cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10371689

Ukraine’s leading arms company is manufacturing about 100 long-range Flamingo cruise missiles a month, a rate able to support an enduring campaign of deep strike against targets hundreds of miles inside Russia.

Fire Point is also making FP-1 and FP-2 fixed-wing drones at a rate of “hundreds per day”, according to chief executive Iryna Terekh. Manufacturing at scale is restarting after a pause caused by the delay in signing off €90bn of EU lending to Ukraine.

The startup’s development from its postwar foundation in 2022 demonstrates the rapid maturing of Ukraine’s homegrown defence industry, finally giving its military the long-range capabilities denied by the west earlier in the conflict.

“I’m not aware of any deep strike attack that was happening in the past few months that was not involving our products,” Terekh said. Missile and drone attacks using Fire Point munitions were taking place at a daily rate of “on average five to 15”.

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Fire Point now operates from 83 factories inside Ukraine, plus another in Denmark, employing 6,000 people, up from 3,500 late last year, according to Terekh. The Guardian visited one manufacturing site last December, where dozens of men were assembling the plywood, plastic and carbon fibre structures into whole drones.

“What we’re seeing now is the result of several years of effort by the Ukrainian side,” said Ben Hodges, a former general who commanded the US army in Europe. “They can not only reach deep inside Russia with precision and get past Russian air defences, their weapons also carry a payload big enough to achieve effect.”

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Terekh, who studied architecture before joining Fire Point in the summer of 2023, when it employed 18 people, said the company is an example of how the Russian invasion has urgently forced Ukraine – once at the heart of Soviet industry – to modernise and regenerate itself.

“Ukraine, in a postwar economy, will need to be an exporter of things with a high additional added value. We do not want to be like a breadbasket any more for the world,” said Terekh, referring to Ukraine’s historical strength in agriculture. For now, however, the demands of the war mean Fire Point’s weapons are not exported.

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