WARSAW, Poland — Ukraine’s drone and missile maker Fire Point is developing an extended-range tactical ballistic missile after its FP-7 weapon was used in combat for the first time on Oct. 1, the company’s CEO Iryna Terekh said during this year’s Helsinki Security Forum.
As European nations are bracing for intensified Russian hybrid attacks, defense companies are pitching products for different capability gaps, with European and American producers partnering rather than working in isolation, industry representatives said during the event over the weekend.
Fire Point has developed its flagship missile, which has attracted praise from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to be part of the pan-European Freyja anti-ballistic missile defense program, with the system’s prototype expected to be ready in the first half of 2027. Meanwhile, the company is working on an extended-range version that is to be released this year, Terekh said during a panel discussion on the first day of the forum, Oct. 2.
“Yesterday we launched our ballistic missile onto Russian territory for the first time. It is a tactical ballistic missile for [a range of] 300 kilometers maximum. We are working on a longer [range] version that will also come this year,” Terekh said. “We were able to make this missile in two years as a private company.”
Fire Point’s executive said the capability is crucial for Ukraine, as the country is joining “a VIP league of operators of their own independent ballistic missiles with no kill switch. We don’t have to ask now anybody if we want to conduct self-defense.”
The Ukrainian authorities have entrusted a private company with developing a key component of the missile defense program because Fire Point has slashed bureaucracy and accelerated research and development on its missile range, she said.
“Also, we were able to make it a few times cheaper than any” competitor, Terekh said.
The forum was officially inaugurated by Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Moldovan President Maia Sandu. Encouraged by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Finland joined NATO in April 2023. In Moldova, concern over intensifying Russian hybrid threats and the war in neighboring Ukraine is pushing the country’s government to seek closer cooperation with NATO, while maintaining its constitutionally mandated neutrality.
“This year, Russian drones have entered our airspace more than 45 times, eight of them in the past week. Last month, Russia deliberately hit Ukraine’s border crossings with Moldova, killing two people,” Sandu said during an Oct. 2 joint press conference with Stubb. “Our answer is to grow stronger. We are investing in air defense, modernizing our Army and raising defense spending.”
During the panel discussion featuring both heads of state, the Finnish president said that Russia has embarked on a campaign of hybrid warfare directed against Europe whose aim is to destabilize allied nations and “make sure we don’t support Ukraine.”
“The warfare that Russia is conducting in Ukraine is kinetic, traditional warfare. But what it is conducting in Europe is hybrid, and hybrid has many different elements. You have daily cyber attacks, you have sabotage attempts as we saw in Leipzig,” Stubb said.
Meanwhile, on Oct. 1, two Finnish companies, satellite operator Iceye and telecoms equipment giant Nokia, unveiled their new partnership to develop sovereign satellite communications for governments and defense customers, offering broadband low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications systems. The first satellites are to be launched in 2028.
Iceye is already supplying radar-satellite systems to numerous European allies, including Finland, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Sweden, and Germany’s December 2025 order for a 40-satellite constellation marked the first-ever European move to create a large tactical system on the continent, according to its CEO Rafal Modrzewski.
Modrzewski and Nokia’s CEO Justin Hotard discussed their companies’ joint project during a panel discussion at the forum, saying it comes in response to nations’ drive for sovereignty in satellite communications across priority mission areas.
“Sovereignty doesn’t exist without competitiveness. Sovereignty without competitiveness is isolation … and the reality, as we see here in Finland and in Europe is that neither the U.S., nor Europe can win in a war of isolation,” Hotard said.
Also on Oct. 1, Finland formally presented the first two of the 64 F-35 fighter jets the nation has ordered from Lockheed Martin. At a Helsinki Security Forum panel, Elizabeth Parcella, the vice president for Strategy and Business Development for Aeronautics at Lockheed Martin, said that, while the move improves Finland’s defense posture, it also comes as the company is expanding its manufacturing collaboration with local industry partners.
“Patria is a key partner with us. They are starting to manufacture the forward fuselage of the aircraft. They are also partnered with our engine provider, Pratt & Whitney,” Parcella said. “And, together with other European manufacturers, about 25 percent of the value of every F-35 will be produced in Europe moving forward.”
In his remarks during a panel, Panu Routila, the CEO of Patria, referred to last week’s award of a contract to supply the first Trackx light armored personnel carriers to Finland and Sweden as an example of how European nations work together to fill their capability gaps.
One example “is Trackx, our tracked vehicle, which we started developing just three years ago, actually, because of the demand for Arctic mobility, mobility in very difficult conditions. And this is a vehicle that is now ready,” Routila said.
Deliveries of the vehicles are to commence in 2027, Patria said in a statement.
“Following delivery, both countries will conduct national field trials and evaluations to assess the vehicles’ suitability for operational use. In addition, part of the testing is expected to be conducted jointly between the nations,” the statement said.
Jaroslaw Adamowski is the Poland correspondent for Defense News.
