Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has announced upcoming tests of an air defense missile developed by Estonia-based Frankenburg Technologies. The prospective trials were discussed at a meeting between Ukraine's Deputy Minister of Defense, General Anatolii Klochko, and the management of the Estonian defense company.
Few details about the missile itself have been made public: it can destroy air targets at an altitude of up to 2,000 meters and is primarily designed to counter unmanned aerial vehicles. The company's CEO Kusti Salm stressed that it's a brand-new low-cost missile. Probably, the layout of this missile is shown in the photo published by the press service of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.
Read more: russian UAVs Learn to Evade Ukraine's Anti-Aircraft Drones
According to the representative of Frankenburg Technologies, if their new weapon proves effective in the hands of the Ukrainian military, they will start planning production of these missiles in Ukraine in the future, no less relevant is the discussion about funding sources for this production.
Frankenburg Technologies' fairly laconic website doesn't provide any specific details about their air defense missile, only emphasizing that the company's goal is to "develop missile systems that are ten times more affordable, a hundred times faster to produce, and in quantities far exceeding current industry capabilities."
In other words, the manufacturer has set quite an ambitious goal of making a tool of, first of all, anti-drone defense, not requiring the buyer to spend the usual tens or sky-high hundreds of thousands of dollars per missile — only to spend it on a UAV that is many times cheaper. The Ukrainian defense ministry expects the first shipment of Estonian-made missiles within a few months.
Defense Express, however, cautiously assumes that the cost of the said missile by Frankenburg Technologies is already known, and it's limited to a few thousand dollars: in June 2024, Defense One reported on Estonia's plans to create both cheap unmanned systems and the means of countering them. The research would be grounded in the analysis of the experience gained in real combat by the Ukrainian Defense Forces.
One of the goals of the plan was to make an extremely cost-effective missile against drones, with its price hovering around $2,000 — which is indeed cheaper than most types of drones used on Ukraine's battlefields. The report said new developments were scheduled for tests near the end of this year.
The Ukrainian military will be able to verify how successful this vector of development is in practice. If the effort brings positive results and secures rapid production scaling, the new weapon could become an extremely efficient means against russian unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicles on par with anti-aircraft FPV drones.
Earlier, Defense Express covered that Ukraine teamed up with Thales to launch anti-drone missile production and explained why it was a good decision for both parties.
Read more: Ukraine and THALES Team Up to Launch Anti-Drone Missile Production: Details Revealed