In early 2025, Russian cruise missile manufacturer JSC Kronshtadt had plans to reach production of 250 S8000 Banderol missiles a month, according to an analysis of the company’s tenders conducted by the open source intelligence (OSINT) project Nordsint. That is more than three times the current production estimate given by Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR), which puts Russia’s current capacity at 80 Banderol missiles a month.
In February 2025, Kronshtadt issued a tender for the production and delivery of components. Items in the procurement documents carried the designation S8000, the same index used by HUR for the Banderol missile.
The tender listed inertial navigation modules, onboard computers, power units, pressure sensors, cables, and other parts. Ukraine later found the same components in wreckage from Banderol missiles, including the Kometa-M8 anti-jamming antenna and the RFD900x telemetry module.
Nordsint focused its analysis on components that are required at a rate of one unit per missile, such as cable assemblies for the Kometa-M8, the missile’s radio modem, and the mechanism used to deploy the missile’s folding wings. For April 2025, Kronshtadt ordered 200 sets of each of those components. The procurement volume then rose to 250 sets a month and remained at that level through the end of October.
Nordsint said the figures point to an initial production plan of about 250 Banderol missiles a month. If the company had actually reached that rate and maintained it after October 2025, Russia could have produced about 4,450 missiles by the end of September 2026, the analysts estimated.
Available estimates of actual production are significantly lower. In August, HUR reported that Russian manufacturers were only capable of producing up to 80 Banderol missiles a month, even with production running around the clock. HUR also estimated that Russia’s production plan for 2026 totaled close to 1,000 of these missiles.
Moscow began using the Banderol — whose name translates to “parcel” in Russian — against Ukraine in spring 2025. HUR released details of the missile’s design in May of that year.
The S8000 is produced by Kronshtadt, which is also known for manufacturing Orion drones. The missile has a range of about 500 kilometers and a maximum speed of 620 to 650 kilometers per hour. It carries a 114.3-kilogram high-explosive fragmentation warhead.
The Banderol makes extensive use of foreign components. HUR identified a Chinese Swiwin turbojet engine, Japanese Murata batteries, South Korean Dynamixel servos, an Australian RF Design radio modem, and microchips made in the United States, China, Switzerland, Japan, and South Korea.
Another Kronshtadt tender, this one published in January 2025, called for the development of equipment to test Chinese SWIWIN SW400Pro and SW800Pro jet engines, as well as the TJ-800A2 engine made by Xi’an Sky Phantom Power Technology. (The SW800Pro is the engine used in the Banderol.)
Russian forces have used Banderol missiles much more frequently in recent months. The Insider reported that two Banderol missiles struck the center of the town of Pechenihy in Ukraine’s Kharkiv Region on the morning of Aug. 18, killing 10 people and wounding 17. In September, the S8000 appeared almost daily in Ukrainian Air Force reports on Russian aerial attacks.
In early September, Ukraine’s defense technology cluster Brave1 said Ukrainian developers had created a lower-cost system to intercept Banderol missiles and that it was already in use.
