UKRAINE, Jun. 10 — Ukrainian ballistic interceptor missile FP-7.x by Ukrainian company Fire Point reached 25 kilometers (~16 miles) altitude, the level of the United States missile complex Patriot, during tests, said Denys Shtilerman, a co-founder of Fire Point, in an interview with the Financial Times (FT).

After one of the Russian massive attacks on Kyiv in May, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian President, warned of a critical shortage of air defense systems in Ukraine, including ballistic interceptor missiles, in a letter to Donald Trump, the US President.

Last week, Fire Point carried out the first flight test of its FP-7.x ballistic interceptor missile, which Shtilierman called “pretty successful.”

Fire Point noted that FP-7.x is intended to counter Russian ballistic missiles and drones at “a fraction of the cost” of existing Western systems.

Also, Shtilierman said that mass production of the missile (three per day) could begin in August this year. With the support of Germany’s Diehl Defense, the completed missiles would be ready by 2027.

Each interceptor costs $700,000, compared with $3.8 million per missile for the Patriot PAC-3. Also, unlike Patriot, which is guided by an advanced ground-based targeting radar, the FP-7.x is radar-guided but uses a heat seeker for the “last mile.”

According to the FT, thermal guidance is considered less effective than radar guidance, as there are more ways to deceive and counter it.

The Ukrainian FP-7.x missile is part of the Freja air defense system. Other components, including radars and the command-and-control system, will be provided by European partners.

According to Militarnyi, a Ukrainian defense media outlet, the FP-7.x has a flight speed of 1,500–2,000 meters per second and a length of 7.25 meters. Its combat load is 150 kilograms, and its maximum flight duration is 250 seconds. The missile is launched from a ground platform and is designed for the rapid destruction of targets at medium ranges.

At the beginning of May, Ukrainian media Kyiv Independent wrote, citing their sources, that Fire Point company was reportedly under the corruption probe in relation to the corruption scandal that broke out after graft agencies’ investigations into Ukraine’s energy sector. Journalists say Fire Point’s ties to Timur Mindich, President Zelenskyy’s business partner and one of the key figures of the investigations, were corroborated by one of the tapes released by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Shtilerman later said that, while he was interrogated by anti-graft agencies, it was not related to Mindich’s case. 

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