The FREYJA project has been launched: Zelenskyy stated that Ukraine will do everything to strengthen anti-ballistic defense.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during his speech on the occasion of Ukrainian Statehood Day, stated that the FREYJA project has been launched and Ukraine and Europe will create a joint anti-ballistic shield for the first time, reports UNN. 

"We are creating exactly the state that has enough strength and self-respect to equally and simultaneously preserve its heritage and implement ambitious plans. Ukraine, which values the past and has believed in its own future. A state that is not afraid of the word 'for the first time' and is doing for the first time what could recently only be a dream.

Ukraine and Europe are creating an anti-ballistic shield together for the first time. A historic project where Ukraine is not an observer, but one of the leaders that united the country and the strongest defense enterprises of Europe. The FREYJA project has been launched," the President stated. 

He emphasized that Ukraine will do everything to strengthen European anti-ballistic capabilities and protect the sky. 

"We will do everything to build an anti-ballistic system for Europe, uniting all European anti-ballistic capabilities, so that the sky of our peoples is protected, so that dictators do not dictate how free people in Europe should live, so that the lives of people in Ukraine and every state do not depend on whether Putin and his ilk have ballistic missiles or not," the head of state stated. 

Reminder 

On July 13 in Paris, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the leaders of 9 other European countries signed a declaration on the creation of the Anti-Ballistic Coalition. The coalition was joined by the leaders of Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Great Britain. 

The Ukrainian defense company Fire Point, which developed the FP-7.x interceptor missile, will be involved in the development of FREYJA from Ukraine. European partners will be represented by: Thales, HENSOLDT, Diehl Defence, Saab, Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace, Weibel, Leonardo, MBDA, Eurosam, Safran, and Destinus.

The pan-European anti-ballistic shield FREYJA was immediately conceived as one that would unite European partners. As President Zelenskyy noted, Ukraine is capable of creating such a system independently, but it would take years, because in addition to the missile, FREYJA requires the integration of a whole range of components that European partners can provide. In turn, Ukraine will provide its ballistic interceptor missile, which is cheaper than Western counterparts. 

The Ukrainian FP-7.x missile, as previously reported by the co-founder and chief designer of Fire Point, has already passed tests and now needs to be integrated with other components of the system.   

As explained by the co-founder and chief designer of Fire Point, Denys  Shtilerman, the key difference of the FREYJA project is its independence from external control. According to him, modern Western air defense systems often operate in a closed architecture format, when the supplier country or manufacturer, in fact, retains control over critical elements of the system. It is expected that the project's architecture will be implemented in such a way that new partner countries can easily join it.