OPEN LETTER: Freyja, three interceptors a day — Ukraine is changing the rules of missile defense

Introduction: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Alliance, look at what is being built in Kyiv

What Fire Point and Hensoldt are doing

I write to you from outside those meeting rooms where, for three years, the best ways to help Ukraine survive Russian ballistic missiles have been debated. I write because something happened in June 2026 that deserves to be named with all the clarity it demands: Fire Point, the Ukrainian company that already accounts for 60% of Ukrainian strikes inside Russia, has concluded an agreement with German radar manufacturer Hensoldt to produce the ballistic interception system Freyja — official designation FP-7.X. And the target production rate is three units per day starting in August 2026.

For those following from a distance, that number may seem abstract. It is not. Three ballistic interception systems per day is potentially 90 per month. In a world where American Patriot PAC-3 missiles are produced at roughly 600 to 650 units per year for the entire planet, and where each Patriot costs approximately four million dollars, Fire Point's goal of producing an interceptor at 700,000 dollars represents a technological and economic break that no one in Western defense circles should take lightly. This letter is addressed to those who decide. And to those who delay.

Fire Point: from casting agency to defense fortress

A trajectory without precedent in the industrial history of defense

Fire Point was, before the Russian invasion of 2022, a casting agency for film and television. Today it is one of Ukraine's largest military contractors, with more than one billion dollars in public contracts for the current year. Its drones already account for 60% of Ukrainian strikes inside Russia, according to statements from its founder Denys Shtilerman. The FP-1, its long-range attack drone, now flies 1,677 miles, up from 1,025 miles in its original version. The FP-2 can carry a 440-pound warhead over 230 miles. And the FP-5 Flamingo is a cruise missile that has struck Russian refineries in the Urals.

What Denys Shtilerman announced on May 14, 2026 on the social network X — "Fire Point joins the ballistic anti-missile coalition" — was not a quip. It was the entry point of a concrete industrial roadmap. Fire Point tested the FP-7.X in controlled flight in early June 2026 — a first flight described as a "fully controlled maneuver flight." The speed achieved during that test: between 1,500 and 2,000 meters per second. This is no longer a promise. It is technology in motion.

The Hensoldt agreement: a historic German-Ukrainian industrial alliance

The partnership with Germany's Hensoldt — a manufacturer of radars and cutting-edge detection systems — is no small thing. It signals that the European defense industry is beginning to bet on Ukrainian engineering no longer as a beneficiary of aid, but as a technological partner. At the June 18, 2026 Ramstein meeting in Brussels, Ukraine's partners pledged four billion dollars in aid and signed an explicit agreement with Germany to develop the Freyja system. Other European partners are in discussions to join the project: Thales for radar, Leonardo for tracking, Kongsberg for command and control.

What I want you to understand, dear allies, is what this architecture means. This is not Ukraine receiving yet another Western system. It is a European industrial coalition being built around Ukrainian expertise — around a company that learned to build lethal and precise weapons under the existential pressure of total war. That kind of experience cannot be purchased in university laboratories. It is earned on battlefields. And Ukraine is saturated with it.

The interceptor shortage: Marc DeVore's diagnosis

Why money alone is not enough

Defense expert Marc DeVore, senior lecturer at the University of St Andrews in Scotland and adviser to the British Foreign Office on the war in Ukraine, is unequivocal: "There is no silver bullet." The ballistic missile interceptor shortage from which Ukraine suffers has "no quick fix," even with money. Here is why.

Worldwide, only about five or six countries are capable of producing interceptors with genuine ballistic interception capability: the United States and Japan with the Patriot, South Korea with M-SAM and L-SAM systems, Russia with the S-300 and S-400, China, the Franco-Italian Aster system in the SAMP/T configuration, and the American-Israeli Arrow system. In the war in Ukraine and the Middle East alone, approximately 3,500 Patriots have been consumed — nearly six years of American production. Even placing an order in January 2026, delivery would likely not arrive before 2031.

