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By Ellie Cook
Senior Defense Reporter
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Ukraine is pushing for a first version of a new, European-designed air defense system to be ready within the next year, according to a top official in the country, as Kyiv struggles to stop Russian barrages of sophisticated missiles and Europe frets over its own defenses.
Kyiv hopes a prototype of the European anti-ballistic missile system, known as Freyja, will be finished within the first half of 2027, Davyd Aloian, a senior Ukrainian official who is overseeing the project, told the Reuters news agency.
Ukraine is in dire need of advanced air defense systems and interceptor missiles as Moscow intensifies its bombardment of the country, including with barrages of hard-to-stop ballistic missiles.
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But the U.S.-made Patriot—which is deemed the gold standard of air defense and the only ground-based system confirmed to have shot down Russian ballistic missiles—is in high demand across the world, with its interceptor missile stockpiles drained in Ukraine and in the Middle East against Iranian attacks.
While Kyiv has become a production powerhouse for military equipment, it hasn't domestically developed a system capable of stopping ballistic missile strikes. Meanwhile, Europe's best-known air defense systems, such as the short-range IRIS-T or medium-range SAMP-T, haven't successfully downed ballistic missiles.
Kyiv is on the lookout for lucrative defense deals and opportunities to draw closer to the rest of Europe and NATO, while swaths of the Continent are rushing to take advantage of Ukrainian expertise to shore up their own defenses against Russia.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with the leaders of almost a dozen European nations earlier this month to unveil an "anti-ballistic missile coalition." The countries involved in the project said they would build a "purely defensive" system to protect Europe from ballistic missiles.
The coalition would work alongside air defense systems already in place across Europe, the 10 nations said in a joint statement on July 13.
Ballistic missiles are often difficult for air defense systems to intercept because they travel much faster than cruise missiles or drones. They follow less predictable trajectories and fly much higher, plunging almost vertically toward their targets so air defenses have less time to react.
A European air defense system able to intercept this type of missile would likely be broadly similar to how a Patriot works and informed by its performance in Ukraine.
What Do We Know About Freyja?
Aloian said the time frame to build a working prototype of Freyja was "tight" but "ambitious."
Freyja is set to be a ground-based system, which means it fires interceptors from the ground to take out threats in the air.
Several big-name European defense giants, including Leonardo and Saab, have already joined up. But Ukraine says it will provide the interceptor missile that would smash into an incoming ballistic missile to knock it out the sky.
The Freyja will fire an interceptor missile known as the FP-7.x, designed by one of Ukraine's most prominent new defense manufacturers, Fire Point.
It's intended to be a low-cost version of Patriot missiles, which can carry price tags in the region of $4 million apiece. An entire Patriot battery, which includes launchers, radars and missiles, costs upward of $1 billion.
FirePoint's head designer, Denys Shtilierman, previously told Reuters the company wanted to reduce the cost of intercepting a ballistic missile to less than $1 million. FirePoint has already announced a deal with Hensoldt, a German defense company, to manufacture the radar for the Freyja system.
Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump said this month he would give Ukraine permission to "quickly" produce their own Patriot interceptor missiles.
"We have Patriots, but we don't have that many," Trump said. "We need them for ourselves, too."
Kyiv has indicated that Ukrainian teams will have the "technical capability" to make Patriot missiles by the end of 2026, although experts have warned it could take years for Ukraine to build its own Patriot systems.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: John Fitzpatrick and Shakeema Edwards.
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