Ukraine claimed it attacked a major electronic connector production facility with R-360 Neptune ground-launched cruise missiles early Monday morning. The Elektrodetal plant, located in eastern Bryansk Oblast, was attacked from well inside northern Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials, who are still working to determine the extent of the damage.

“We are adjusting the work of the Russian defense factories,” the Ukrainian Navy stated on Telegram. “At night, our ‘Neptune’ successfully struck the Russian Karachevsky ‘Electrodetal’ plant. Another link in the enemy’s supply chain is down.”

The Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff offered more details about the strike and the target.

The attack involved four Neptunes fired from a distance of roughly 240 kilometers (about 150 miles). That would put the launch site about 25 miles across the border in Ukraine.

The Karachev Electrodetal Plant “manufactures various electrical connectors for military and general industrial applications, including low-frequency, high-frequency, and combined connectors,” the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff explained. “The products are used in aerospace, electronics, instrument engineering, and other industries. These include connectors for printed circuit boards, military equipment, aircraft, antennas, base stations, and other systems, as well as components for various measuring instruments.”

“Explosions and a fire have been recorded on the premises of the facility,” the general staff added.

The plant produces “most of the inter-block connections of Russian cruise and ballistic missile wings,” the Ukrainian Colonel General Staff Telegram channel reported on Monday. In addition, its products are also used in the production of first-person view (FPV) drones such as the Chimera, the Ukrainian Militarnyi news outlet reported.

Ukraine’s forces famously used Neptunes to sink the Russian Navy’s Project 1164 Slava class cruiser Moskva in 2022 and reportedly began employing a new land-attack version in 2023. The R-360 is derived from the Soviet-era Kh-35 and is very similar externally to that missile, which remains in service in Russia and elsewhere today. You can read more about what is known about this variant of the missile here.

Earlier this year, Ukraine showed off another variant, called the Long Neptune. In the past, the maximum stated range of the anti-ship version of Neptune has been said to be around 190 miles (300 kilometers). A Ukrainian defense official told TWZ that the original land-attack version could have a range of up to 225 miles (360 kilometers). With its extended body having capacity for additional fuel, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed Long Neptunes can strike targets at a range of about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers). Zelensky said that the new version has already been tested in combat.

The attack on the Elektrodetal facility came shortly after Ukraine struck an energy plant inside Russia’s Belgorod region, reportedly launched by a U.S.-made Army High Mobility Rocket System (HIMARS).

U.S. President Donald Trump has signed off on Ukraine using American-made standoff weapons inside Russia on a case-by-case basis, Keith Kellogg, a White House special envoy to Ukraine, told Fox News on Saturday. He did not say what weapons Ukraine might use, but confirmed the Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missile (TLAM), which the Trump administration is considering sending to Ukraine, was not one of them. 

That the administration is now considering giving TLAMs to Ukraine highlights the ephemeral nature of Trump’s support for Kyiv, which may have to rely on U.S. weapons for years to come. As we recently noted, after saying long-range munitions were off the table and throttling the supply of weapons and intelligence to Ukraine, the American president has reversed course on both, as we noted in our recent story, which you can read here.

Meanwhile, as we have frequently reported, the U.S. wants to restock its own supply of a wide array of long-range missiles.

“The Pentagon, alarmed at the low weapons stockpiles the U.S. would have on hand for a potential future conflict with China, is urging its missile suppliers to double or even quadruple production rates on a breakneck schedule,” The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

The brainchild of Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, this new effort is called the Munitions Acceleration Council. It is focusing “on 12 weapons that the Pentagon wants on hand for a potential conflict with China,” the publication reported, citing unnamed sources. “The list includes Patriot interceptors, Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles, the Standard Missile-6, Precision Strike Missiles and Joint Air-Surface Standoff Missiles. Patriot is a particular priority because Lockheed has struggled to keep pace with surging global demand.”

Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth “are exploring extraordinary avenues to expand our military might and accelerate the production of munitions,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told the Journal, when asked about the plan. “This effort has been a collaboration between defense industry leaders and senior Pentagon officials.”

However, some involved in the effort, both inside and outside of the government, “worry that the government’s targets aren’t realistic,” according to the newspaper. “Individual missiles can take two years to fully assemble. It can take several months and hundreds of millions of dollars to test and qualify weapons from new suppliers as safe and reliable enough for U.S. service members to use.”

The U.S. is already working to expand its ability to make missiles. It is opening up new plants, expanding work at existing ones and increasing the budget for buying new munitions. These existing efforts include jumpstarting production overseas for certain missiles, as well. How much more all this can be accelerated without using other means, like the Defense Production Act, isn’t clear, but what is clear is that the Pentagon knows this isn’t enough.

The war in Ukraine and fighting in the Middle East have shown the extreme importance of deep stockpiles of long-range strike missiles and air defense interceptors. As China shows increasing belligerence in the Pacific, the need to support Ukraine with weapons has no end in sight, and NATO’s relationship with Russia continues to spiral, as well as a massive spike in demand for these weapons around the globe, the race is on in the U.S. to ensure it can meet these challenges.

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