Russian attacks and the human cost of the shortage

This is not an accounting abstraction. In the month of May 2026 alone, Russian ballistic missile attacks killed at least 274 Ukrainian civilians — according to UN figures — making it the deadliest month since the start of the full-scale invasion. Those same attacks damaged all 15 thermal power plants in Ukraine. Ukraine currently has approximately seven operational Patriot batteries. It would need 14 to cover its entire territory. Half the distance remains to cover, and every month of delay is counted in human lives.

It is in this context that Freyja takes on its deepest meaning. Not as an industrial gadget. Not as a technology showcase. But as a concrete response to a shortage that kills. The fact that DeVore himself, skeptical of the December 2026 timeline, believes Freyja could become a genuinely operational system by December 2027 — and says he would be happy if it does — is in itself a measured and credible signal of hope. This is not propaganda. It is the serious assessment of an expert who has advised governments on these questions.

The revolutionary cost: 700,000 dollars against four million

The economic equation that changes everything

Fire Point's target for the FP-7.X Freyja is to shoot down a ballistic missile for under one million dollars per shot, with a target cost of approximately 700,000 dollars. Compare that with a Patriot PAC-3 interceptor costing roughly four million dollars — more than five times as much. This cost difference is not merely a commercial performance. It is potentially revolutionary in the dynamics of aerial warfare.

The military logic of missile defense rests on a critical economic balance: the cost of interception must be manageable relative to the cost of attack. If shooting down an enemy ballistic missile consistently costs more than launching one, the attacker holds a structural economic advantage. At 700,000 dollars per interception, Freyja begins to tip that balance in favor of defense. It is a fundamental shift in deterrence logic. And it is a Ukrainian company — with blood in its circuits from four years of war — that is making it happen.

The European partners still hesitating to join

Discussions are under way with Thales, Leonardo, and Kongsberg to integrate their systems into the Freyja architecture. These discussions reflect a European defense industry gradually awakening to the fact that Ukraine is not merely a target market for its exports — it is a living laboratory of military innovation from which it should learn and with which it should co-build. Every week of delay in these decisions represents a missed opportunity to strengthen both Ukrainian security and the European defense industrial base.

I want to address directly the decision-makers at those companies, and the governments that oversee them. The agreement with Hensoldt is signed. The FP-7.X has flown. The August production rate is a promise that Fire Point appears determined to keep. The only missing element is the decision of those who have the means to accelerate this architecture. Every month of delay has a measurable human cost in Ukraine. And every month of delay also reinforces the conviction of those fighting there that the West admires them but is slow to protect them.

The system architecture: what Freyja can and cannot yet do

Confirmed capabilities and realistic timelines

The FP-7.X Freyja targets an interception altitude of 15 miles. Its speed during the June 2026 test reached between 1,500 and 2,000 meters per second. To intercept a ballistic missile, an interceptor must be capable of high-G maneuvers — tight turns at high speed that less sophisticated systems cannot execute. What the early June test demonstrated is that the FP-7.X possesses this fundamental capability for controlled maneuver. That is not nothing. In the 1990s, during the first Gulf War, the Patriot's success rate against Scud missiles was around 2%. Technology has evolved. And Fire Point is learning in real time on the most demanding operational theater in the world.

DeVore is honest about timelines: he would "not bet" on an operational production of Freyja before the winter of 2026. He believes that an initial genuine operational capability by December 2027 would already be a remarkable success, while doubting that will be the actual date. The first interceptors could be produced by year's end according to Shtilerman himself. This honesty about timelines does not invalidate the project. It places it within a serious industrial reality, far from the hollow promises this domain has sometimes produced.

What Ukraine has already proven that no one expected

The recent history of Ukraine's defense industry should teach us humility in our predictions. DeVore himself admits it: Ukraine has achieved results "that industry experts considered impossible" — notably with its Hornets, Fire Points, Flamingos, and cruise missile programs. Timelines that seemed insurmountable were compressed by necessity. Costs that seemed irreducible were cut by constrained innovation. Ukraine has acquired an institutional capacity to surprise.

