Ukrainian military officials recently revealed the deployment of a secretive, indigenous missile system during a massive multi-domain attack directed at Moscow and surrounding regions, whilst withholding precise technical details regarding the new hardware.

On September 20, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that domestic long-range strike capabilities were launched overnight against critical Russian strategic infrastructure. These coordinated operations targeted key oil refineries and logistics facilities in the Moscow region, along with a major industrial enterprise in the Voronezh region.

The strikes coincided with the final phase of Russian parliamentary elections. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin condemned the offensive as an unprecedented attempt to disrupt the electoral process, claiming that Russian defence forces successfully repelled the operation.

Sobyanin stated that air defence units had intercepted more than 1,600 unmanned aerial vehicles across various defence boundaries since September 19, with 450 destroyed while advancing directly toward the capital, marking the largest drone assault on Moscow recorded to date.

In an official public address, President Zelensky listed the array of weapons used by Ukrainian armed forces and intelligence agencies during the operation. The inventory included the FP-1, RZ-100, MICH-2000, Palianytsia, Vendetta, Liutyi, Bars, Flamingo, Sichnevyi, and a previously unannounced ballistic missile called the Pelican. The explicit mention of the Pelican immediately sparked intense debate among military analysts regarding its actual capabilities and origin.

In unrelated European geopolitical developments around the same period, the European Union reached an agreement on September 22 to lift sanctions on Russian billionaires Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman, while extending economic restrictions against nearly 3,000 individuals and entities associated with Moscow for an additional three years.

Defence experts have frequently associated the Pelican with the FP-7 tactical ballistic missile developed by Ukrainian defence start-up Fire Point, although official confirmation linking the two designations remains absent. In September 2025, Fire Point unveiled its program to engineer the FP-7 tactical missile and its larger sibling, the FP-9, positioning them as sovereign, locally produced replacements for foreign hardware such as the US-supplied ATACMS. During initial rollouts, these strike systems were identified solely by their alphanumeric codes. Fire Point had previously assigned the moniker Flamingo to its FP-5 cruise missile, but the name Pelican was never publicly disclosed until Zelensky's announcement.

Technical evaluations suggest that the FP-7 is unlikely to have struck the Russian capital directly. Radio NV military analyst Vasyl Pekhno pointed out that the FP-7 possesses a design range of 200 to 350 km, whereas Moscow lies roughly 450 to 500 km from the Ukrainian border. Pekhno highlighted the physical improbability of the missile reaching Moscow given its maximum flight envelope.

Pekhno hypothesized that tactical ballistic missiles could instead be utilized in a layered, multi-vector strike strategy. In such a scenario, shorter-range ballistic weapons would be launched to neutralize frontline Russian air defence batteries, opening corridors in the radar umbrella through which slower, long-range drones and Flamingo cruise missiles could pass to strike deeper metropolitan targets in Moscow. This operational theory remains unverified by official Ukrainian defence sources.

The FP-7 tactical missile carries a warhead weighing 150 kg, achieves top speeds of 1,500 m/s, and features a terminal circular error probable of approximately 14 metres. Concurrently, Fire Point is advancing its larger FP-9 ballistic missile, designed to deliver an 800 kg warhead over distances up to 850 km.

Due to distance limitations, the Pelican missile deployed near Moscow is unlikely to be an un-modified FP-7, leaving analysts to ponder whether it represents a variant of the longer-range FP-9, which is still undergoing testing.

The rapid advancement of these indigenous missile initiatives highlights the expanding role of private aerospace start-up companies working alongside state defence entities in Bangalore and internationally to enhance deep-strike capabilities.

Funding for such advanced weaponry continues to scale rapidly, with domestic military start-up investments reaching hundreds of crores of Rupees, equivalent to tens of Lakhs of Rupees per unit for basic airframes, up to several ₹ Crores for complete long-range ballistic platforms. Ukrainian manufacturing facilities are ramping up throughput to deliver multiple tons of conventional explosives via these indigenous systems.

Agencies