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Ukraine’s FP-7 Ballistic Missile Is Weeks From Combat—Moscow-Range FP-9 Comes Next
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Ukraine’s FP-7 ballistic missile has completed about 15 test launches and is now undergoing Defense Ministry certification, putting it on track for its first combat use as early as this fall.
Fire Point CEO Iryna Terekh told Reuters that the approval process should take another two to four weeks in an interview on August 4.
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The company is also preparing the much larger FP-9 ballistic missile, which it expects to launch against targets in Russia by late autumn and says could reach Moscow.
The FP-7 has both strike and interceptor variants. Its ground-attack version is now closest to operational deployment, while the faster FP7.X is being developed as the interceptor for Freyja, a new pan-European missile defense system intended to counter Russian ballistic threats.
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Fire Point has secured agreements with 13 European defense companies to provide radar, guidance, command-and-control, and other components for Freyja. The number of industrial partners could eventually rise to around 20.
“Pretty much everything is agreed,” Terekh said.
The company is now integrating the FP7.X with surveillance radars, tracking systems, and missile seekers supplied by its European partners.
“Right now we are in the most intense and also in the most complicated stage of finally assembling everything together with surveillance radars, with tracking radars, with the seekers,” she said.
⚡️ Ukraine’s FP-7.x completed its first fully guided flight, a key step toward developing FREYJA, Europe’s future ballistic missile interceptor.
— UNITED24 Media (@United24media) June 9, 2026
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Norway’s Kongsberg is working on the command center that will connect the different elements. Germany’s Diehl Defence has confirmed talks with Fire Point, although neither company has disclosed details about a potential seeker agreement.
Fire Point aims to conduct Freyja’s first successful ballistic missile interception by mid-2027. Terekh said at least five interceptor tests have already taken place.
The planned launcher would carry between four and six missiles.
“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.
Fire Point wants each interceptor to cost less than €1 million, or about $1.2 million—roughly one-quarter to one-sixth of the reported cost of a Patriot interceptor.
“We’re trying to squeeze a program that usually takes 20 or 30 years into a matter of a couple of years,” Terekh said.
Ukraine currently relies heavily on US-made Patriot systems to stop Russian ballistic missiles, but limited global supplies and competing demand have left Ukrainian cities increasingly exposed.
Freyja is being designed around an open architecture, allowing components from different manufacturers to be exchanged or added. Ukrainian officials have said, for example, that one radar could be replaced with another without rebuilding the entire system.
Fire Point based the FP-7’s initial architecture on Soviet-era S-300 and S-400 interceptor designs. Terekh said the Ukrainian missile has since evolved to the point that it retains only about 20% similarity with those systems.
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The company is also addressing an engine shortage affecting its FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile. Earlier Flamingos used secondhand jet engines that are becoming increasingly difficult to source.
Fire Point is now assembling the first 10 prototypes of its own engine.
The company had previously been “digging through the cemetery of the engines… like in a thrift store,” Terekh said.
“As soon as we’re happy with the results of tests of these test engines, there’ll definitely be many more Flamingos,” she added.
Previously, Fire Point has initiated the technical integration of radar and guidance components from over a dozen European contractors into its Freyja anti-ballistic missile program.
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