Inside the Production of Flamingo Missiles

I already like this trip. We had a decent sleep and immediately see the scale. This is the front nose cone for the Flamingo rocket. Look at its size. It's almost as tall as me.

There are so many of them here, and this is just a small part. And actually, I know that many of you will write, asking why we are showing all of this. But believe me, all materials have been approved by the Security Service.

And, unfortunately, I won't be able to show you many things, because it would simply give extra information to the enemy.

Therefore, we will blur part of the video, and some things, unfortunately, I won't show you at all. But still, there will be a lot of interesting things.

Fairings or nose cones of rockets are the first thing that catches our sleepy eyes after the journey.

The black color is not a mistake, nor is it for style to make the nose look like a flamingo's beak, but a natural coloring, because the rocket's nose is made of radiotransparent materials, like a composite.

It is a combination of fiberglass, which provides strength, and resin, which binds it all together. It is the resin that has the dark color.

Behind the fairing hides an antenna or a guidance sensor. No details here.

Now, for the first time, you see how and what makes the Flamingo rocket. This is one of dozens, maybe even hundreds of factories.

Each one makes some separate parts; everything is decentralized.

Flamingo is wings and a rocket.

A rocket that sets fire to the asses of Russians, and our information space too.

Because the rocket flies, which our neighbors gladly confirm,

but at the same time, Firepoint, from one of the most secret and closed companies,

has turned into the most controversial and popular Ukrainian weapons manufacturer.

Your company was one of the most secretive...

...in Moscow, but to see everything with my own eyes.

And I saw several locations.

This is not an old Soviet giant factory, but a huge number of production facilities scattered across the country.

If something happens to one location, the workers move to an identical backup one.

The process does not stop.

The main feature of these missiles is simplicity.

They are cheap, relatively easy to make, and the production cycle is much faster

than that of classic Soviet-school missiles.

For example, the body is not cast from steel, you don't need hundreds of tons of metal,

metallurgical plants—everything is completely different.

On this machine, the carbon body of the missile is wound,

it is not working right now.

But I can show you what carbon fiber looks like.

It's actually like a very sticky tape.

It looks a lot like hair being braided,

and that's basically how carbon is wound onto the rocket.

To be more precise, this is one of the rocket body winding lines.

Polyacrylonitrile fiber is used to create it.

I know, it sounds scary.

Heat-treated at temperatures up to 3,000 degrees.

It's much cheaper and, on average, five times lighter than steel.

And the tensile strength of carbon fiber is higher.

How does all of this work?

A computer program controls the process

and winds the fiber at different angles.

It calculates exactly where it needs to be stronger

and where the load areas are larger.

After the carbon is wound onto the rocket,

and its body is formed, along these rails,

it rolls into a huge oven like this.

It looks like some kind of giant microwave.

It's really hot inside here.

And here, simply put, the rocket is baked.

That's when it holds its shape.

Because the wound fiber, soaked in epoxy resin, is still uncured.

In the oven, it is usually cured at a temperature of 120-180 degrees.

I'm not revealing any secrets now, because any AI can easily tell you the recipes, so to speak.

In an oven like this, the liquid resin binds the fibers, and we get the required strength,

because without baking, it would just be threads that don't really hold together.

It seems baking isn't only used to make rocket bodies.

Take, for example, armor plates made of ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene,

where layers of material are pressed under high pressure and temperature.

Or ceramic armor plates, where a special powder is heated to ultra-high temperatures.

Even visually, it is noticeable that the Flamingo is not a work of military art for all the money in the world,

but a missile whose task is to inflict maximum damage on the enemy at a minimal cost.

There is a lot of talk about the Flamingo, but videos of its hits do not often appear online.

And a logical question arises: does the Flamingo even exist?

Can we make many of them, and do they really hit anything?

Right now, I am in a unique place. This is the answer to the question of whether Ukrainian missiles exist.

You can see its size for yourself, how huge it is.

They joked that the president walked here, and I was given the same opportunity.

Honestly, the scale of all this is very impressive.

And this is only a small part of what we can show you.

We are looking at the question about Flamingo.

Ukrainian missiles are launched from launchers.

Russia has more variation because, as you know, they have many aircraft.

You read news about this almost every evening, about them launching "Panam" missiles.

They have submarines and also ground launchers.

For us, everything is still limited to just this kind of launch system.

It's just a question of their quantity, how many of them there are.

And it's interesting how many in total

missiles we can launch simultaneously in general.

Regarding missiles, it's interesting, everyone is interested in ballistics.

Nine months ago, I spoke with Korolyshniy.

Now we are in another building,

where they manufacture wings for missiles.

That is exactly what they do there.

And right here, they apply thermal insulation to one of the missile elements.

I don't know Chesnyk yet, what he is like, and we won't name him.

I would also draw attention to the smell in this room,

because everything is processed, there's a smell of some acrid resins.

We've been here for literally five minutes, and it's already getting hard to breathe.

So it's no wonder why everyone is wearing respirators and why there are such safety measures.

But you'll definitely never guess what this is.

This is a special mold where the missile's wing is placed.

We can see that special mechanisms are pressing it down,

and it has to sit in this mold for a few hours.

I wanted to ask you about the attack on Kyiv. The latest attack.

Over there is a modern 3D printer that actually prints their fuselage.

And over here, step into the oven, where they are baked at a temperature of 40-60 degrees.

Well, it really looks like a little sauna.

This is another oven where our drones are baked.

You can just see how many of them there are.

And there are actually many such ovens here.

To be honest, it's even hard to be here.

You can see that you're in some kind of sauna,

where this warm air is constantly blowing right in your face.

Honestly, I don't envy the workers who work in this exact location.

Even just bringing something here.

By the way, if you like fiery mornings in Moscow,

then you can become…

I hope in this video…