Ukraine Reveals Koral, a New Air Defense Missile Designed to Hit Ballistic Targets

Ukraine has unveiled the launcher for its domestically developed Koral surface-to-air missile for the first time, revealing a significantly evolved weapon designed to engage both conventional aerial threats and ballistic targets.

The launcher appeared at the MSPO defense exhibition in Poland, according to Militarnyi on September 8.

An image released by Ukraine’s state defense industry showed a Koral missile launching from a self-propelled system mounted on a Czech-made Tatra truck chassis.

According to Militarnyi, the missile is being developed primarily as an air defense interceptor capable of engaging both aerodynamic and ballistic targets. Its developer says that, in exceptional circumstances, it could also be used against radar-visible targets on land or at sea.

The latest Koral weighs approximately 450 kilograms, including a 36-kilogram warhead.

Militarnyi noted that its guidance architecture combines an inertial navigation system, radio-command correction and an active radar seeker, allowing the missile to receive course updates before independently homing on a target during the final phase of an engagement.

The missile measures 4.8 meters in length, with a body diameter of 230/300 millimeters. Its wings span 835 millimeters, while the control surfaces span 685 millimeters.

The newly revealed configuration represents a substantial evolution from the Koral project Ukraine first discussed publicly several years ago.

Development work began in 2016, when Koral appeared in documentation as part of a prospective ship-based surface-to-air missile system.

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The project became considerably more visible in 2021, when Ukraine’s Luch Design Bureau displayed a full-size missile mockup at the Arms and Security exhibition.

At the time, Koral was envisioned as a highly modular weapon that could be adapted for land-based and naval air defense systems, with an air-to-air version also considered.

The original concept was noticeably smaller.

Early specifications envisioned a missile weighing about 300 kilograms with a 25-kilogram warhead, a maximum engagement range of approximately 30 kilometers and an altitude ceiling of about 10 kilometers. That version measured 4.33 meters long and 230/260 millimeters in diameter.

Designers cautioned even then that the final specifications could change depending on customer requirements.

The system displayed in 2026 confirms that significant changes did indeed follow: the missile is now longer and roughly 50% heavier, while its warhead has grown from 25 to 36 kilograms.

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One of the original goals behind Koral was extensive component commonality, allowing technologies and subsystems to be shared across multiple Ukrainian missile projects rather than requiring an entirely separate industrial base for each weapon.

In 2021, Luch chief designer Oleh Korosteliov estimated that development of the overall system was approximately 70% complete.

The company was simultaneously considering an entire family of Ukrainian-made air defense systems covering different engagement envelopes—roughly 10 kilometers at the short end, 30-40 kilometers in the middle tier, and as far as 100 kilometers for longer-range interception.

Koral was originally intended to occupy that middle layer.

The current maximum engagement range of the substantially redesigned missile has not been publicly disclosed.

Earlier, Ukraine publicly revealed its Rheinmetall Skyranger 35 air defense system for the first time, confirming that the latest German-built anti-aircraft gun is already operational and may have been serving with Ukrainian forces for considerably longer than previously believed.

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