What would this fairly bulky machined piece be doing in a missile?

Question

Ria Novosti allegedly posted an image of this fairly bulky 10x10x4 cm (or so) machined piece with a hole in the middle, reportedly part of a Storm Shadow missile that hit Luhansk.

I'm wondering strictly from an engineering perspective what role that piece could be playing in a missile.

(I found the image on reddit, but it has since been removed for being posted off-topic in a combat footage forum.)

Anyhow, in the discussion someone pointed to https://www.nsndepot.com/NSN/1420-99-989-0488 where it's listed as "LUG,SADDLE ASSEMBLY" part of a missile indeed. Can someone explain what that does/mean?

The Storm Shadow is an air-launched 1.3 ton missile, so the attachment hardpoints probably need to be fairly beefy machined pieces, but I'm not sure if that's what we're seeing here (or some kind of lifting lug?)

Answer 1

Yeah, it seems to be part of the hardpoint connection, although I found only two photos (of the same museum piece) that has that version

The scale does kinda match, as the missile is about half a meter in diameter/width. OTOH a number of other pictures have a different lug fitted to this missile.

I suppose it might depend on the carrying aircraft. Or the latter might be some showroom version(s) because they seem to lack serial number inscriptions (unless it's been moved to a different location on later models.) But the s/n of the first one also seems to contain the word "inert".