Ukraine has been running a yearslong weapons program to develop cheap surface-to-air missiles that cost no more than $20,000 each, said Andrii Hrytseniuk, the head of its Brave1 startup incubator.
Several firms have been testing prototypes under this framework, and Kyiv is “preparing to put two of these companies into combat,” Hrytseniuk said in a video interview published with Ukrainska Pravda on Thursday.
He expressed hope that a third would soon reach a similar stage.
Hrytseniuk said some of these manufacturers have managed to get costs down to $10,000 per missile, though the program has set a hard price cap of $20,000 per shot.
“This is significantly cheaper than the cost of a Shahed. Even if you need two or three missiles, it is still several times cheaper than the cost of a Shahed,” said Hrytseniuk of the limit.
Hrytseniuk said the program was launched by Brave1 as a competition between Ukrainian firms to “create the cheapest anti-aircraft missile systems possible.”
“Funding for missiles began in 2024, but making a missile takes even more time than making an interceptor drone,” he added.
A price limit of $20,000 would make these Ukrainian missiles even cheaper than the AGR-Falco Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, an American-made unguided 70mm rocket fitted with a laser guidance kit.
Costing about $30,000 to $35,000 each, these were traditionally air-to-ground rockets that have now been converted for air defense in Ukraine. The cheapest US standard surface-to-air missile is the shoulder-mounted Stinger, which costs about $120,000 per missile.
The Ukrainian effort to lower air defense costs comes as a response to Russia’s extensive Shahed attack drone fleets, which are numerous and cheaper to produce than typical missiles. Ukrainian officials have estimated that the Russian Geran-2, for example, costs $70,000 each, while jet-powered drones like the Geran-3 cost at least $100,000.
Kyiv uses a layered network of defense systems, including machine gun crews, interceptor quadcopters, and electronic warfare, to fight against these drones, which Russia can launch hundreds of at a time.
But Moscow has increasingly used jet-powered Gerans, which fly too fast for regular interceptor drones and human gun crews to keep up with. A new AI-powered terrain mapping system found on some Gerans has also raised concerns that Russia will soon be able to bypass Ukrainian jamming.
Ukraine’s alternative has been air-defense missiles, such as the air-launched AIM-9 Sidewinder, which can cost about half a million dollars per shot.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier this month that his country was working on a “small missile program” as a counter to jet-powered Gerans.
“There are several types. We will clearly see the result this month. At the end, in the second half of this month,” he told reporters at a press conference.
In September, Hrytseniuk told Business Insider’s Jake Epstein that several Ukrainian companies were also integrating artificial intelligence into strike missile systems and were seeing “first successes.”
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