Ukrainian arms manufacturer Fire Point said it conducted the first flight test of its FP-7.x missile interceptor last week. The company's co-founder, Denys Shtilerman, described the test as “quite successful” in an interview with Financial Times.
According to Fire Point, the FP-7.x is designed to counter Russian ballistic missiles and drones at a significantly lower cost than Western systems, including Lockheed Martin's Patriot and the Franco-Italian SAMP/T. In the future, such missiles could also be produced in far greater numbers.
Mass production of the missile could begin in August, Shtilerman said. This depends on the delivery of an infrared seeker head, which Fire Point hopes to obtain from Germany's Diehl Defence. Finished missiles could be available in 2027, he added.
The remaining components of the Freyja air defence system — including target detection and tracking radars, as well as the command-and-control system — are expected to come from European partners. Fire Point declined to confirm or deny which companies it is working with. However, European and Ukrainian officials said the company had held talks with Germany's Hensoldt and Thales on radar systems, Italy's Leonardo on target-tracking and acquisition radars, and Norway's Kongsberg on command-and-control technologies.
“Completion of the project depends on how quickly our Western partners move and when they decide to get started,” Shtilerman said.
According to Shtilerman, the interceptor costs $700,000, compared with $3.8 million for a Patriot PAC-3 missile, based on US Army budget estimates for 2026. He added that Fire Point would be able to produce three missiles per day from August and store them until the seeker heads are installed.
The newspaper noted that Ukraine's rapid production pace, compared with Western countries, has largely been made possible by its wartime economy, which accelerates military manufacturing.
“Today, we probably have the least bureaucratic approach to producing anything in the aerospace sector,” Shtilerman said.
Shtilerman said the FP-7.x has an interception altitude of 25 kilometres, roughly comparable to Patriot. According to him, the missile, like the PAC-3, was designed to be fast enough to intercept ballistic missiles.
Unlike Patriot, which relies on advanced ground-based radars for guidance, the FP-7.x uses radar guidance but switches to an infrared seeker during the terminal phase of flight, a Fire Point representative said.