Fire Point Boss Says Home-Grown Ballistic Missile Interceptor May Be Operational by Mid-2027

Ukraine is planning for an initial launch of its answer to the powerful US air defense system – the new Freyja interceptor missile – in mid-2027, the Director of the aerospace company Fire Point Denys Shtilerman said in a late Sunday comment. Work for the weapons system that would partially or possibly even totally replace US-made PAC-3 interceptor missiles that currently are the only means Ukraine has to intercept Russian ballistic missiles is going forward at a satisfactory pace, but much coordination work and sub-systems testing remains to be done before even an experimental home-grown Freyja might take to the air, Shtilerman wrote in an “X” post.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. “We are planning a full-scale launch of the anti-ballistic interceptor by mid-2027. As of now, the first cluster of integration work within the Freyja project has been completed. Ahead lies a major and technologically complex stage – the unification of all components [and subsystems] into a single complex [unified weapons system]. After that, the system must undergo a full cycle of testing and confirm its ability to intercept ballistic targets,” Shtilerman said in part. The FirePoint/Shtilerman timeline was more ambitious than a Sunday prediction by President Volodymyr Zelensky, who stated that Ukraine hopes to field a domestically manufactured version of the US premier ballistic missile interceptor, the PAC-3 fired by the Patriot air defense system, in “12 months to several years.” Other Topics of Interest Zelensky in Belgrade: Vučić Refused to Let Serbia Foot Putin’s Bill Receiving Zelensky in Belgrade showed that Serbia understands where it must stand. A ballistic missile flies in a high arc nearing space and on re-entry can reach attack speeds of six or more times the speed of sound, making the missile difficult to detect and intercept. Ukraine’s search for ballistic missile interceptors is a matter of national security. Aside from the US-made PAC-3, Ukraine’s military has no practical means of stopping a Russian ballistic missile once launched. As a result, the Kremlin’s armed forces are able to fire ballistic missiles at targets inside Ukraine with impunity whenever supplies of PAC-3 missiles to Ukraine run low. Although imprecise, most ballistic missiles launched by Russia at Ukraine carry a warhead weighing at least half a ton. Zelensky in Saturday comments to Kyiv reporters said an initiative for Ukraine to produce PAC-3 missiles under license is moving slowly because of plodding US participation in the project and “bureaucracy.” US President Donald Trump and key institutions had already made the political decision to transfer the necessary licenses to Kyiv, Zelensky said. However, Trump has recently questioned whether he and the US would even agree to license Ukrainian production of the US high-tech PAC-3 missile. “We have to be very careful about letting somebody build our advanced weapons,” Trump said in a July 31 Camp David comment to a reporter’s question. “We have not agreed to that. We’re talking about it, but it’s a hard thing to give away that kind of technology. Those people whom you give technology can also turn on you. That’s possible. We have to be very careful.” The major US weekly, the Atlantic, in an analytical article published on Sunday, reported US generals and executives at the US arms giants Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are concerned that, were Kyiv to receive full production blueprints for PAC-3 interceptor missiles, Ukraine’s skilled weapons manufacturers would quickly reverse-engineer US military technologies and set up production of a competing weapon costing half the price. A pure Ukrainian interceptor missile, thanks to combat testing in a full-scale war against Russia, might even be more effective than the American missile, which has never been used in combat against a peer opponent, some Ukrainian military analysts say. The White House, in February 2025, announced it was drastically curtailing deliveries of PAC-3 interceptor missiles to Ukraine and would in the future only sell the missiles to Ukraine via Ukraine’s European allies at a 10% markup. Following the joint US/Israeli attack on Iran and war between those countries, Trump and administration officials in the Pentagon have blamed Ukraine for taking too many PAC-3 missiles from US stocks, and leaving US forces with insufficient missile stocks to take on Iranian missiles and drones fired at US forces and their allies. The Kremlin has exploited a near-total absence of PAC-3 missiles in Ukrainian hands to bombard Ukrainian homes and businesses ruthlessly with its ballistic missiles. In July, according to a Ukrainian military count, Russia launched at least 195 ballistic and/or hypersonic missiles at targets inside Ukraine, of which only 29 were intercepted. In the first week of August, Russia launched 51 ballistic missiles, of which none were intercepted. The weapons launched by Russia were primarily the advanced Iskander-M surface-to-surface missile, with salvos augmented with S-400 dual-use (surface-to-surface and surface-to-air as NATO’s SA-21) missiles and, possibly, North Korean KN-23 ballistic missiles. Following Russian missile attacks hitting Ukraine on Aug. 5-6 – killing 17 Ukrainian civilians and injuring 44 – Trump, in response to a reporter question whether the US should increase PAC-3 deliveries to Ukraine so that casualties caused by Russian ballistic missiles might be reduced, Trump denied America was under any moral obligation to sell Ukraine interceptor missiles it needs to stop the Russian ballistic missile bombardment. “Look, we’re not involved. We’re separated by an ocean,” Trump said. He went on to say he thought thousands of war deaths in the Russo-Ukrainian War, every month, was deplorable. In an Aug. 6 editorial entitled “Will Trump Leave Ukraine Without Patriots?” in the Wall Street Journal, the usually pro-Republican broadsheet called Trump’s active prevention of PAC-3 interceptor missile deliveries to Ukraine strategically foolish and morally wrong. In an Aug. 3 editorial published in the Washington Post, Shtilerman argued that the multi-source/joint development of the Freyja was the only strategy by which Ukraine might meet the threat of Russian massed ballistic attacks, because only mass-produced, inexpensive Ukrainian interceptor missiles have a realistic chance of taking on the Russian ballistic missile threat. Shtilerman wrote that the Ukrainian objective with the Freya system is: “Not to build another Patriot, but to create an ecosystem in which no single manufacturer, factory or state determines the fate of the entire system. Network logic and redundancy are pervasive in the arrangement... Software and technical systems should not contain hidden dependencies on any single company or state, and they should be open to independent audit...The best weapon in insufficient numbers loses to a sufficient number of good weapons. Ukraine paid dearly to learn that lesson. Other democracies need to learn from our early mistakes.” Maj. Gen. Vadym Skibitsky, vice director of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency HUR, in comments published by the news agency RBK-Ukraina, on Monday said that the Russian Federation is increasing production of ballistic missiles and that Ukraine should expect more of the weapons launched by Russia in the future. Current production of Iskander-M is about 65 weapons a month, he said, with the Kremlin able to add limited numbers of S-400 dual-use and North Korean KN-23 ballistic missiles to the attacks as well, Skibidsky said. Production of Iskander-M missiles has accelerated about 10% since the start of the year and Russian manufacturing of cruise missiles – a weapon Ukrainian air defenses are fairly efficient at detecting and shooting down – increased by about 40% over the same period, he said. As of mid-August, per Ukrainian intelligence estimates, Russia has about 400 S-400 missiles, 130 ballistic “Iskander-M” and 100 North Korean KN-24 in stock, Skibidsky said. Future attack targets most likely will be the Ukrainian defense industry, railways, ports, shipping, logistics and energy infrastructure, he said. Based on Russian missile production rates and probable targets, attacks on electricity and heat supply facilities are to be expected, and Ukraine needs to prepare for them, Skibidsky said.