Ukrainian Fire Point presented updated information about its FP-7.x surface-to-air missile from Freyja system, designed to shoot down ballistic missiles. Although most parameters remained the same, important detail changed — guidance features in addition to radio-command guidance.
On company social media infographic, instead of infrared seeker as previously stated, combined infrared and radar seeker is indicated. No additional details on this question are provided.
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Defense Express notes two possible variants can be determined here regarding which guidance is involved. First variant is quite obvious — using combined seeker from Diehl Defence's Iris-T SLX SAM system, or developments from it, where active radar seeker is declared alongside infrared seeker.
Specifically, Diehl Defence officially cooperates with Fire Point for Freyja project development, and previously information appeared it may be seeker supplier. This also fits plan of using already available components and developments from them, which should accelerate new ballistic interception system appearance.
Worth noting for Iris-T SLX, basic ballistic missile interception capability is not declared. However possibly this is question of that system's features and for Ukrainian FP-7.x this will not be a problem. Plus worth remembering American PAC-3 MSE uses specifically active radar seeker.
Here we approach another variant — previously for Freyja, Fire Point declared using not only detection radar but also separate illumination radar. Such requirement exists specifically for semi-active radar seekers, which can only receive reflected signal from external radar, while active ones can emit themselves.
Here one can recall original 48N6, on which FP-7.x is developed, had semi-active radar seeker in addition to radio-command guidance. So we can assume Ukrainian interceptor may receive precisely such system in addition to infrared guidance.
Regarding capabilities, PAC-2 GEM-T for Patriot uses only semi-active radar seeker and can shoot down ballistic missiles, albeit with noticeably lower effectiveness than PAC-3 MSE, which has active radar seeker. Therefore potentially such guidance method may be applied further.
Overall currently not precisely indicated which of these two variants will be used finally. Also possible are other guidance system implementation variants that are not currently public. Possibly in future more details will be disclosed.
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