At Poland’s 34th International Defence Industry Exhibition (MSPO 2026), Europe has showcased that effective, low-cost air defence solutions are a major priority for its industry and end-users.
This pursuit is unique to Europe as – in contrast to other markets (e.g., Pakistan) relying on interceptor drones and anti-air guns (AAG) – it is focusing on tuning surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) such that they provide a level of scalability and effectiveness to not only stop drones but cruise missiles too.
To this day, the Russia-Ukraine War has proven to be the cradle for understanding how today’s actual and tomorrow’s conflicts will unfold – and in that regard, cruise missiles reign at the top. For the striker, subsonic cruise missiles have emerged as a scalable and potent long-range attack option. And for the defender, these same weapons are not easy to stop at scale without SAMs.
Indeed, subsonic-cruising missiles are no longer confined to the traditional marquee solutions – e.g., SCALP, Tomahawk, etc – but, increasingly, simpler low-cost designs too. The latter range from new airframes leveraging fixed-stabilizers and cheaper materials – e.g., MBDA Crossbow and Russia’s Geran-5 – to reworked tailless delta loitering munitions like MBDA’s Deluge and Russia’s Geran-4.
Recently, Ukraine itself has reported that Russia’s use of jet-powered Geran-4/5s now exceeds its utilization of piston-powered Geran-3s. And, for its part, Ukraine is also moving towards comparable low-cost cruise missiles (LCCMs), like the BARS.
Basically, Europe understands the risk of LCCMs and, as such, has clearly frontloaded low-cost SAM development. This shift will extend well beyond Europe and, in all likelihood, begin emerging in other regions as well, especially in South Asia.
Europe’s Low-Cost Air Defence Missile Solutions
Ukraine’s Shershen Air Defence System
At MSPO 2026, Radionix – a Ukrainian vendor registered under the National Association of Ukrainian Defence Industries (NAUDI) – showcased the “Shershen” (Hornet) air defence platform.
At its core, the Shershen is the radar, target management, and command-and-control (C2) system that would support different third-party SAMs. In other words, the Shershen is an open-architecture system that can deploy legacy Russian and current-day Western European and American missiles, including the R-27, R-73, AIM-9, and AIM-132.
Basically, it seems to be an evolution of the “FrankenSAM” – i.e., an in-service platform that introduced this open-architecture, third-party SAM-ready system. Ukraine has repurposed existing missiles in the same way elsewhere, including by reworking a surface-to-surface missile into a ballistic interceptor.
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