Ukraine is approaching a milestone it has chased since the first Russian ballistic missiles fell on its cities: a ballistic missile of its own. Kyiv's Fire Point defence company is finalising two domestically developed systems — the FP-7 and the FP-9 — that could begin narrowing one of the most lopsided capability gaps of the war.
Closing a dangerous gap
For more than four years, Russia has held an almost unchallenged monopoly on ballistic firepower. According to the Kyiv Independent, Moscow produces roughly 120 ballistic missiles a month, raining them on Ukrainian cities and stretching Kyiv's limited stocks of air-defence interceptors. Ukraine, by contrast, has had little to no serial domestic production of such weapons.
The FP-7 is designed to change that at the tactical level. Described as an operational-tactical ballistic missile, it is derived from the airframe technology of S-300 and S-400 air-defence systems, with a reported range of about 200 to 300 kilometres and a warhead of roughly 150 kilograms. Its intended targets are the assets Russia uses to strike Ukraine first: missile launchers, air-defence batteries, command posts and battlefield depots.
The FP-9 is the strategic half of the pairing — a much larger missile designed to travel around 850 kilometres with a warhead of up to 800 kilograms, putting military infrastructure deep inside Russia within reach.
From test launches to deployment
The programme is moving fast by peacetime standards. Fire Point officially announced the two projects in September 2025, and Ukrainian sources reported the first test firing of the FP-7 in February 2026. Fire Point chief executive Iryna Terekh has said the FP-7 completed two stages of testing and could be ready for deployment within weeks.
The FP-9 is further behind but advancing: the company's chief designer, Denys Shtilerman, has said development is focused on the rocket's engine structure, with engine burn tests on a test stand determining how quickly the missile proceeds to flight trials. In an interview with journalist Dmitry Gordon, Shtilerman said Ukraine could carry out its first ballistic missile strikes on Moscow as early as this autumn — a timetable he said depended on the results of those engine tests.
A three-tier deep-strike arsenal
The ballistics are only part of the picture. Ukraine is building what analysts describe as a three-tier indigenous strike force: the long-range FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile, which carries a warhead of up to about 1,150 kilograms; the FP-7 — reportedly designated "Pelican" in combat use — for rapid tactical strikes; and the FP-9 for deep strategic missions.
The weapons are already making their presence felt. After a strike on an oil facility in the Moscow area on September 20, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces had employed several domestically produced long-range weapons, including the Flamingo and Pelican, though publicly available evidence has not established which individual weapon struck the site.
Senior Ukrainian voices are setting an ambitious timetable. Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko said Ukraine would field domestic missiles with ranges of 300 to 500 kilometres this autumn, with the 850-kilometre Fire Point ballistic missile as the next stage. Zelenskyy has tasked the defence sector with fielding domestically produced ballistic missiles by 2026–2027.
The hard part: money and mass production
The remaining obstacle is not engineering alone — it is scale. Shtilerman himself has warned that producing only two or three ballistic missiles a month would have little impact on the war. Fire Point says it could pivot to mass serial production — "hundreds per month" — as early as the middle of 2026, but only if Kyiv locks in firm state orders and financing, with codification of the FP-7 expected by the end of this year.
Russia will hardly watch this happen passively: Ukrainian arms factories are already priority targets for Russian strikes, and the race between production lines and Russian missiles is now the programme's central contest.
Ukraine will not close Russia's ballistic missile gap this month, or even this winter. But for the first time since 2022, Kyiv has tested hardware, a design bureau moving at wartime speed, and explicit political backing from the president. If funding and firm orders follow the test launches, Ukraine's deep-strike campaign could soon be running on missiles it built itself — a shift that would reduce Kyiv's dependence on Western weapons stocks and keep the pressure on Russian logistics, air defences and fuel infrastructure far behind the front.
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