Fire Point Localizes Production of Jet Engines for Cruise Missiles

The Ukrainian company Fire Point has created a stock of jet engines for Flamingo cruise missiles and is building a new plant for their licensed production.

This is stated in an article by Militarnyi that follows the company’s press conference.

Before the start of mass production, Fire Point bought a large stock of old aircraft engines with a residual life of up to 10 hours. They can no longer be used on aircraft, but their operating time is sufficient for the necessary tests after repair and the real flight phase – 3.5 hours.

The purchased engines are being repaired and modified: some of the structural elements are being simplified, and cheaper and easier-to-produce alternatives are being used instead of titanium parts that are resistant to wear. All this is necessary to reduce the cost and speed up the restoration work.

“There are thousands of such engines, and we bought them in advance to have a stock before scaling up. But we need to think about tomorrow: that’s why we are already building a plant under the license of a Ukrainian manufacturer to produce this engine ourselves from the beginning of next year,” says Iryna Terekh, the company’s CTO.

She added that some media sometimes write that Motor Sich produces these engines for them, but this is not true. The developers actually “found” the current months-long stock in a landfill and restored it.

At the same time, they are setting up engine production at their own facilities in close cooperation with the developer at various facilities to diversify risks.

The Economist and other researchers recently suggested that the Flamingo was powered by the Soviet AI-25 jet engine, which was produced in large quantities for L-39 Albatross training aircraft in Ukraine.

During the Soviet era, more than 6,000 engines of this model were produced, and they remain in large quantities in post-Soviet countries, Asia, and Africa.

Thus, the only part of the missile that Fire Point does not deal with directly is the warhead. This element is manufactured and developed by other Ukrainian companies.

According to Terekh, a cluster warhead and “many other types” will soon be developed for the missile. Currently, the missile uses a penetrating warhead that “pierces thick concrete” and goes 10 meters underground.

The company has almost completely automated missile production and divided it into many different locations. As of early September, the production rate was about 2 missiles per day (full cycle). The plan is to reach 200 per month by the end of this year.