The Russia-Ukraine conflict is one of the most intense confrontations of the 21st century – and among the largest military engagements in Europe since World War II. In this environment of full-scale fighting, both sides rely heavily on missile technology to strike deep behind enemy lines, disrupt logistics, and project power.

Today, Ukraine’s missile arsenal is a patchwork of homegrown designs, leftover Soviet stock, and Western technology. On the tactical level, Soviet-era systems like the Grad are now supplemented by Eastern European clones, but the backbone of long-range strikes comes from American-supplied HIMARS and their derivatives. Modern variants of ATACMS extend Ukraine’s reach to about 300km, along with a handful of European air-launched Storm Shadows – though Kiev’s stock of these appears to be extremely limited. Beyond that range, Ukraine has no Western-made systems to rely on. At greater distances, it must turn to its own projects and the remnants of its Soviet inheritance.

As we noted in the first part of this series, Russia fields a vast and diversified missile arsenal rooted in decades of development. Ukraine’s story is very different. Once home to some of the Soviet Union’s most advanced missile design bureaus, the country has struggled to preserve that expertise and build its own modern systems.

What does Ukraine’s missile industry actually look like today? And does Kiev have the capacity to produce weapons that can compete on the modern battlefield?

Grom-2 missiles

In 2023, the Russian Defense Ministry reported intercepting a Ukrainian Grom-2 missile. This may have been the trial combat use of Kiev’s new ballistic missile system – evidence that at least some prototypes had been assembled and tested under battlefield conditions.

Before the start of Russia’s military operation in February 2022, Ukraine still had several missile design centers that survived from the Soviet era. Some of these existed only on paper, but others retained technology, personnel, and limited industrial capacity. Among them were the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau and the Luch Design Bureau, both heirs to major Soviet enterprises that had once supplied missiles and space systems for Moscow’s military-industrial complex.

Yuzhnoye, in particular, was a leader in developing liquid-fueled ICBMs such as the R-36M2 Voevoda (NATO designation: SS-18 “Satan”), as well as the solid-fueled Molodets and the Cyclone and Zenit launch vehicles.

After defense cooperation with Russia ended in 2014, these enterprises faced a crisis. Yuzhnoye tried to keep afloat by promoting new tactical and operational missile projects. The most ambitious was the Grom-2, conceived as Ukraine’s answer to Russia’s Iskander system.

The roots of the Grom-2 reach back to the early 1990s, when Ukrainian engineers took part in the first rounds of work on Iskander variants. In practice, however, development of the Grom-2 relied heavily on foreign money, most notably funding from Saudi Arabia. When that partnership faltered, Kiev put the project on hold – until 2022, when the government suddenly tried to revive it under wartime urgency.

By 2019, Yuzhnoye had produced two launchers and a small test batch of missiles, with an intended range of up to 500km. On paper, the system looked comparable to Russia’s 9M723 ballistic missile from the Iskander-M. In reality, Russian engineers had spent decades refining their design, while Ukrainian teams struggled to piece together working prototypes. The Grom-2 eventually reached the testing stage, but by late summer 2025, Russian intelligence announced that its production and testing facilities had been destroyed.

That said, had it succeeded, the Grom-2 might have become a genuinely modern missile system – one potentially superior to ATACMS and comparable to Russia’s Iskander-M. Such a development could well have rekindled interest among Gulf monarchies and perhaps even further afield. As always, the question was whether Ukraine could move from prototypes to mass production – a step that might have been possible in another time, but not under today’s conditions.

Long-range Neptune missiles

Ukraine’s most publicized missile system is the Neptune, built around the R-360 anti-ship missile officially adopted in 2020. In many ways it is a reincarnation of late-Soviet technology: its design is based on the Russian Kh-35, which entered service in 2003. Kiev’s Luch Design Bureau gained access to the Kh-35 in the 1990s, even receiving a benchmark model from Russia’s Zvezda-Strela plant under a bilateral defense agreement. Building on that heritage, Luch became the lead developer of the Neptune complex.

After the collapse of the Ukrainian Navy in 2014, engineers pushed forward with an anti-ship system modeled on the Kh-35 but with several modifications: longer wings, a solid-fuel booster, and a compact turbojet engine. The R-360 has a range of roughly 280km. It also carries a modern guidance package – combining satellite navigation for mid-course correction with an active radar seeker to lock onto ships or other radar-contrast targets. This makes the missile flexible: it can strike pre-programmed coordinates or autonomously hunt targets detected in flight.

Neptune missiles saw high-profile combat use early in the war. It was Neptune-type missiles that were credited with striking Russian missile cruiser the Moskva in 2022.

In 2023, versions of the Neptune adapted for land strikes were reportedly used against S-400 air-defense complexes in Crimea. In 2024, Neptune variants were again reported to have attacked ships of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. These episodes underline how a coastal anti-ship weapon was quickly repurposed for broader operational roles.

