- Defense Express reported that Ukraine’s “Sapsan” ballistic missile program, previously declared 80% complete in 2021, has not moved into serial production and faces growing risks due to the proximity of key industrial sites to the front line.
- Experts noted that producing solid-fuel ballistic missiles requires advanced industrial, chemical and testing infrastructure that Ukraine currently lacks at scale.
Ukraine’s drive to field indigenous medium- and long-range ballistic missiles has run into hard technical and industrial limits, according to a detailed critique published by Defense Express and interviews with former experts in the field.
What once was presented as a project nearing operational status in 2021 now faces problems that go well beyond design: the core issue is solid-rocket propulsion and the fragile industrial ecosystem that produces it.
Defense Express notes that the Sapsan ballistic missile — marketed abroad in an export configuration as Grim-2 and first publicly shown in pieces and a launch erector in 2018 — was described in 2021 as “ready at 80 percent.” Yet five years on, there is no public sign of mass production and growing concern that advances will evaporate as the front line approaches key facilities that underpin the program. The outlet also reported that official testing in 2024 produced a launch with a near-term range on the order of 300 kilometres, not the 480 kilometres the Sapsan was claimed to reach and far short of the 1,000-kilometre capability some planners say Ukraine needs to strike deep into Russian territory.
At the heart of the problem are solid propellant motors. Modern, reliable solid-fuel engines are a high-technology product that requires not only precise chemical recipes but also advanced test, measurement and manufacturing capabilities. Ukraine has no ready external suppliers for such motors and cannot simply buy the engines from abroad. Former Soviet-era expertise is available in people and in legacy facilities, but converting that capacity into a modern, resilient production line is complex and time-consuming.
Defense Express drew on commentary from Zinoviy Pak, a chemist and former general designer at the research-production association Soyuz, which during the Soviet period developed solid motors for multiple ballistic systems. Pak stressed the technical and organizational demands of producing solid motor grain and assembling complete motors. He and others interviewed pointed to the Pavlograd Chemical Plant as the linchpin of Ukraine’s solid propellant capability; yet Pavlograd sits some 80 kilometres from the current front line and is vulnerable to disruption. The plant’s legacy production model uses large rotating mixing drums — a Soviet-era process the industry calls the “rotating barrel” concept — and sprawling open production zones that are hard to relocate and that expose the enterprise to wartime risk.
Attempts to repurpose ingredients salvaged from retired Soviet missiles have not proved a simple fix. Hydrodemilitarization yields some reusable chemical components — notably octogen in certain cases — but other dissolved or processed materials are suitable only for industrial explosives, not for precision rocket propellant. Trial work, including exchanges with foreign specialists, has revealed how sensitive propellant performance is to the exact fuel formulation, burn rate versus pressure characteristics, and the mechanical stresses a grain must withstand during firing. Incomplete mastery of those parameters risks catastrophic motor failures, including internal burn-through and explosion.
The article argues that Ukraine needs a systemic investment in laboratory, measurement and computing capacity to train designers and technologists and to move beyond “firefighting” fixes. It also highlights modern, compact approaches to secure production: hardened, modular production cells — described in the report as small spheres that can survive significant internal blasts — could allow dispersed, resilient manufacture of propellant and munitions without replicating massive Soviet-style yards that require hundreds of hectares.
Finally, Valeriy Romanenko, an aviation expert, said that Russian strikes have in many cases damaged or destroyed Ukrainian enterprises that could have developed and produced ballistic missiles.
“The Russians know every enterprise in Ukraine that could be involved in missile production… As for ballistics, the Russians have practically knocked out everything that could produce ballistic missiles here. Clearly, ballistics is Dnipro and Pavlohrad — rockets and engines. Everything that can reach those areas is sent there; Molniyas [kamikaze drones] and KABs [guided bombs] also strike those regions,” the aviation expert said.
He said that when Ukraine was approaching the stage of serious tests and the start of production, Russian combined strikes hit a number of key facilities to disrupt those plans.