Babcock and Frankenburg Technologies have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to jointly develop a new and affordable air defence system to increase the protection of ships against the proliferation of one-way attack drones.

Frankenburg, an innovative defence technology start-up from Estonia which also operates in the United Kingdom, Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark, Germany, Poland and Ukraine, is pushing its FG-1 “mini-missile” as an affordable, mass-producible counter-drone weapon. Frankenburg claims the FG-1 is meant to be “ten times cheaper” and “a hundred times faster to produce” than current capabilities.

The FG Mk 1 is around 65 centimetres long and pushed by a solid-fuel rocket motor built from commercially available components, which went “from concept to live firing in 13 months”. In December, Frankenburg claimed the first, milestone success in a “full kill-chain, hard-kill intercept” test against a “fast-moving” air target at Adazi air base in Latvia.

Babcock’s experience in the maritime sector is meant to facilitate the creation of a “cost-effective, containerised platform” which enables embarkation and successful use of the FG-1 to protect ships from drone attacks.

In Estonia, in October 2025 the government picked Frankenburg to set up shop in the Country’s new Defence Industry Park to begin producing FG-1 at a rate of “100 a day”.

In Polonia in November, Frankenburg signed a MoU with Polska Grupa Zbrokeniowa (PGZ) to integrate the FG-1 on PGZ vehicles and look at the establishment of a local production line for up to 10,000 missiles per year.

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