Winged World

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Contents
  1. Design and development
  2. Specifications
  3. Launch platforms
  4. Operators and combat use
  5. Variants
  6. Similar weapons

The S8000 Banderol is a medium-size Russian air-launched cruise missile1 powered by a jet engine. Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence (HUR) names Kronstadt JSC as its main manufacturer and designer2, the company also known as Kronshtadt that builds the Orion drone, the missile’s main carrier. The name translates roughly as “package” or “small parcel”3. FDD’s Long War Journal describes it as a low-cost option for long-range strikes4.

Design and development

HUR made the missile public in spring 2025. FDD’s Long War Journal says HUR revealed it in April 2025, around the time Russia briefly displayed a likely mock-up at Kapustin Yar, and on 12 May 2025 HUR published technical details and a parts list5 on its War & Sanctions portal. Moscow did not acknowledge the weapon until a VGTRK state television report of 12 July 20264.

The design leans on parts that can be bought abroad. HUR identified more than 20 key components and around 30 companies involved in production or supply, with most foreign electronics arriving through the Russian distributor Chip and Dip. Its engine is a Chinese Swiwin SW800Pro turbojet6, an aeromodelling engine sold online, including on AliExpress, for approximately $16,000. Other parts named by HUR include an RFD900x telemetry module from Australia or a Chinese copy, a probably Chinese inertial navigation unit, Murata batteries from Japan and Robotis Dynamixel servos from South Korea. The Russian-made part is a Kometa-M8 jam-resistant antenna5 from VNIIR-Progress, which HUR says is also used in Geran drones and in the UMPK and UMPB bomb kits. HUR’s database lists 24 components2 from makers headquartered in seven countries, among them the United States, Switzerland and China.

The airframe has pop-out wings3, listed in HUR’s database as wings with a folding mechanism, and the missile burns aviation kerosene6.

Specifications

HUR’s database gives a length of about 5 m2, a housing diameter of 30 cm and a flight range of 500 km, with a top speed of 620 to 650 km/h, a cruise speed of 520 to 560 km/h and 50 to 65 kg of fuel. In its May 2025 release HUR gave a warhead of up to 150 kg5 and a cruise speed of 500 km/h. Militarnyi later described an OFBCh-150 high-explosive fragmentation warhead with a total mass of 114.3 kg7, of which 49.5 kg is explosive. According to Militarnyi, the turbojet itself weighs 8.5 kg8 and produces up to 81.6 kgf of thrust.

FDD’s Long War Journal says the missile is guided by inertial and satellite navigation4. HUR also says it can make tighter turns than the Kh-1015, 3M-14, 9M727 and Kh-69 while keeping a typical cruise-missile flight profile.

Launch platforms

The main carrier is the Kronstadt Orion, also called Inokhodets, a medium-altitude long-endurance drone. HUR’s database lists the Orion and, in the future, the Mi-28N2 attack helicopter, and in May 2025 HUR said the missile was being adapted5 for the Mi-28N. The VGTRK report of July 2026 showed an Inokhodets carrying what the report said was a Banderol4 under its fuselage, with the munition blurred out; FDD’s Long War Journal noted that the drone apparently gives up its stabilised targeting system when it carries the missile.

Operators and combat use

In May 2025 The War Zone reported unconfirmed accounts of strikes3 on targets in southern Ukraine, and FDD’s Long War Journal says Ukrainian sources reported strikes in the Odesa and Mykolaiv regions in 2025. According to the same analysis, Ukraine’s Air Force recorded 16 Banderol strikes from mid-May to mid-July 2026, after none since the previous September; in most cases Ukraine did not say how many were launched, but it reported five in the barrage of 16 July. Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, an expert who advised Ukraine’s defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov, reported a Russian plan to make 120 Banderols a month in 20264 and wrote in July that the rate had likely not been reached.

Ukraine has brought the missiles down with aircraft. In September 2026 Militarnyi reported, citing a Telegram channel affiliated with the Air Force, that a MiG-29 had shot down a Banderol7 at extremely low altitude, and in October 2026 that a Mirage 2000-5F had downed one with its cannon for the first time8. For the night to 9 November the Air Force reported an attack by 317 Shahed-type drones9, 105 of them jet-powered, together with S8000 Banderol/Dan-T, Gerbera and decoy drones, and by morning counted five S8000 Banderol/Dan-T, Gerbera and other drones among the targets shot down or suppressed.

Variants

In September 2026 Rosoboronexport showed the Dan-T at the El Alamein airshow in Egypt. Janes found it nearly identical externally to the Banderol10 and judged it likely an export version, quoting Rosoboronexport data of a 130 kg warhead, a 268 kg maximum take-off weight, satellite and inertial guidance, 500 km/h and a range of 450 km. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) instead says the Dan-T is based on the Dan-M11, a 1990s target aircraft; it noted that Ukraine began telling Banderols and Dan-Ts apart on 13 September 2026. Militarnyi reported in August 2026 that the Dan-T can be launched from the Su-25SM3, Su-30SM, Su-34, Su-57 and Mi-2812 and from a wheeled ground launcher, costs about 35% less than the Banderol, and that Russia’s Aerospace Forces were considering buying only the Dan-T.

Similar weapons

  • Dan-M and Dan-T: the target aircraft family that ISW links to the Dan-T, whose Rosoboronexport data give a 450 km range10 against 500 km for the Banderol.
  • Kh-59: a Russian air-launched cruise missile for tactical aircraft, with launch ranges from 45 km up to 285 km13 depending on the version.
  • Kh-101: a much larger Russian long-range cruise missile, 7.45 m long13 against about 5 m for the Banderol.