CDR Salamander - Is the U.S. about to get its own FP-5 Flamingo?

As we like to point out, if you pay proper attention, small and medium-sized wars will show you what works, what doesn’t, and probably what you will need should war come your way at some point in the future on a larger scale.

Prior to WWI, you had the Boer Wars. Prior to WWII, you had the Spanish Civil War. Right now, we are blessed—or cursed, depending on your focus—with a flood of lessons in the offensive use and defense against swarms of the many, affordable, and massed long-range attack drones, cruise missiles, and conventional ballistic missiles.

The Russo-Ukrainian War since 2022 and the U.S.-Israeli conflict against Iran and her proxies since the Hamas invasion of Israel in October 2023 are sending clear signals on what the war in the second quarter of the 21st century demands.

There was a minority opinion for decades that there was a missing capability/capacity gap, but it was tut-tut’d away by The Smartest People in the Room™.

The War Gods of the Copybook Headings have proven TSPITR’s™ (pronounced ‘T-spit-ter’) peacetime theories wrong. Actual war has shown an insatiable appetite for three simple requirements:

• Range

• Scalability

• Affordability

We have Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missiles (TLAM). They are great, but they are few, expensive, and a challenge to scale.

Same with our other exquisite weapons such as ATACMS, PrSM, etc…but that is what we have at hand. That is what we bought, and we have not bought/cannot buy enough. Bad thing about that is, once you use up those, your only other option is to deliver weapons via manned systems up close and personal, with all the dangers that come with it.

Not every target needs a TLAM/ATACMS/PrSM, etc. …and when you have to rack-and-stack your target set, some targets don’t make the cut simply because you only have so many weapons to send downrange at a time.

In a contested air environment with a modern air defense system—as we will have to deal with against the People Republic of China—then a certain percentage of your few-and-expensive weapons will never make it to their target.

How do you address the issues in the above two paragraphs?

We’ve discussed the Shahed/LUCAS “flying lawnmower” here earlier this year. A couple of months ago we touched on another attention getter, Ukraine’s FP-5 Flamingo and what it brings for the Ukrainians:

Where is America’s Flamingo, or something close to it, given that we can only make so many of our exquisite weapons?

Well, we seem to have our own version on the way…and we’re bringing Israel and Germany along for the show.

US defence contractor Covenant plans to set up a production facility for long-range cruise missiles in the German state of Saxony, the company said on Wednesday.

“We will be producing roughly 1,000 in our first year and then scaling to 5,000,” Covenant chief Abigail Denburg said, outlining the company’s “target for annual production.”

Covenant also operates a production facility in Texas to supply the US armed forces, as well as a location in Israel.

“Covenant’s facility in northern Israel supports engineering and manufacturing, and the company draws heavily on Israeli defence tech talent,” the Jerusalem Post reported.

According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “a foreign cargo aircraft” picked up equipment in Israel ahead of a secret weapons test in Morocco last month.

Production of the Anthem cruise missile for European customers is to begin next year at the German facility to be set up near Leipzig.

It isn’t as large in size or warhead as the Flamingo, but it can carry a 200-kilogram warhead with precision, while offering a reported range of 1,500 kilometers.

Some of the specifics vary depending on the source, but here’s the 85% solution for comparison.

That storage and handling aspect is critical… and, in a way, sexy. To mass fires, you need mass…sustainable and suitable for storage and ease of maintenance. The team at Covenant seems to have done the right thinking.

The TLAM carries a 450-kilogram warhead and can carry that a bit further, but not all that much further. NAVAIR says each TLAM costs $3.64 million, while the Anthem is supposed to be less than a million (though land and not sea-based).

You win wars with a high-low mix. We need a low-mix, and many of our allies cannot afford all that many “high”. Just like we pointed out last week in the anti-ballistic missile arena, our allies need to get in this game. They have work to do there, but Anthem gets them in the game of affordable and scalable deep strike.

Its missile, called Anthem, is a ground-launched cruise missile carrying a payload of more than 200 kilograms (441 pounds). In a fight, it would be used in high volumes to work alongside other long-range missiles like the 1,000-mile (1,609 kilometers) range Tomahawk cruise missile produced by RTX’s Raytheon unit and the 600-mile Lockheed Martin Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range (JASSM-ER).

Nice additional tool in the toolbox…and, yes, it works in all sorts of ways west of the International Date Line.

Anthem is powered by a solid rocket motor for takeoff and a heavy-fuel jet engine for cruise flight. Covenant says it has flown the missile more than 200 times over the past year in tests.

Executives said the missile was built with an eye toward the Pacific. “We were designed for the China fight,” said Covenant President Abby Denburg.

Taiwan, call your office.

They have already answered some of my follow-on questions.

Covenant said it deliberately avoided sole-source suppliers, lining up three solid-rocket-motor providers with a fourth in the works, and locking in long-term agreements for more than 4,000 jet engines over the next two years.

The company’s Dallas plant, spanning 105,000 square feet (9,754 square meters), opens on Wednesday and is expected to reach full-rate production of 5,000 missiles a year.

Covenant operates a similar-sized facility in Saxony, Germany, which will also have a 5,000-unit-per-year capacity. A smaller site in northern Israel will make 2,000 units a year.

Just as an oh-by-the-way thought, it shares the external engine with the Flamingo, just underneath, different to most cruise missiles we are used to seeing. There has to be a good engineering/cost reason for this. If you know it, share in comments.

One of the best operationalizations of the requirements at the top of the post that I’ve seen manifested about Flamingo/Anthem in spoken form comes from Covenant’s President and Chief Growth Officer, Abby Denberg.

Might as well go to the top. As a side note, I can see why they recruited her. She is an exceptional talent.

She adds a bit more in this interview.

Cost, for small and large militaries, matters. Yes, there are tradeoffs, but the folks at Missile Matters outline a perfect example.

Estonia, for example, was approved between 2022 and 2025 to purchase up to 200 ATACMS short-range ballistic missiles. It could afford three to four times as many low-cost cruise missiles of the types discussed here, yielding a deeper arsenal that could also reach into Russia’s strategic depth rather than being confined to frontline targets. To be clear, ATACMS’ ability to service time-sensitive targets is a quality in itself that states may want regardless of arsenal depth. But depth is a quality of its own, and one that was previously beyond Estonia and most of its small-state peers. This may change soon.

This appears fairly turnkey, especially with 200+ flights already complete.

There will be no black-pilling. Good things are happening.

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