The recurrent drone threat has plagued discussions during Estonia’s inaugural Defence Week, but it was more sobering when the chief executive of one the country’s fastest-growing defence start-ups admonished the West, arguing that air defence manufacturing has done “virtually nothing” to solve the quandary.
In a press briefing in Tallinn on 22 September, Kusti Salm of Frankenburg Technologies maintained that short-range air defence (SHORAD) will be the “biggest need in the world” over the next five to ten years, and that an effective solution is a cost-effective one.
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“It’s about redefining the economies of air defence… and this is, frankly speaking, the only reason why the Russians are putting all their efforts into drone manufacturing.”
Russia is said to have produced more than 6,000 one-way attack (OWA) uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) in 2024, and judging from the level of units launched throughout 2025 – between 500 and 700 in one day in some cases – the numbers seem to have grown this year.
While a conventional Stinger missile costs close to half a million dollars, Frankenburg will soon offer its own capability at a tenth of this price. Known humbly as ‘Mark I’, the interceptor will be the world’s smallest guided missile.
Mark I
Mark I will be produced at scale, up to 100 per day, despite Salm’s more ambitious target for more than a thousand in such a short amount of time. The missile uses solid rocket propellant and autonomous guidance. The capability is designed to intercept low, slow, massed UAVs, detonating the warhead one to two metres away from the target, and operating within a two kilometre (km) range.
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By GlobalDataWhile the range may strike one at first as a limited distance, Salm observed that if you look at all these threats in Ukraine, “they have never been more than 150km away from the frontline.”
Another key part of the Mark I missile in the SHORAD market is that it is designed for scalable production – with delivery beginning in 2026 – providing Europe with a saturated response to the mass effect of drones.
The whole system can be mounted on a mobile platform or mounted on a static installation. This method of deployment will prove crucial for critical national infrastucture (CNI) across the continent, not just in Ukraine, where there are more than 2,000 CNI sites along Nato’s eastern flank; approximately 550 missiles are needed to protect each of these sites from just one large-scale attack, the company determined.
It is said that 53 live fire tests have taken place, Salm confirmed, but only half of these achieved accuracy.
Production plans
Frankenburg has derived expertise from across Europe’s thriving missile defence market, which GlobalData intelligence considers the geographic region with the second largest share (31.2%) after North America, to drive the low-cost interceptor revolution.
Their director of engineering, Andreas Bappert had worked on the IRIS-T SLM system in Ukraine. Just two weeks ago, another notable person from MBDA UK joined the Estonian team, who had been the chief engineer for of the SPEAR 3 missile capability, which due to circumstances outside the UK’s control, emanating from upgrades with the F-35, are facing delays.
While headquartered in Estonia, Frankenburg will also be established in Latvia, Lithuania, with representation in Ukraine, and plans to “roll out” in Denmark, Poland, and soon Germany.
The UK is another key strategic market for the company, with its ‘always-on’ production policy laid out in the Strategic Defence Review, with Frankenburg having opened offices in London back in December 2024, to much acclaim from the UK prime minister Keir Starmer.
Responding to a question from Army Technology regarding their existing manufacturing sites, Salm confirmed that production of Mark I missiles currently take place in two of these countries.
Missile dilemma
“Missiles bring range, they bring precision and they, they bring speed,” Salm emphasised. It is for that reason that he expects missiles to dominate the air defence market, even the counter-uncrewed aerial systems (C-UAS) sector, where at the moment it is more popular and affordable in Ukraine to launch interceptor drones to down OWA UAVs such as the dreaded Shaheds.
Just two weeks ago, during DSEI 2025, the UK announced it would scale the production of thousands of interceptor drones every month for Ukraine under Project Octopus.
“The only problem with missiles is [that they are a] very difficult market to access… when it comes to building missiles, then there is a very exclusive small group of people who can deal with in the whole world, and they are mainly assembled around the big companies.”
But it is not an either/or scenario, Salm accepts that the air defence problem is going to be solved by a combination of of missile-based, drone-based, and electronic warfare solutions.
This layered approach is already forming the basis of the Baltic States’ so-called ‘Drone Wall’, launched by the Estonian Defence Cluster, which say they are ready to deploy the concept when approval comes from the three governments.
“There’s no doubt that the price tag is just too high and [that missiles are] not producible in the scale that we actually need to change the behaviour of the [opponent] in the battlefield. That’s why I’m here,” Salms said. “That’s why we are developing these systems, and it will not be the last,” he insisted.
