{"id":24412,"date":"2026-08-04T14:35:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T14:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/24412\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T14:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T14:35:12","slug":"fire-point-starts-to-integrate-european-tech-into-missile-defense-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/24412\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire Point starts to integrate European tech into missile defense system"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ukrainian drone and missile maker Fire Point has secured agreements from over a dozen European defense companies to provide radar, guidance and other systems \u200bfor the Freyja missile defense project, and is starting to integrate the various systems, its CEO has said.<\/p>\n

Ukraine had urgently sought partners to develop a weapon capable of \u200cstopping Russia’s ballistic missiles. The pan-European project was launched officially in Paris last month by 10 governments and 12 defense firms – including Eurosam, Leonardo and SAAB.<\/p>\n

Kyiv currently relies on the US-made Patriot system<\/a> to down ballistic missiles that fly at several times the speed of sound, but global shortages of its interceptor missiles, exacerbated by the war in Iran, have left Ukraine exposed.<\/p>\n

“Pretty much everything is agreed,” CEO Iryna Terekh told Reuters, saying 13 industrial partners had already \u200bjoined. Fire Point aims to achieve its first successful interception by mid-2027, she added.<\/p>\n

\"IrynaIryna Terekh, CEO of the Fire Point, Ukrainian defence-tech company, attends an interview with Reuters, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in an undisclosed location in Ukraine, July 29, 2026 (credit: REUTERS)Ukraine’s Fire Point builds pan-European Freyja missile<\/p>\n

The Ukrainian company is providing the FP7.X \u2013 a faster version of its \u200bFP7 ballistic missile \u2013 as the interceptor and is now integrating that with the guidance system, known as a seeker, Terekh said:<\/p>\n

“Right now we are in \u2060the most intense and also in the most complicated stage of finally assembling everything together with surveillance radars, with tracking radars, with the seekers.”<\/p>\n

Norway’s Kongsberg is working on the command center integrating the \u200bvarious systems. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Industry publications have reported that Germany’s Diehl Defence<\/a> – which produces a seeker for its own IRIS-T air defence system – will provide the guidance system. A \u200bDiehl spokesperson confirmed the firm was in talks with Fire Point but declined to discuss details. Terekh declined to comment.<\/p>\n

Fire Point aims to produce a ballistic interceptor for less than \u20ac1 million ($1.2 million) per missile, Terekh said – a quarter to a sixth of the cost of a Patriot.<\/p>\n

“We’re trying to squeeze a program that usually takes 20 or 30 years into a matter of a couple of years,” Terekh said, adding that there had been at least five tests \u200bof the interceptor missile.
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The project would use open-source architecture and allow different options to swapped in and out – such as a Weibel radar for one made by Saab, according to Ukrainian officials.<\/p>\n

The number \u200bof industrial partners could rise to around 20, which would increase production capacity, Terekh said. She added Fire Point was in talks with Ukrainian state-owned missile makers, but declined to name them.<\/p>\n

Terekh said the participating companies would finance \u200cresearch and \u2060development until a minimum viable product (MVP) was reached – which she said would mean the successful interception of a ballistic missile.<\/p>\n

Attack missiles nearly ready for combat<\/p>\n

“We expect the launcher to have from four to six missiles. So if from one batch there was an interception of a ballistic missile for MVP, this would be a wonderful result,” Terekh said.<\/p>\n

A missile gets through only if all the interceptors in a launcher miss. Keeping the probability of six misses in a row below 5% – an industry standard – requires each interceptor to hit roughly 40% of the time, according to Fabian Hoffmann, missile expert at the Norwegian Institute for \u200bDefence Studies.<\/p>\n

If it could really be done for \u20ac1 \u200bmillion, it would be “pretty impressive”, and “very cheap”, Hoffmann \u2060said.<\/p>\n

\"Ukraine'sUkraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko visit the Dormition Cathedral of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, which was hit during Russian missile and drone strikes, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine June 15, 2026. (credit: UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE\/REUTERS)<\/p>\n

The FP7 missile has an attack variant<\/a> that can be used to strike ground targets. This has undergone about 15 test launches and is now being certified by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, which she expected to take two to four more weeks.<\/p>\n

Fire Point aims for first combat use of this version \u200bin early autumn, and late autumn for the much larger FP9 ballistic missile, which it says will be able to reach Moscow.
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Terekh said the \u200bFP7’s architecture was based on \u2060Soviet-era designs for the S300 and S400 interceptors, but that Fire Point’s missile now shared only 20% similarity with those weapons.<\/p>\n

In a recent interview, Fire Point co-founder Denys Shtilierman said the Soviet plans had been procured as a favour by Timur Mindich, a former business associate of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy who faces charges of corruption and is now a fugitive in Israel.<\/p>\n

Fire Point says it declined an offer from Mindich to buy a \u2060stake in \u200bthe company.<\/p>\n

Fire Point is pressing ahead with building its own engine for its FP5 cruise missile, known as the Flamingo, \u200bwhich has hit several prominent military targets in Russia this year.<\/p>\n

It had been using second-hand jet engines – “digging through the cemetery of the engines … like in a thrift store,” Terekh said.<\/p>\n

But these are getting harder and harder to find, so Fire Point is \u200bassembling the first 10 units of its own prototype.<\/p>\n

“As soon as we’re happy with the results of tests of these test engines, there’ll definitely be many more Flamingos,” Terekh said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ukrainian drone and missile maker Fire Point has secured agreements from over a dozen European defense companies to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1521,488,2789,239,287],"class_list":["post-24412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-ballistic-missile","tag-defense-industry","tag-defense-tech","tag-missile-attacks","tag-ukraine-russia-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}