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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Ukrainian-produced ballistic missiles are undergoing successful tests, and some of them will likely be seen in action soon: at least one manufacturer — Fire Point — announced initial launches this fall. The season during which the debut of Ukrainian ballistics may occur begins tomorrow. The publication GORDON explains which Ukrainian ballistic missiles are now in the final stages of development, what is known about their technical characteristics, and why Russian air defense is unlikely to be able to shoot them down.
What kind of ballistics is Ukraine building?
Sapsan. The first ballistic missile considered to be of Ukrainian manufacture is the Sapsan. Its development history begins back in 2007. Since then, the project, also known as Hrim-2, has come a long way, enduring periods of insufficient funding and its complete stoppage (during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to the Russian Federation after the Revolution of Dignity).
Work on the project resumed in 2014, and at the end of 2021 the Ministry of Defense assessed the system’s readiness at more than 80%, but there have been no official reports of mass combat use of the Sapsans so far. These missiles and the launch systems intended to fire them are being built by Yuzhnoye Design Office. In June 2025 the director of the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies, Valentyn Badrak, reported a successful test and said the missile had entered serial production.
According to him, during testing in mid-May it successfully destroyed a Russian military target at a distance of almost 300 km. Defence Express wrote that the missile’s declared range is 480 km. The warhead during the design stage was 480 kg, Military wrote.
FP-9 and FP-7. These missiles were developed by Fire Point after the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. The first is intended to deliver a warhead weighing up to 800 kg and to strike targets at distances up to 855 km; the second has a shorter range (200 km) and a smaller warhead (150 kg).
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Both are launched from a ground platform (the manufacturer does not specify its characteristics). FP-7 has a faster version — FP-7.x — which will become an interceptor for the Freyja anti-ballistic air defense project.
The declared maximum speed of the FP-9 is 2200 meters per second, its flight altitude is 70 km. Accuracy of impact — 20 m.
The speed of the FP-7, according to the manufacturer, will be 1500 meters per second; it will be able to fly at an altitude of 65 km. The larger and heavier FP-9 will be able to stay in the air for a little less than 9 minutes (520 seconds); the maximum flight time of the FP-7 is approximately 4,2 minutes (250 seconds).
As of early August FP-7 had undergone roughly 15 tests, and the company began its certification with the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. This process takes two to four weeks, Fire Point’s CEO and CTO Iryna Terekh told Reuters in an interview.
Defence Express pointed out an external similarity of these missiles to the 48N6 surface-to-air missiles from the S-300 and S-400 air defense systems, noting important structural changes — the publication believes only aerodynamic solutions were used. Terekh said in an interview that the architecture of the FP-7 and FP-9 missiles is based on the design of those Soviet interceptors, but now the missiles have only 20% similarity to that weapon.
When to expect launches?
In the summer the media widely circulated news about a successful test of Ukrainian ballistics. Which missile was tested then, Mykhailo Fedorov, the former defense minister who made that statement, did not specify. However, Terekh later said that it likely concerned their missile and the Sapsan (or only the Yuzhnoye Design Office development). “As far as I know, Sapsan has undergone significant improvement and recently achieved one of its first major successes in terms of accuracy and technology,” she added.
Fedorov later effectively confirmed her guess about Sapsan, noting that it concerns a project that had been “developed for 10 years before but could not reach a proper result.” According to him, during tests in July the missile hit the target with almost no deviation from course and it remains to “finish this exercise, test everything that is needed, [and] begin combat use.”
The former minister did not give dates for the start of combat use of the missile — even approximate ones.
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FP developers expect the first combat launches of the FP-7 to take place in early autumn, and of the FP-9 — in late autumn. As Denis Shtilerman, chief designer and co-founder of Fire Point, told GORDON founder Dmytro Gordon in an end-of-July interview, one of the final stages of testing FP-9 is currently underway.
“This is a big missile, big engine and a big product. To deliver a warhead weighing 800 kg to a distance of 850 km — that requires a big missile,” he explained. According to Terekh, FP-9 needs 4,5 tons of fuel and the “final touch” in building the missile was the solid-fuel engine. The company built new infrastructure for this.
“Our task now is to fire the engine, see that nothing structurally falls apart, that the engine works as intended. Then we will immediately conduct a test flight: we see that everything works according to the flight mission. And then flights into Russian territory will begin. The military will determine where, but I think those will be some significant targets right away,” he said.
Asked when the first Ukrainian ballistic missile might fly to Moscow, Shtilerman answered: “This autumn” — and stressed that he cannot give more precise dates because they depend on the results of the engine tests.
“We will fill the engine, put it on the stand, run tests and see how it performs. If there are any inaccuracies, we will fix them. But we are doing everything very quickly. I think it will happen this autumn,” the designer explained.
Gordon believes that Ukrainian ballistic strikes against Russia this autumn will be massive and that Russian air defense is unlikely to be able to shoot them down. The same view was expressed on the Kyiv 24 channel by military analyst Andriy Kramarov. Terekh emphasized that there is not yet a single recorded case of ballistic missiles being intercepted by S-400 or S-500 systems in Russia’s arsenal. According to her, the task is not impossible, but “requires training.”
“I have seen Ukrainian ballistics,” Gordon said in an interview with Novyny.Live on 21 August. “One company’s ballistics has already passed two test cycles and is fully ready. The other — is about to be ready. I think massive strikes on Moscow will take place in the fall. How will this happen? I think in response to another ballistic strike on Kyiv, Ukraine will hit Moscow fiercely with ballistics. These ballistics are unlikely to be shot down, because skills are needed, since Moscow has never been attacked with ballistic missiles before. Pantsiri, S-300, S-400 — these are not Patriot. Ballistics fly en masse where needed and then Zelensky will address Putin directly: ‘You, bastard, either you stop now along the line of contact, or we will crush Moscow so thoroughly that there will be no place left for you there.’”
The distance from the Ukrainian border to Moscow is from 450 km. Therefore, in the very near future at least two Ukrainian ballistic missiles known to be under development and testing will probably be able to reach the aggressor country’s capital. And the declared range of the FP-9 would be enough to destroy 80% of Russia’s military-industrial complex, given a sufficient number of missiles, aviation expert and analyst Kostiantyn Kryvolap said in a comment to the 24 channel.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Коли українська балістика почне атакувати Москву і чому російська ППО навряд чи зібʼє її. Головне". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Gordon.