Ignoring this capacity would be a strategic error as much as an intellectual failure. When Shtilerman declares that Freyja interceptors will soon fly "not only over Ukraine, but over all of Europe," this is not entrepreneurial bluster. It is the vision of a man whose company transformed a casting agency into an industrial fortress in less than four years. And when someone has already proven the impossible once, we should at least take the next promise seriously.

The question of the investigation and transparency: what I must mention

The NABU investigation and the leaked recordings

This open letter would be incomplete if I did not address what the Kyiv Independent has reported: Fire Point is the subject of an investigation by Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU). Leaked recordings mention a certain Timur Mindich in this context. Clarity is essential here: no charges have been filed against the company. The investigation is ongoing. I do not know what it will reveal.

What I do know is that the fight against corruption is a necessary condition for the credibility of Ukraine's war effort in the eyes of its allies. NABU is doing its job — that is a good thing. The fact that this work becomes public, even through leaks, signals that Ukraine's oversight institutions are functioning, however imperfectly, however much under wartime pressure. This is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of a democratic society resisting its own demons. But allies have the right to follow this file closely. And Fire Point has an obligation to answer these questions with the same transparency it expects of its Western partners.

What Western parliaments must fund now

DeVore's priorities and their compelling logic

Marc DeVore proposes an architecture of response to the interceptor shortage built around four priorities: first, attacking Russian production of ballistic missiles — targeting factories, supply chains, dual-use components. Second, extending an air defense zone over western Ukraine, proposing that NATO intercept any missile or drone heading toward its airspace. Third, focusing diplomacy on South Korea and Japan — the two countries capable of delivering interceptors in the short term. Fourth, developing initiatives like Freyja. These four priorities are not alternatives. They are complementary and simultaneously urgent.

On South Korea, DeVore notes that its M-SAM and L-SAM interceptors have remained purely domestic programs, but that active diplomacy could change that. On Japan, whose license-produced American Patriots could technically be exported to Ukraine, he notes that the country has recently amended its constitution to authorize defense exports and that there would be no principled reason opposing a sale to Ukraine. These options exist. What is missing is the political will to activate them.

The question of sanctions-consistent production

Ukraine and its allies have another underused lever: sanctions on dual-use components. DeVore notes that many guidance components for Russian missiles — notably the Iskander and Kinzhal — are manufactured in the West, particularly the United States, and reach Russia through shell companies in Hong Kong created specifically to circumvent sanctions. He proposes holding original manufacturers accountable when a product is sold to an entity whose dubious nature should have been verifiable. This is a legal and economic avenue that has not yet been fully exploited.

The EU, the United States, and the United Kingdom have not harmonized their lists of prohibited dual-use components. This gap creates loopholes that Russia systematically exploits. Closing them requires coordination that these governments have not yet achieved. This is an administrative urgency that does not cost billions of dollars. It costs political will and inter-allied coordination. These are resources the West possesses. That it is slow to mobilize them is difficult to explain to those dying under missiles manufactured with components passing through poorly harmonized sanction gaps.

Letter to the defense decision-makers of Ukraine's allies

What you can do today

Ladies and Gentlemen, defense ministers, heads of procurement agencies, directors of industrial cooperation programs: I am not asking you for heroism. I am asking you for consistency. You have supported Ukraine with strong words and real financial commitments. The June 18, 2026 Ramstein meeting confirmed an additional four billion dollars in aid. That is concrete, that is significant. But in the chain of decisions running from promise to delivery, there are always bottlenecks, bureaucracies that slow things down, procurement processes that take months when wars are decided in weeks.

Freyja is an opportunity to shorten that chain. Not because it is a silver bullet — DeVore said it clearly, there is none. But because it is a real solution, developed under the pressure of necessity, by people who understand what the absence of a solution costs. If you have the means to accelerate discussions with Thales, Leonardo, and Kongsberg, use them now. If you can harmonize the sanctions lists on dual-use components this week rather than this quarter, do it. If you can open the conversation with Seoul and Tokyo on available interceptors, do not wait.

