Ukraine firm Fire Point hopes for extension of Starshield coverage beyond Ukraine’s borders

STOCKHOLM — Ukrainian missile manufacturer Fire Point has called for SpaceX’s military-grade Starshield satellite network coverage to be extended beyond Ukrainian territory, the company’s CEO told Breaking Defense.

The company’s plea is being made against the backdrop of the war-torn country’s upcoming round of talks with Washington regarding the terms of a renewal of its contract to use the network.

“If we had the possibility to expand Starshield licenses, not just on the temporarily occupied territories, but also a little bit further, like 200 to 300 kilometers, [that] could dramatically impact how Ukraine fights [Russia’s] ballistic attacks on civilians,” Fire Point CEO Iryna Terekh told Breaking Defense on her visit to Stockholm on Friday. 

She explained that Kyiv only uses Starshield for its military use, not the civilian Starlink. The Starshield license for the terminals is issued and controlled by Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence and functions much like an end-user certificate that guarantees government oversight. 

Last month, however, Ukrainian officials claimed a sudden change to the Starshield network, which they directly attributed to the failure of drones and defenses that led to military and civilian deaths. Currently, Terekh said, the network is geographically limited only to Ukraine’s territory.

In practice, this means that only the missions conducted on temporarily occupied territories can be carried out, “which is a huge help,” Terekh said, but “this does not solve the main problem of hunting targets in the closest Russian territory, closest to [the] border, because the majority of ballistic [missile] launchers are launched from this [short] range.”

The Starshield contract with the Ukraine is set to expire in mid-2027, a senior Ukrainian government official recently told reporters in Washington, and negotiations started this month to hash out details for a new deal.

“It is really important to understand that the lives of hundreds and thousands of Ukrainians really depend on one political decision that will not take much from the US administration,” Terekh said.

While Fire Point has found a workaround to counter the American limitation on Ukraine’s use of Starshield, according to the CEO, the solution provides only 15-20 percent of Starshield’s capability. Terekh declined to give any further details on the workaround.

“We are trying to squeeze the maximum out of this workaround [at] the moment … but it cannot replace [neither] in price, nor in scalability, the Starshield as a full alternative,” Terekh said. 

Fire Point says it is only permitted to install the terminals as ultimate control remains with the Ukrainian government, and the company is strictly forbidden from sharing the system with anyone else. 

Terekh explained that the advantage of the military-grade Starshield compared to the civilian Starlink is that it can be used against “moving targets,” as the terminals are mobile. 

Starlink consists of civilian terminals designed “only for static use”, while Starshield is essentially the same type of terminal but licensed to operate on drones, vehicles, or “on any moving platform, and there is a certain speed at which it can be moved.” 

According to video material provided to Breaking Defense by Fire Point, the company claims responsibility for a long series of successful deep strikes inside the Russian Federation over the past months.  

These included deep strikes reportedly carried out on Oct. 24 against a rubber plant and a logistics hub in Omsk (thousands of kilometers from Ukraine) as well as a rubber plant in Togliatti; long-range attacks on Oct. 18 against oil depots, a data center and a railway bridge in St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea; and another deep strike on a Sberbank data center in Balakovo on Oct. 14.

As Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine are under repeated heavy Russian ballistic attacks, and there are gaps in the country’s air defense due to delays in the delivery of US-made Patriot air defense systems, Ukraine is putting a lot of effort into fielding Fire Point’s Freya anti-ballistic system, a joint project with Swedish Saab, among others. Terekh said a test is “already this year, but the actual interception of a ballistic target we expect to have next year.”

The CEO compared Freya to the Patriot, emphasizing it “will not have a vendor lock-in situation. It’s very interoperable. It is like Lego in a way, and it will be much cheaper and much more affordable in terms of mass production.”

On the offensive side, the company said its FP-7 tactical ballistic missile with a range up to 250 km has recently undergone combat testing. “We got our first battlefield launch. We collected a lot of very useful data. We did some updates, and we are preparing for the next. And I think this would be the final part of the testing program, and we are ready then to sign a contract and to go into mass production,” Terekh said.

For the longer-range FP-9 ballistic missile, which has a range of up to 850 km, she expects “a first combat test” by the end of this year.