Ukraine's FirePoint outpaces Russian rivals through faster battlefield adaptation, soldier says
A serviceman explains the advantages of Ukrainian drones (photo: video screenshot)
Ukrainian developers of unmanned systems, including FirePoint and manufacturers of reconnaissance systems, are demonstrating greater effectiveness than their Russian and Western counterparts thanks to their flexibility and constant adaptation to battlefield requirements, serviceman Serafym Hordiienko, founder of the metaromanticism cultural movement and a member of the MEMORIA motorcycle club, said in an interview with RBC-Ukraine.
According to him, most of the specific achievements of Ukraine's defense industry were made during the full-scale invasion under conditions of constant shortages of time, personnel, and resources.
However, the need to fill critical capability gaps forced developers to create solutions "with a touch of creativity and by pushing resources to their limits."
"If we are talking about reconnaissance, the best-known companies are Skyeton, Ukrspetssystems, Dovira (DeDeviRO - ed.) with the Leleka systems, and in the mid-strike segment, the well-known FirePoint... Now we can say that these niches are firmly occupied, and that desperation has already evolved into a certain level of systematic development," Hordiienko said.
He emphasized that the core principle of Ukraine's market leaders has become strong customer focus through constant communication with military units and individual servicemen, as well as a willingness to update their systems every six months.
In addition, Ukrainian companies have their own logistics capabilities and repair facilities to support the front line.
"Why doesn't Russia have this? Because it already has established structures and nationalized enterprises. Try competing with them. It is much more difficult, to put it mildly," the serviceman noted.
Hordiienko stressed that this systematic approach is partly changing the global market, as Ukrainian manufacturers are countering peacetime bureaucracy and timelines with real-world results achieved under the most challenging conditions in the world.
"You have thousands of targets detected by the Shark system, you have dozens of targets destroyed by FirePoint, and you simply put all of that into your portfolio and say, 'Let's compare whose system has been tested more.' It's not even about money. Bigger budgets would not solve it, because they have more money. But we see the situation differently," the serviceman concluded.
Earlier, FirePoint announced the timeline for the first interception of a ballistic missile as part of the Freyja project and provided an update on the current stage of its development.