What Freyja means for the future of European defense

Ukraine as the founder of a new security architecture

There is a vision in Shtilerman's declaration that I want to take seriously: "Soon, interceptor missiles will fly not only over Ukraine, but over all of Europe." That is a strategic vision. Ukraine is no longer presenting itself merely as a beneficiary of Western solidarity. It is presenting itself as a provider of security solutions for the entire continent. A country that has learned — under the most brutal possible conditions — how to build, test, and deploy effective weapons systems at revolutionary costs.

Europe, which has sought for years to develop strategic autonomy in defense, may have found an unexpected partner. Not an established industrial great power, but a country whose military genetic code has been rewritten by four years of total war. This recomposition of the European defense industrial architecture around a Ukrainian hub is not a utopia — it is what is beginning to take shape with Freyja, with Hensoldt, with the ongoing discussions with Thales, Leonardo, and Kongsberg.

The allies' responsibility toward this project

Choosing to accelerate this project means choosing to recognize Ukraine as a fully-fledged defense industrial actor — not merely a battlefield being resupplied, but a partner being co-developed with. This is a fundamental shift in posture with political, economic, and moral implications that allied governments will have to own publicly. It is not simple. Defense industrial policy is complex terrain, populated by national interests, industrial protectionism, and legitimate strategic considerations.

But when Putin continues to strike Ukrainian cities with ballistic missiles killing dozens of civilians every month, the argument of industrial complexity begins to ring hollow. The world is short of affordable ballistic interceptors. Ukraine is producing one at 700,000 dollars a unit. The question I ask you, dear allies, is simple: what are your commitments of support to Ukraine worth if you are slow to seize the solution Ukraine itself is offering?

The Ramstein summit: what was promised and what is still missing

Four billion dollars in June 2026: a step, not an end

The June 18, 2026 Ramstein meeting in Brussels produced concrete commitments: four billion dollars in aid from Ukraine's partners, a formal agreement with Germany for the development of the Freyja system, open discussions on expanding industrial production. This is significant. It is not enough. The Ramstein meeting has been held monthly for two years. Every month, new promises. And between the promises and the deliveries, delays that cost lives.

I am not saying allies are wrong to promise. I am saying they are wrong to promise without making public the delivery timelines, the industrial bottlenecks, the bureaucratic obstacles that prevent deliveries. Transparency about obstacles would be at least as useful as generosity in commitments. A Ukraine that knows a certain delivery cannot arrive before a specific date can plan accordingly. A Ukraine waiting on vague promises cannot.

The FP-9 ballistic missile: Fire Point's other breakthrough

A Ukrainian ballistic missile with Moscow in range

While Freyja is Fire Point's defense project, the company is simultaneously working on the FP-9 — a ballistic missile with an 850-kilometer range, developed specifically for deep strikes inside Russia. According to Shtilerman, flight tests could begin this summer or in early fall 2026. And on July 2, 2026, Bloomberg reported that Ukraine may have used a nationally designed ballistic missile for the first time to strike targets in Russia.

Russia claimed to have intercepted a "long-range operational-tactical missile" without specifying the type. Ukraine has not officially confirmed the use of a national ballistic missile. But if that report is confirmed, it would mark Ukraine's entry into a very small circle of nations capable of producing and deploying ballistic missiles in actual combat. This is no longer a country defending itself with other people's weapons. It is a country forging its own weapons — offensive and defensive — with the rigor and determination of those who know their survival depends on it.

The strategic significance of this symmetry

The combination of the FP-9 offensive ballistic missile and the FP-7.X Freyja defensive interceptor draws an unprecedented strategic profile for Ukraine. A country capable of striking deep inside Russia while developing its own ballistic interception capabilities — this is a deterrence equation that Putin had not anticipated in 2022. Putin's doctrine rested on the certainty that Ukraine would be quickly overwhelmed and its industrial capabilities destroyed. That calculation was wrong. And every Fire Point breakthrough confirms just how wrong it was.

