19.03.2025 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, following the report by General Oleksandr Syrsky, stated that the Long Neptune missile had been tested and successfully used in combat , but did not provide any additional details. At the same time, a version emerged that the successful destruction of the Tuapse oil refinery was this use.

Let’s find out what makes this missile so good and why it can become one of Ukraine’s main arguments in the matter of its own defense capability.

SCRC “Neptune”

The need to create a domestic anti-ship missile system in Ukraine appeared practically immediately after the collapse of the USSR, since at that time the country mostly had morally and technically obsolete Rubizh complexes with P-15M missiles to protect its maritime borders. But despite the existing Ukrainian SCRC projects, none of them was ever implemented.

In 2014, after Russia occupied the Crimean peninsula, Ukraine lost the outdated Rubezh missiles that remained in its arsenal, and it was then that it was decided to give impetus to the Neptune project.

It allowed us to create an anti-ship missile system with a number of interesting features in the shortest possible time and at a fairly low cost, which we will discuss later.

The basis of the weapon was the Soviet Kh-35 missile, which during the USSR never completed a full cycle of tests and was not adopted for service. But in general, as a basis for a new missile with the prospect of development and modernization, the choice was made correctly, and later it was transformed into the R-360 missile with very decent characteristics.

Initially, the missile had a range of 280 km, with a warhead of 150 kg and a flight altitude on the march from 10 to 300 meters, but on the final from 3 meters – that is, an ultra-low flight altitude, which significantly complicated the possibility of intercepting this missile.

This became a decisive factor during the combat use of the R-360 missile in real combat conditions, when Russian air defense systems (both ship-based and land-based) proved helpless against a low-flying subsonic target.

Combat use

To date, there are several known cases, both officially confirmed and not entirely, of the use of the R-360 missile.

First of all, of course, is the destruction of the Russian missile cruiser Moskva on April 13, 2022. It was hit by two R-360 missiles, which the naval air defense systems, including the S-300F , were unable to intercept. The cruiser was sunk.

A year later, on August 23, 2023, modernized R-360 missiles struck a battery of the S-400 anti-aircraft missile system located on Cape Tarkhankut in Crimea. A second strike on the S-400 battery took place on September 14 near Yevpatoria.

And it was like a bolt from the blue!

A feature of these strikes was that, firstly, the S-400 complexes were declared capable of intercepting missiles at ultra-low altitudes, and secondly, the R-360’s approach to Cape Tarkhankut took place over terrain with complex relief and elevation differences, which indicated the missile’s improvement in terms of evading terrain at ultra-low altitudes.

In other words, that day it became clear that the S-400 had problems intercepting targets at ultra-low altitudes, and the R-360 had significantly expanded functionality.

There was also information that the strikes on the landing ships “Konstantin Olshansky”, “Azov”, “Yamal” and the reconnaissance ship “Ivan Khurs” were also carried out with the R-360 missile.

Thus, during its combat use, this missile showed that it can successfully hit not only surface targets in the open sea, but also land targets, in difficult terrain conditions and in the presence of echeloned enemy air defense. And there was nothing surprising in this, given the prospects laid down in the missile.

Prospects

When the Neptune SCRC was first presented, it provoked a flurry of negative reviews and completely unfounded criticism. Moreover, both many Ukrainian “experts” and their Russian “colleagues” joined in the harassment of the project.

But if everything was clear with the Russian harassment of the Neptune, because this complex was a direct competitor of the Russian Bal-E anti-tank guided missile system, and later of the wheeled copy of the Ukrainian Neptune – the Rubizh-ME anti-tank guided missile system on the KamAZ chassis (8×8), then many questions arise regarding the Ukrainian “experts”.

In fact, at the very beginning of the creation of the first Ukrainian anti-ship system, Ukrainian “experts” began to sink it, preventing it from improving and developing. Meanwhile, an extremely promising development was built into the project.

First of all, the R-360 was to become multifunctional in terms of carriers, namely, to be launched not only from a land launch site, but also to be sea-based and air-based. The missile was conceived (and we have already seen this implementation) as a highly effective means of destroying sea targets, with a displacement of up to 5 thousand tons, as well as land targets. The advantage of the missile was to be the ability to break through the enemy’s echeloned air defenses, despite its subsonic speed, which we have also already observed.

But the further development of the program itself included an increase in the flight range to 500 kilometers or more. And, as can be seen from the words of the President of Ukraine, these characteristics of the missile were achieved.

It is not surprising that one of the reasons why the Russians tried to exert maximum information pressure on the project even before 2022 was that they feared this missile not only as a competitor in the arms market, but also as a means of striking their facilities. After all, a missile with a range of up to a thousand kilometers or more, covering a route at ultra-low altitude with the ability to skirt the terrain, is a terror for Soviet-style echeloned air defense.

Well, it looks like this horror is starting to become reality…

https://war.obozrevatel.com/ukr/koshmar-dlya-rosijskoi-ppo-scho-osoblivogo-v-ukrainskih-raketah-neptun-i-na-scho-voni-zdatni.htm