Me in the Financial Times on why I think Fire Point might be onto something with its ballistic missile interceptor. Sharing my unabbreviated comments below.

First, let's address why everybody thinks this is unrealistic.

Ballistic missile interceptors are just about the most complex technologies in aerospace. The demands on end-to-end reaction time and agility are mind-boggling.

An Iskander-M has a range of up to 500 km and a launch-to-impact flight time of only only a few minutes.

Even with modern sensors, defenders lose valuable time establishing a reliable track and preparing an engagement solution.

When the Iskander makes its final steep dive toward a target, it travels at hypersonic speeds up to Mach 7. The time it spends within an interceptor's (like the Patriot system) firing radius is often less than 25 seconds.

What's more, over the past years, Russia has frequently upgraded its ballistic missiles with radar decoys and evasive maneuvers, making them even harder to intercept.

Ukraine is severely limited in its access to interceptor systems and missiles, and those missiles are in very, very short supply. Russia's ballistic missile output is now measured in the hundreds annually, while Western interceptor production remains constrained and struggles to keep pace, with new conflicts like Iran increasing demand significantly.

Instead of accepting that this is too hard a problem and calling it a day, Ukraine did what Ukraine does and looked at available resources - drone and missile manufacturers, potential EU partners for detection and tracking systems, blueprints of Russian interceptor missiles used in the S-300 and S-400 air defense systems, and the Western world's greatest experience in utilizing commercial off-the-shelf parts to build sophisticated kit - and got to work.

The plan is more than ambitious, sure. But, as I share in the article, Ukraine might have a gift and a curse on its side: being under attack. Ballistic missile interceptor systems need time to mature, and they don't mature well in labs. Centimeter precision under real-world conditions, electronic warfare, decoy identification all make operational testing a necessity.

I think Firepoint and the Freya project might have an actual chance, and if they do, it might turn out to be a big chance for the EU and NATO as well: Russia makes a new version of the Iskander, which has a 1.000 km range, and puts many EU targets within rage. Food for thought.

I've been writing about the convergence of missiles and drones for quite some time now, and I think that we're going to see the sophistication of commercially sourced and drone-inspired systems rise significantly within the next year.

Thanks to the FT and to Charles Clover for the conversation.