a long time in the Kremlin, and with the humiliating Ukrainian deep-strike campaign targeting oil refineries and warehouses making the war tangible to the Russian public just ahead of elections this September, it’s an especially touchy subject. In response, hybrid warfare across Europe carrying Russian signatures, such as mystery drone appearances and sabotage, have increased.
In May 2023, the U.K. became the first country to publicly supply long-range missiles to Ukraine in the form of Storm Shadow, although initially with a restriction against using them on Russian territory. Shortly after, France followed suit and provided SCALP to Kyiv. In the fall, the U.S. quietly began delivering ATACMS ballistic missiles, though again on the condition they won’t be used on Russian soil directly.
A turning point came in summer 2024, when the Biden administration authorized the use of HIMARS rocket launchers across the border into Russia to help defend Kharkiv. Similar case-specific uses of SCALP and Storm Shadow against Russia followed later that year.
Finally, in May 2025, new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced that Germany, the U.K., France, and the U.S. had lifted range restrictions, allowing Ukraine to strike deep across Russia with Western-supplied weapons.
In parallel, Ukraine has been developing domestic deep-strike capabilities, most famously in the form of the FP-5 “Flamingo” cruise missile built by the private but state-supported Fire Point enterprise. In recent months, the country has also field-tested various homegrown ballistic missiles, including an incident when the Russian military shot down a Ukrainian ballistic missile just 40 kilometers from Moscow.
Linus Höller is Defense News’ Europe correspondent and OSINT investigator. He reports on the arms deals, sanctions, and geopolitics shaping Europe and the world. He holds master’s degrees in WMD nonproliferation, terrorism studies, and international relations, and works in four languages: English, German, Russian, and Spanish.