Once the conflict escalated, Ukraine began adapting Neptunes for strikes against land targets. But with only a 280km reach, their effectiveness was limited. Engineers therefore attempted to create an extended-range version with a larger fuel load, reportedly boosting range to between 700 and 1,000km. Technically feasible, such a missile has been developed, though in very small numbers.

The Neptune is classified as a subsonic cruise missile. Its small size and ability to skim low along terrain make it harder to detect – but not invulnerable. Russia has successfully intercepted similar weapons, including British Storm Shadow missiles. Ukraine’s production capacity is another constraint: at best, only a handful of missiles can be built each month, and each requires launchers and command systems that are difficult to assemble under wartime conditions.

By technological standards the Neptune ranks as a contemporary anti-ship missile – and even a versatile subsonic cruise missile that could find buyers on the global arms market. European stealth cruise missiles such as the Storm Shadow are more advanced but also far more expensive. In the current conditions, however, organizing serial production of the Neptune complex is almost impossible, and any talk of exports remains premature.

A new name has emerged in Ukraine’s missile industry: Fire Point. At first it looked like a British-Emirati startup, but it has since become clear that the company is essentially a Ukrainian effort established to design and produce drones as well as cruise and ballistic missiles. Its projects have attracted attention in the media – especially the FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile and the FP-1 long-range kamikaze drones, now widely used by Ukrainian forces.

On August 24, 2025, the port of Ust-Luga in Leningrad Region was struck by FP-1 fixed-wing drones. An Associated Press report published shortly before showed production lines at Ukraine’s Fire Point facility – the footage appeared to capture final assembly of those same drones as well as of the company’s new FP-5 “Flamingo” cruise missiles.

Does Ukraine have the expertise to build cruise missiles? The answer is yes. During the 1980s, the Kharkov Aviation Plant mass-produced long-range strategic cruise missiles – the Kh-55s carried by Tu-95MS and Tu-160 bombers – as well as reconnaissance drones like the Tu-143 Reis. Fire Point’s latest Flamingo missiles appear to draw on this legacy, reportedly using engines from retired L-39 training aircraft.

Specifications published in open sources claim a range of up to 3,000km, a payload of around 1,000kg, and a cruising speed of roughly 900kph. In theory, those numbers are achievable – though the Flamingo looks more like a budget solution designed for improvised mass production. Unlike piston-engine drones, these are turbojet-powered missiles that fly higher and faster, making them harder to intercept and capable of delivering far more destructive warheads.

At the same time, Fire Point is moving aggressively into ballistic missile concepts. At the MSPO-2025 arms expo in Poland, the company presented slides of two new designs: the FP-7 and FP-9.

The FP-7 resembles a scaled-up version of the Smerch multiple-launch rocket, with a 200km range and a 150kg warhead.The FP-9 is more ambitious, projected to reach 855km with an 800kg warhead.

So far, these remain designs on paper, and production will likely take place outside Ukraine with foreign funding. But with substantial Western financing, projects like these are being pushed forward – even if the end products remain closer to prototypes than to mature weapons systems.

It’s worth noting that, for now, Fire Point’s output looks like mobilization-era ersatz solutions: inexpensive, rapidly produced systems intended for wartime use but not of the highest quality. If Ukraine manages to scale up serial production and these missiles and drones are employed en masse by the Ukrainian armed forces, their technical shortcomings would become less relevant. That said, it seems unlikely Fire Point products will be offered for export in the foreseeable future.

As for their use in the conflict with Moscow, Russian air-defense systems are capable of shooting down such missiles. Detection and comprehensive air-defense coverage remain the principal practical challenges – but the capability to intercept these weapons exists.

What does it all mean?

Ukraine inherited fragments of the Soviet missile empire – design bureaus, engineers, and production lines that once turned out some of the world’s most powerful weapons. Over the past decade, those remnants have been pressed into service.

But ambition is not the same as capability. Ukraine can design missiles and even produce them in limited numbers, yet scaling up to the level of an industrial power remains out of reach. Production sites are vulnerable to strikes, supply chains are disrupted, and foreign funding often determines which projects live or die.

For Kiev, missiles serve two purposes. They are weapons of war – intended to hit military targets deep behind the front. They are also political tools – symbols to reassure the domestic audience and signal to foreign sponsors that Ukraine is keeping pace with Russia’s technological edge.

In practice, Ukraine’s missile industry is caught between its Soviet inheritance and its Western patrons, producing ambitious prototypes but struggling to deliver at scale. Whether these systems can alter the balance of power on the battlefield is doubtful. What is certain is that Ukraine will continue trying – because in modern conflict, missiles are not just weapons, they are statements of survival.