I want to end on this note, dear allies: you are not helping a weak country survive. You are accompanying the emergence of a defense industrial power that could redefine European security architecture for decades to come. What Fire Point has built since 2022 has no equivalent in recent industrial history. Your responsibility is to prove yourselves worthy of it — with rapid decisions, kept deliveries, and clear recognition that Ukraine is not merely a beneficiary. It is a partner. Perhaps the most important one Europe has ever had in the domain of security.

Conclusion: sign the contract with Freyja before it is too late

What this letter asks

I close this letter with a simple request. Not to public opinion — it has already broadly supported Ukraine. Not to journalists — they are covering this file with the rigor the situation demands. My request is addressed to decision-makers: accelerate. Sign with Thales, Leonardo, and Kongsberg. Harmonize the sanctions lists on dual-use components. Open the conversations with Seoul and Tokyo on available interceptors. Support funding for the production rate of three Freyja units per day starting in August 2026. And make these decisions public — not for the glory, but so that those who are fighting and dying in Ukraine know that their wait has a measurable end.

Ukraine has proven it can turn the impossible into reality. Freyja is the most recent proof of that capacity. What the allies must now prove is that they are capable of the same on their side: turning commitments into action, within timelines that match the urgency on the ground. The history of this war will be the history of delays — between promise and delivery, between recognition and action. Let that history, for Freyja, be short and decisive. Ukrainian skies cannot wait.

The deterrence logic reversed: when Ukraine forces Moscow's calculations

Freyja and the new strategic equation

There is a strategic dimension to Freyja that deserves to be stated clearly: if Ukraine manages to produce ballistic interceptors at 700,000 dollars per unit and at a rate of three per day, it fundamentally alters the economic equation of aerial warfare. Putin's doctrine since the start of the full-scale invasion rests in part on an attrition logic: strike hard enough, often enough, to make the cost of defense unsustainable. Patriots at four million dollars per interception against Russian ballistic missiles at a significantly lower price — that is an economic logic favorable to the attacker. Freyja at 700,000 dollars begins to reverse that logic.

This reversal is not only Ukrainian. If Freyja becomes a European system — produced and deployed through an industrial coalition of Ukraine, Germany, France, Italy, and Norway — it changes the entire European capacity to defend against ballistic threats at a sustainable cost. Russia has invested decades in ballistic missiles precisely because they were economically unbeatable. Freyja may be the weapon that renders that calculation obsolete. That is reason enough to invest in it now, with the same urgency those ballistic missiles impose every day on the Ukrainian people.

Industrial solidarity as a political act

Joining the Freyja project is not merely an industrial decision. It is a political act. It means affirming that Europe does not merely want to sell weapons to Ukraine — it wants to co-build with it. It means acknowledging that Ukrainian military expertise, forged in the most intense war Europe has seen since 1945, is an irreplaceable strategic resource from which the entire continent should draw. And it signals to Putin that every ballistic missile he fires accelerates, rather than discourages, the development of the countermeasures that will ultimately render them ineffective.

Governments that choose to accelerate the deployment of Freyja will be making a decision scrutinized through the lens of history. We are living through a pivotal moment — not only for Ukraine, but for the global security architecture. What we build now with or without Ukraine will determine who controls European skies in twenty years. Putin knows this. Shtilerman knows this. It is time for the NATO and EU decision-making circles to know it too, with the same urgency as those living under these bombs.

What history will remember: promises versus deliveries

The ultimate test of Western solidarity

Ukraine has been testing its allies since February 2022. Not in speeches. In timelines. Every weapons system delivered late has a documented human cost. Leopard tanks promised in December arrived in March. ATACMS missiles announced then delayed under political calculation pressure. Patriots committed in insufficient numbers. Each time, Ukraine's defenders adapted, filling the gaps with their own ingenuity. But each time, it was they who paid the price of Western hesitation in lives, in territory, in destroyed infrastructure.

