Better Than Tomahawks: Ukraine’s New, FP-5 Flamingo Missiles

Forged under fire by engineers who refused to wait for permission, Ukraine’s FP-5 Flamingo shows how a nation can build its own long-reach answer to Russian aggression—and hit harder than anyone expected.

“When you have a gun being pointed toward your head, you don’t think about standards, you think that ‘this should be working.’ We didn’t care that we met NATO standards. We only cared that our weapons would be effective on the front line…We could, as a result, make a very effective weapon.”

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— Iryna Terekh, Chief Technology Officer for Fire Point.

On October 13, 2025, U.S. President Donald J. Trump boldly suggested the possibility of sending BGM-109C Tomahawk Land-Attack Missiles (TLAM-Cs) to Ukraine, and the Pentagon subsequently approved the offer. The Tomahawk is an American-made, GPS-guided, 2,900-pound cruise missile with a 992-pound warhead, a range of 1,000 miles, and a very low flight altitude of about 100 to 160 feet, traveling at a speed of 570 miles per hour, or Mach .74. It’s a truly formidable weapon system.

However, in order to avoid the Russian perception of escalation of the war, any future discussions about Tomahawk missiles for Ukraine have been downplayed. As it turns out, Ukraine already has a much better, long-range, cruise missile system, the Fire Point FP-5 Flamingo, weighing in at a hefty 13,000 pounds (3.5 times larger than a Tomahawk), with a 2,540-pound, high-explosive warhead (2.5 times larger than a Tomahawk’s), and a range of 1,865 miles (almost twice as far as a Tomahawk.)

The Flamingo was first revealed to the public on August 17, 2025, and three days later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it “the most successful missile we have,” declaring that it was in full production. On August 30, 2025, the Flamingo saw its first combat action, striking a Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) facility in occupied Crimea with at least three new missiles.

Fire Point is a defense production organization, founded in 2022, and currently producing three FP-5 Flamingos per day, without any Western funding, licenses, or restrictions, relying solely on the initiative of Ukrainian engineers. They plan to increase production to seven missiles per day by the end of 2025.

Their Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and spokesperson is Iryna Terekh, age 33, an experienced entrepreneur with a significant background in design, architecture, and the production of concrete structures. She’s also a mother to two children, juggling multiple corporate positions full-time.

The “Flamingo” name allegedly came from early versions of the missile being painted pink, a supposed factory error that the company denies. Another source stated that the initial pink coloration was a temporary tribute to Ukrainian women, like Terekh, who have recently stepped into leadership positions in the Ukrainian industry, as a result of most of the men being away at war.

For another example, in August 2023, I wrote about Blade Brothers Knives, of Kharkiv, Ukraine, an excellent company in which their female office manager oversaw daily operations, while the owner, Oleksander Vorobey, was frequently away at the front lines, defending the Kharkiv region from Russian invaders.

Oleksander Vorobey, of Blade Brothers Knives. Photo credit: Blade Brothers Knives website.

Interestingly, the FP-5 missile is powered by a surplus Ivchenko AI-25TL turbofan engine, previously used in the Czech-designed Aero L-39 Albatros jet trainer aircraft, with thousands of such engines recently extracted from landfills in Ukraine. Many of these turbofans had only about 10 service hours left before overhaul was required, but since the one-way, flight time of a Flamingo missile is no more than about 3.5 hours, none of that really matters, and it keeps the production costs down to an estimated $500,000 to $1 million per copy, considerably cheaper than the much smaller and shorter-range, Tomahawk missile.

Fire Point Flamingo — Fire Point FP-5 Flamingo missile. Photo credit: RBC Ukraine.

Although the Flamingo’s guidance system is not as complex, sophisticated, or as costly as a Tomahawk’s, the FP-5 still impacts within 46 feet of its assigned target, and its massive, 1.27-ton, explosive warhead ensures catastrophic damage to the target. Its carbon-fiber/fiberglass body can be manufactured in just six hours, with the engine mounted on top, and Fire Point has begun producing its own brand-new engines, as well. This design gives it a general resemblance to the German V-1 “Buzz Bomb” from World War II, although the Flamingo is far more advanced.

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The FP-5 flies just as fast and just as low as a Tomahawk missile, and it has already been employed at least nine times in real combat operations. It is considered to be Ukraine’s very best and most advanced long-range missile. The Independent, a British publication, recently wrote that, “Kyiv can fire the Flamingo at any target it wants. It is not restricted by what Ukraine’s ‘allies’ say it can and cannot do when fighting Russia’s invading forces.” Flamingo missile launch. Photo by Fire Point. The new Flamingo missile is a real game-changer, enabling Ukraine to finally strike Russian military targets, air bases, oil refineries, ammunition depots, and critical infrastructure without relying upon other Western missiles or being constrained by rules of engagement imposed by allied nations. One military expert accurately described the FP-5 Flamingo as “the first truly strategic weapon of Ukrainian origin.” Iryna Terekh summed it up quite bluntly on November 9, 2025, stating that, “They say flamingos are pink because they eat shrimp. Our Flamingo will be black because we ‘eat’ Russian oil refineries…We are preparing for a bigger, much scarier war.”