Ukraine might receive more than 5,000 air defense and surface-to-surface multirole portable missiles from the UK soon – but what missiles specifically?
On Sunday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said a new deal has been agreed on to spend £1.6 billion ($2 billion) via UK export finance and purchase “more than 5,000 air defense missiles” for Ukraine at a Sunday press conference after a European summit attended by Western leaders.
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The BBC said the missiles would be the lightweight multirole missiles (LMMs) manufactured by French arms maker Thales’s factory in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where the funding would include the hiring costs for 200 additional staff.
However, the factory’s production capacity is unclear, and the delivery timeline has not been disclosed.
BBC, citing the British Ministry of Defence (MoD), said the new deal is the largest contract ever received by Thales in Belfast.
Thales LMMs
According to Thales’s site, the LMM is a “lightweight, precision strike, multirole missile… designed to be fired from a variety of tactical platforms on land, air, and sea against a wide range of conventional and asymmetric threats, including armored personnel carriers (APC), fast in-shore attack craft (FIAC) and UASs [unmanned aircraft systems].”
It weighs 13 kilograms (29 pounds), has a range “in excess of 6 kilometers [3.7 miles]” at a speed of Mach 1.5, is “immune to countermeasures,” and uses “laser beam riding guidance” to target multiple target types, according to Thales’s official data sheet.
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It has been “integrated onto eight different platforms across air, land and sea” and has been in service with the UK military since 2019.
Promotional videos of the weapon have seen the launcher installed on boats and light armored vehicles, indicating a potential integration with Ukraine’s unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), such as the Seababy drones.
LMMs were already in service in Ukraine – in September 2024, the UK announced a £162 million ($213 million) contract for 650 LMMs for Ukraine, with the first deliveries in December.
The UK had reportedly already supplied hundreds of LMMs to Ukraine prior to the September contract, where they have been successfully used to destroy Russian drones and other threats.
On Feb. 20, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Defense Brig. Gen. Anatolii Klochko met with a representative from Thales to discuss “the realization of potential joint projects” without further elaboration. However, it could be about acquiring LMMs, as Ukraine’s head of Main Directorate for Missile Program Support, Brig. Gen. Serhii Baranov, was also present.
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