The founder and chief designer of Fire Point, Denis Shtilerman, assessed the prospects for the supply of Ukrainian weapons to foreign markets.
The founder and chief designer of Fire Point, Denis Shtilerman, assessed the prospects for the supply of Ukrainian weapons to foreign markets.
«I am sure that the export issue is a vain hope.» To supply something to a European army, it takes three years to go through all their bureaucratic systems. This has started to change quite quickly, but not yet to the point where we can go out and export somewhere. We can export to non-European countries,» he noted .
According to Stillerman, the company is currently negotiating according to the following scheme: it produces 3,000 FP-5s, leaves half in the country where they were produced, and the rest goes to Ukraine as a payment for permission to export the technology. «But this is also not a quick process. We hope that this agreement will be signed in February,» he noted.
The designer added that the Flamingo is a technological rocket that can be manufactured in any quantity by not very qualified personnel. «And it is a very cheap device. It costs €600,000,» he noted.
Stillerman recalled that the company is building a plant for the production of solid-fuel engines for accelerators for FP-5 and for ballistic missiles FP-7 and FP-9 in Denmark. «It is dangerous to have such a plant in Ukraine now, because when ammonium perchlorate burns, 30% of hydrochloric acid is released into the air. That is, in the event of a hit, it will be a metallurgical catastrophe,» he noted.
In the coming week, the co-founder of Fire Point predicts, a deal to sell a stake to a sovereign fund of another country may be closed. «They have an even lower bureaucratic burden than in our country, where we continue to develop our projects. We built a production facility there that is capable of manufacturing solid-fuel engines 4.5 m in diameter and 24 m in length. This is for delivering satellites into orbit in the future,» said Stillerman.
Currently, he said, FirePoint employs 650 engineers.
