A Ukrainian manufacturer took a ballistic missile from nothing to its first combat launch in a little over two years, which its chief executive said is the fastest development of such a weapon on record, the Apex Europe conference in London heard on Wednesday.
Iryna Terekh of Fire Point was asked from the floor how a company that did not exist before 2023 had managed it, and she began with what she had measured it against.
She said: “It is the fastest ever track record for developing a ballistic missile. I made my analysis. The average timeline for such a development is 15 years, the maximum was 30 years, and the minimum before that was seven years.”
“The first flight that we conducted was the last day of February, and three days ago it was the first combat flight. In between there were almost 20 different launches where we tested different things,” she said, adding that the whole programme had taken a little more than two years.
She was candid that the weapon is nowhere near finished, and set out her own measure for when it will be. “I have the rule that the first 100 launches of whatever you are launching, you can still be considered as polishing the product, establishing it to a more mature zone,” she said, describing Ukrainian manufacturing as living permanently at technology readiness level seven because insisting on level nine would cost too much money and too much time.
The method she credited is a document the company wrote at the outset and persuaded the government to sign. “We made a critical decision at the very beginning. We made a book. This book is called the Album of Acceptable Deviations, and we wrote it to present it to our military acceptance unit, who does the quality assurance before it is transported to the unit,” she said.
Inside it, everything that affects the quality of flight goes in one half and everything that does not goes in the other. The acceptance authority signed it, and quality assurance inspections are now carried out against it, which allows the company to use cheap parts wherever the engineering case for an expensive one is absent.
Not everybody who saw the result approved of how it had been built. “Once I saw some critics on the internet, oh my God, you’re using off-the-shelf solutions to fix some of the parts of your missile, your missile should be embarrassed to fly with this detail,” she said. “But this is exactly what cost-effective innovation is. If you are looking for a fancy, high-tech, ideal solution, it will be extremely expensive. You have to be able to be embarrassed as an engineer, but be proud as a Ukrainian providing a good product for a fair price.”
Her description of how the missile was built owes nothing to conventional aerospace practice. “We did it as it’s called in Ukraine from shit and sticks from the beginning, made it fly first and then polished,” she said.
A change in Ukrainian law is what made a company like hers possible in the first place. A bill signed in 2023 set out how new defence products, initially drones, are certified, tested, accepted into the army and procured, with the process published openly. “They took the industry from the shadows and made this a very clear, visible opportunity for any startup that want to try themselves,” she said, and the result is that a drone or a missile can now be certified within about six weeks without dropping safety requirements.
The effect on who builds weapons in Ukraine has been considerable, and she put it in a single sentence. “My generation, for example, who used to build startups, are now building arsenals,” she said.
Precisely echos what I was saying a few days ago about the inability to accept error healing enormous expense on weapons engineering.
Trouble is if you say that there is an immediate pile-on from the ooooohhhhh if that went wrong then XYZ would happen brigade of perfectionists.
Hi Mate, sadly so. Most of that in the UK is driven by the MOD’s risk adverse culture. Which was driven due to the findings of the Haddon-Cave Nimrod report. Since then the MOD has put the risk on the design authority. Which obviously wants the contract, so makes sure the risk is negligible. Only a few companies such as Space X, can afford the fail fast learn fast methodology. Most others have to plod through R&D to make sure their product has a very low risk of failing.
I am hoping we see reports of the first used of the FP-7.X anti-ballistic missile defense missile soon. Even if it is only as capable as the ASTER to start with, I would bet that Ukraine will be able to build interceptors nearly as fast and effective as the PAC-3 ACE within a few years.