Inside Ukraine’s secret missile programme

THE LONGVICBMATACMS , thin pulsejet engine comes to life with a thunderous racket, prompting everyone in the garage to take a step back. The missile is called the Trembita, after the Ukrainian alpine horn. It isn’t hard to understand why. “We might miss our target,” says Serhiy Biryukov, who heads the missile’s ragtag crew of volunteer engineers, “but we’ll fly the thing so low above Russian trenches they will shit themselves.”Trembita’s engine is a modern $200 remake of the pulsejet first used on the German -1 bomb in 1944. The engine tube is rough-and-ready. A more stylish grey rectangular casing hangs below it, hiding the missile’s guidance system and warhead. The basic Trembita flies at 400 km/h with a range of 200km. A larger and more powerful model is being developed to reach Moscow. Serial production is set to follow the final field tests. Getting this far has taken the enthusiasts just a year and a half—a feat in a field where getting from the drawing board to the battlefield usually takes many years.It is uncertain how long Ukraine can count on . Hence the Trembita, which is one of several missile projects the country hopes will ignite a resurgence in its domestic industry. In the Soviet era, Ukraine was a world leader in space and rocket innovation. Dnipro’s Pivdenmash plant produced four generations of strategic missiles. But that illustrious tradition was brought to a halt in 1994 by the Budapest Memorandum, which saw Ukraine surrender its nuclear-armed s in exchange for what turned out to be useless security assurances. Later attempts to resurrect the industry suffered from corruption, a skint government, Russian infiltration and a lack of political will.Now Ukraine is playing catch-up—in the middle of war. With the exception of a limited number of (official range 300km) and British/French Storm Shadow/Scalps (250km or more), the country has mostly hit targets close to the front lines. That has allowed Russia to operate in relative safety 30km behind the front, while pounding the entirety of Ukraine with missiles produced by its rocket industry, which is second only to those of America and perhaps China. Long-range drones once helped Ukraine redress the balance, but are now shot down nine out of ten times. In late November Volodymyr Zelensky announced a shift in favour of the harder-to-intercept missiles, setting a target of producing 3,000 by the end of 2025.About half a dozen new missile and missile-drone crossovers are already flight-ready. Another dozen smaller projects could join them. The most prominent projects are the Neptune, a long-range cruise missile adapted from the anti-ship weapon that , the , in 2022, and the Hrim-2 (also known as Sapsan), a tactical ballistic missile under development at the Pivdenmash plant. Both missiles are state-backed, relatively expensive, and have been slow off the ground. Industry insiders say they see more promise in the newer start-ups. Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s vice prime minister, is working to reduce barriers to entry. “Everything that is given freedom in Ukraine flies,” he says. He makes a bold prediction: “2025 will be the year of the Ukrainian cruise missile.”Details of Ukraine’s missile programme are tightly guarded, and for good reason. Russia relentlessly hunts production facilities, and has killed and maimed hundreds of workers. In December 2023, several cruise missiles slammed into the facility producing Neptune missiles in Kyiv; ambulances were still lined up outside the building hours later. In November 2024 Russia targeted Pivdenmash in Dnipro with its “new” Oreshnik inter-regional ballistic missile. The dawn strike on the empty factory was symbolic; the missile hit the place where some of its core technologies were developed. But it was not even Russia’s deadliest shot. An attack on the plant in 2023 caused far greater devastation, leaving scores dead and wounded.The task of wartime missile production has taken rocket science to a new level: underground. Some of the assembly has already moved to protected bunkers, while production of components is scattered across hundreds of hidden, unremarkable sites, like the garage shielding the Trembita. “We will carry out the missile programme regardless,” says Volodymyr Horbulin, Ukraine’s former national security adviser and a 62-year veteran of the missile industry, who is advising several projects. He declines to share details of Ukraine’s ambitions—out of respect, he says, for those risking their lives to realise them. But he dismisses “wild, ill-informed fantasies” about nuclear rearmament that have recently animated some Ukrainians.Another daunting issue is finance. The government backs production of any missile that has shown it can fly, offering private manufacturers the same maximum 25% profit margin it gives to drone producers. But developers must often risk significant amounts of their own money to get projects off the ground. An even tougher task is scaling up to industrial production—raising capital, procuring sensitive equipment from abroad and providing security. Here, Ukraine lags behind Russia’s state-led military complex. “Ukraine has no shortage of ideas,” says a defence-industry insider, “but the devil has always been in the implementation.”That source says new partnerships with Western allies are the best way to scale. Not every country is willing to share expertise, equipment and risk. But some, like Denmark and Britain, are stepping up. Mr Fedorov says Ukraine is “open for business”. For the West, the potential is obvious. A cruise missile with nearly identical flight characteristics can be 12 times cheaper to produce in Ukraine than in western Europe. The Trembita missile, for example, starts at just $3,000 in its decoy variant, and $15,000 complete with a 20-30kg warhead—a bargain in the missile world. “We are the hobo missile,” says Mr Biryukov, adding that the low cost could become a crucial factor in Ukrainian operations that aim to exhaust enemy air defences. “Many hobos can cause a lot of mischief.”But Ukraine still needs time, which may be scarce. A senior security official says the country is at least a year away from producing missiles in the numbers, range and capabilities that would seriously threaten Russia. A lot can change before then. If Donald Trump reins in American aid to Ukraine (and if other Western allies follow), it could choke the already limited supplies of Western missiles. Russia might use ceasefire talks to demand limits on Ukrainian missile production. The pressure is on, but the Trembita team is not deterred. “If there is a ceasefire, it’ll be between governments,” says Mr Biryukov. “We’re partisans. Our rockets will keep flying.”