Ukraine's cheap Patriot rival now has a two-mode seeker

Ukrainian missile maker Fire Point has changed the published specifications of its FP-7.x anti-ballistic interceptor, now listing a combined infrared and radar seeker for the weapon instead of the infrared-only seeker it described earlier.

The company posted an updated specification card for the missile on X, which it calls the FP-7.x Freyja interceptor. In August, when co-founder and chief designer Denys Shtilerman presented the Freyja project, Fire Point said the interceptor would use an imaging infrared seeker, which homes in on a target’s heat signature. Fire Point did not explain the change or say who supplies the radar component.

A seeker is the sensor in a missile’s nose that finds the target and steers the weapon in the final seconds of flight. Pairing infrared and radar lets a missile use both a target’s heat and its radar reflection to track it, which can help when one sensor is degraded by weather, decoys or the target’s own design.

The card lists the FP-7.x as 7.25 m (23.8 feet) long and 0.53 m (21 inches) in diameter, with a top speed of 1,500 to 2,000 m/s, or roughly 5,400 to 7,200 km/h (3,400 to 4,500 mph). It carries a fragmentation warhead, which explodes near the target and sprays it with metal pieces. The missile flies on inertial guidance, using onboard sensors to track its own position, and receives course corrections by radio from the ground while in flight.

For comparison, Russia’s Iskander-M ballistic missile travels at about 2,100 m/s at the end of its powered flight, according to Fire Point’s August presentation.

The FP-7.x is the interceptor for Freyja, a pan-European project to build a cheaper ballistic missile defense system than the U.S.-made Patriot. Ukraine and nine other European countries signed a declaration launching the effort on July 13. Fire Point serves as the main system integrator and has signed agreements with 13 European defense companies, including Hensoldt, Thales, Diehl Defence, Saab, Kongsberg, Leonardo, MBDA and Safran, to supply radars, guidance, seekers and command-and-control equipment.

Fire Point is a Kyiv-based company founded in 2022 and is best known for its FP-1 long-range attack drones and FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile. The FP-7.x is a faster version of the company’s FP-7 ground-attack ballistic missile, and Fire Point has said the FP-7’s initial design drew on Soviet-era S-300 and S-400 interceptor designs. The company says the airframe is built from composite materials to keep costs down.

Fire Point chief executive Iryna Terekh told Janes in July that the current FP-7.x uses a blast-fragmentation warhead, which gives a low chance of destroying an incoming ballistic missile’s payload, and that the company plans to develop it into a hit-to-kill interceptor that strikes the target directly. She said the missile’s top speed is expected to rise to about 2,200 m/s as the program matures.

The company wants each interceptor to cost less than €1 million ($1.14 million), about a quarter to a sixth of the reported price of a Patriot interceptor, and aims to produce 2,000 a year. Ukraine relies heavily on Patriot to stop Russian ballistic missiles, and global supplies of those interceptors are limited.

Fire Point has said it hopes to have its first FP-7.x interceptors ready by the end of 2026 if European partners deliver the components it still needs, and plans the first interception of a ballistic target around July 2027.

If you wish to report a grammatical or factual error in this article, please let us know by using the

online form.

Independent reporting takes resources. Join us on Patreon.