The official did not say how many SCALP -- an air-launched British-French missile known to UK forces as the "Storm Shadow" and the longest-range Western weapon in Ukraine -- had been sent.
"The first missiles had been delivered when the president announced it," the source said, speaking at the NATO summit in Vilnius.
Macron said the new missile delivery was designed to allow Ukraine to strike at Russian occupation forces "in depth" during its counteroffensive to liberate its territory.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that France's decision to send the missile "is a mistake with consequences for the Ukrainian side, because this will of course force us to take countermeasures."
The SCALP/Storm Shadow has a range of 250 kilometres (155 miles) and Britain announced in May that it would supply a batch of the advanced weapons.
Russia reacted with fury, warning that London risked being dragged directly into the conflict, and even some Western allies were concerned that Kyiv might conduct strikes into Russia itself.
Macron implied, however, that Ukraine had given an undertaking not to use SCALP against such targets, saying that they had been given "in coherence with our doctrine, that is to say to permit Ukraine to defend its own territory".
Macron did not say how many of the missiles would be sent, but France is understood to have an arsenal of less than 400, according to specialist defence review DSI.
"The number delivered to Ukraine is fairly significant but it will preserve French stocks at a level comfortable above what we need," the military source said.
Rather than being an escalatory step, the source argued, the longer-range weapons would help even up the balance of forces, with Russia capable of firing much further.
The SCALP was designed to be fired from western fighters like France's Rafale or the British Typhoon, but Ukraine will modify it's Soviet-designed MiG jets to accept the weapon.
France's SCALP missiles: long-range weapon for Ukraine's armoury
Paris (AFP) July 11, 2023 -
France's announcement on Tuesday that it would send SCALP long-range missiles to Ukraine comes months after Britain began delivering its identical Storm Shadow.
Developed jointly by the two NATO allies, Storm Shadow/SCALP is a 1,300-kilogramme (2,870 pounds) missile armed with conventional explosives, usually launched from aircraft such as the Royal Air Force's Eurofighter Typhoon or French Rafale.
The first SCALPs were already in Ukraine as President Emmanuel Macron announced their delivery, a French military source told AFP Tuesday on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Lithuanian capital Vilnius.
Built by missile maker MBDA, the missile's range of over 250 kilometres (155 miles) makes it the longest-range Western weapon supplied to Kyiv so far.
It is capable of striking targets far into the country's Russian-occupied east, well behind front lines that have remained relatively fixed for months.
Such capability is "critical for Ukraine's forces to disrupt Russian logistics and command and control," said Ivan Klyszcz, a researcher at the Estonia based International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS).
SCALP strikes could help "with Ukraine's current approach to operations... namely to advance slowly so as to protect its forces and reduce its own casualties as much as possible," he added.
French deliveries would "preserve the clarity and coherence of our doctrine, which is to allow Ukraine to defend its territory" from Russian invasion, Macron said.
The subtext is that French-supplied weapons should not be allowed to hit Russian territory, after Moscow's repeated warnings of reprisals.
Macron's message matched that of Britain's Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, who said in May that Storm Shadow would "allow Ukraine to push back Russian forces based within Ukrainian sovereign territory".
- 'High-value targets' -
"With these weapons, a few jets operating within the safe space of their own air defences can make a difference," said Dylan Lehrke of UK-based private intelligence firm Janes.
"Russian forces can deny Ukrainian aircraft the use of airspace above territory they control, but they have been unable to defend against deep strikes," he added.
Manufacturer MBDA says on its website that the SCALP is "designed to meet the demanding requirements of pre-planned attacks against high-value fixed or stationary targets such as hardened bunkers and key infrastructure".
It has been used in previous conflicts including in Iraq, Libya and Syria.
The missile uses inertial navigation, GPS and terrain referencing to chart a low-altitude course to its target to avoid detection.
It uses an infrared camera to match images of the target to a stored picture "to ensure a precision strike and minimal collateral damage," MBDA says.
The warhead can be programmed to detonate above the target (airburst), on impact or following penetration.
Russian-installed officials said last month that a British-supplied Storm Shadow had hit a bridge at Chongar, which links the annexed Crimean peninsula to southern Ukraine.
The bridge was "unusable" following the strike and would be closed for around 20 days, Moscow's governor for southern Ukrainian region Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, said at the time.
Russia claimed soon after Britain began delivering the missiles in May that it had already shot down a Storm Shadow.
But both sides in the conflict regularly claim to have destroyed the other's hyped high-tech weapons.
In recent months, Ukraine has claimed kills of Russia's Kinzhal hypersonic missiles and Moscow has highlighted successes against German-made Leopard tanks operated by Kyiv.
As with many Western arms supplied to Ukraine, France's stocks of the SCALP are not bottomless.
Trade magazine Defense et Securite Internationale has reported that Paris has "fewer than 400" of the missiles.
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