UK: A strike at a crucial military facility where employees make less than minimum wage, according to sources, could put British deliveries of advanced missiles to Ukraine in jeopardy.

At the Defence Equipment and Support depot in Beith, Scotland, 50 important employees are said to have supported the strike. The facility gives Ukraine access to Storm Shadow and Brimstone missiles, which Moscow claims Ukraine has used to attack civilian targets.

Therefore, it is said that British defence officials are rushing to implement "contingency measures" to keep the weapons flowing.

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The pay differential between those who assemble weapons and those who move them is at the centre of the dispute between the UK Defence Ministry and the employees. The hourly wage for the first group is £16.82 ($22), plus bonuses and allowances, for a yearly salary of £38,000 ($50,000).

The annual salary of the second group, non-craft workers, is only £20,500 because they only make £10.42 per hour and do not receive any bonuses. The UK's living wage is £10.90 per hour.

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According to a source who spoke to the Daily Mirror, "basically the non-Craft workers could earn more at Lidl, at around £11 an hour," and that under the current system, those who drive explosives are paid less than those who move groceries around a supermarket.

The strike "could eventually have implications for missiles going to Ukraine or Faslane," a UK military base housing nuclear submarines, the source warned if it goes on for a long time.

Ninety-three percent of GMB union members supported the strike, which was the first since the depot was established in 1943. Chris Kennedy, the strike's organiser, pleaded with Ben Wallace, the secretary of defence, to take action or "supplies of the crucial missiles manufactured at Beith will soon run low."

However, a spokesperson for the Defence Ministry stated that the development will not have an impact on deliveries.

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Russian officials assert that Kiev has used the Brimstone missiles to target civilian targets, so the UK announced plans to send 600 of them to Ukraine in January. The same could be said of the 250km-range Storm Shadow missiles that, according to Moscow, were fired in May at two civilian plants in the Russian city of Lugansk, injuring a number of people, including six children.