Will the history of Freyja be different? The commitment from the June 2026 Ramstein meeting with Germany is a concrete step. But the next stages — integrating partners Thales, Leonardo, Kongsberg, accelerating the production rate, achieving operational deployment before the winter of 2026-2027 — remain considerable industrial and political challenges. What the West chooses to do with the coming weeks will say, better than any speech, what its commitments are worth.

Three interceptors a day: the challenge and the vision

The target of three Freyja interceptors per day starting in August 2026 is an ambitious promise. If it is met, it produces approximately 90 systems per month — a rate that, even well below total American Patriot production, would represent a significant reinforcement of Ukrainian and European air defense. If it is not met, that will not be the end of the project — but it will be one more lesson on the gap between Ukrainian ambition and industrial reality under wartime pressure. In either case, the effort deserves the broadest possible support, as soon as possible.

I want to end this chapter of the letter with an image I hold in mind: Denys Shtilerman, the founder of a casting agency turned into a pillar of Ukrainian defense industry, announcing on a social network that his company "joins the ballistic anti-missile coalition." Not a government press release. Not a speech to the European Parliament. A post on X, on May 14, 2026, by an entrepreneur doing what he can so that his country survives. That simplicity should embarrass every bureaucracy in the world that takes months to decide what one man decided in a single sentence.

Conclusion: Ukraine forges its own weapons — the West must forge its will

What Freyja says about Ukraine

This industrial story — from casting agency to ballistic systems manufacturer in four years — is one of the most extraordinary stories in contemporary military history. This is not abstract heroism. It is industrial genius, operational management, calculated risk-taking in an environment where the risks are equally existential. Freyja is not merely a weapons system. It is the metaphor for what Ukraine has become: a country forging itself, arming itself, innovating — and doing so simply asking its allies not to abandon it when the solutions it creates need their support to reach the necessary industrial scale.

I close this letter with a conviction I have carried since the first day of this war: Ukraine does not ask the West to fight in its place. It asks for the means to fight with the same effectiveness its adversaries have. Freyja is a Ukrainian response to one of the most complex challenges of modern warfare. Supporting it fully, swiftly, and without conditions — that is the minimum we owe to those dying under Putin's missiles defending the values that, in theory, are also ours.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Who I am and my acknowledged biases

I am a columnist and analyst, not a defense engineer or military procurement expert. My convictions are pro-Ukrainian and pro-Western — I do not hide them. I admire Ukrainian ingenuity under the constraints of war. These convictions inform the tone and calls to action in this open letter. The facts I advance — costs, technical capabilities, production dates, expert statements — come from verifiable sources that I cite. Italicized passages are my personal opinions.

What I do not know and my method

I do not have access to the full technical details of the FP-7.X Freyja system, nor to the contracts between Fire Point and its industrial partners. I rely on reporting published by Military Times, Euromaidan Press, RBC Ukraine, and other identified sources. The NABU investigation into Fire Point is a reality I mentioned because honesty demanded it — I do not know where it will lead. My predictions on production timelines are based on the assessments of experts like Marc DeVore, whose academic rigor is established. The future remains uncertain. The urgencies do not.

Sources

Primary sources

Military Times — Ukraine's top strike drone maker moves into ballistic missile defense with Freyja/FP-7.X — June 25, 2026

Euromaidan Press — Ukraine's interceptor shortage has no quick fix, expert DeVore says — June 26, 2026

RBC Ukraine — Ukraine may have used its first national ballistic missile against Russia — July 2, 2026

Secondary sources

Euromaidan Press — Ukraine defense and technology news — July 2026

Militarnyi — Ukrainian defense, technical and operational news — July 2026

United 24 Media — Ukraine tests innovative laser air defense systems to counter Russian strikes — June 2026