Associated Press reporters visited the factory of Fire Point, which produces long-range FP-1 drones and the FP-5 cruise missile with a range of up to 3,000 km. The developers talked about the production of their weapons and why the powerful Ukrainian missile was named «Flamingo».
Associated Press reporters visited the factory of Fire Point, which produces long-range FP-1 drones and the FP-5 cruise missile with a range of up to 3,000 km. The developers talked about the production of their weapons and why the powerful Ukrainian missile was named «Flamingo».
«Air combat is our only real asymmetric advantage on the battlefield at the moment. We don’t have as much manpower and money as they [the Russians] have», — Irina Terek, head of production at Fire Point, told the Associated Press.
The agency’s journalists visited one of Fire Point’s dozens of secret production facilities, where «rock music was playing» and where they were shown the company’s products, including the FP-1 kamikaze drones, which can fly up to 1,600 kilometers, and the FP-5 cruise missile with a range of 3,000 kilometers.
Fire Point, a defense company founded in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of 2022, was a group of close friends with backgrounds in construction, video game design, and architecture who set out to mass-produce low-cost drones that could rival Iran’s Shahed drones in terms of capabilities.
To do this, the Fire Point team created new drone designs that could fly farther and hit targets with greater accuracy than most products already on the market. Their long-range drones had another advantage: they didn’t need to take off from an airfield.
Architect Iryna Terek, who holds the position of CTO at the company, joined Fire Point in the summer of 2023. She was tasked with producing 30 drones per month. The company currently produces approximately 100 drones per day, each of which costs $55,000.
According to Terek, the FP-1 drone has proven to be extremely effective on the battlefield. It has a warhead weighing 60 kilograms and is responsible for 60% of strikes on the Russian rear, including attacks on oil refineries and weapons depots.
«I think the best drones, or some of the best, are Ukrainian drones. When the war in Ukraine is over, they will flood the market», — said Claude Chenuil, a former French military official who now works for a trade group specializing in defense.
The Fire Point team regularly receives feedback from military units, and the company reinvests most of its profits into rapid innovation to keep up with other drone manufacturers. Increasingly, these profits are being channeled into developing new, more powerful weapons.
This year, the company completed testing of its first cruise missile, the FP-5. According to experts, the FP-5 is capable of flying 3,000 kilometers and hitting a target with an accuracy of up to 14 meters. It is one of the largest missiles of its type in the world, and can carry a payload of 1,150 kilograms. This makes it twice as powerful as the famous American Tomahawk missile.
Since the first versions of the rocket were pink due to a factory error, the name «Flamingo» stuck.
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the missile has already passed a successful test, confirming its ability to fly a distance of 3,000 kilometers. Speaking to reporters on August 21, Zelensky said that by the end of December this year or in early 2026, Ukraine plans to begin mass production of long-range Flamingo missiles.
Irina Terek said that Fire Point currently produces about one Flamingo missile per day, and by October the company hopes to increase its capacity to seven missiles per day. Terek added that she is skeptical that Russia will agree to the terms of a real peace.
«We are preparing for a bigger, much scarier war,» said the Fire Point production manager.
