CaliToday (10/11/2025): A new startup, led by Estonia's former top defense official, is building a tiny, cheap, AI-guided missile to solve NATO's "unsustainable" drone crisis.
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| Kusti Salm, the former chancellor of Estonia’s ministry of defence, with a foam replica of the Mark 1 missile |
TALLINN, ESTONIA – Held in the hands of Kusti Salm, the chief executive of Frankenburg Technologies, the "Mark 1" looks more like a scale model than a weapon of war.
At just 65cm (25 inches) from top to tail, the missile is roughly the size of a baguette and smaller than the average human arm. As he speaks from a glass-walled office overlooking Tallinn's airport, Salm slaps a full-size foam replica into his palm for emphasis.
The rocket may be small, but the project is monumental.
"We are not apologetic about the fact we manufacture weapons," says Salm, the former chief civil servant in Estonia’s defense ministry. "We are not afraid to say we are manufacturing them to take down Russian long-range drones."
"And we are not at all apologetic," he adds, "about the fact that this will be the most-needed capability in the Western world in the next five to 10 years."
The "Unsustainable Exchange"
In labs across Europe and the US, defense firms are scrambling to answer the defining challenge of the war in Ukraine: How do you stop a barrage of cheap drones without bankrupting your own country?
Credit: Frankenburg Technologies
This is no longer a theoretical question for NATO. On September 9, the alliance was forced to scramble F-16s to intercept around 20 Russian drones that crossed the border into Poland.
The exchange was a financial disaster. The F-16s fired missiles worth approximately $\pounds 500,000$ each to destroy Shahed-style drones worth less than a tenth of that—and according to reports, they failed in half their attempts.
It does not take a military strategist to see that this is an unsustainable economic model for war. In response, European leaders have promised a "drone wall" on NATO’s eastern flank. Frankenburg believes its Mark 1 is the answer.
"Good Enough" is the New "Perfect"
For decades, Western defense arsenals have been built like "a designer bag industry," Salm says, filled with "exquisite" systems: rare, eye-wateringly expensive, and capable to the nth degree.
The tiny Mark 1 aims to be the opposite. It is "affordable mass." It is "good enough."
The specifications are modest. It can fly just 2km (1.2 miles) and would struggle in the extreme heat of the desert or the chill of the Arctic. Its current accuracy is around 56%, though the company is rapidly iterating to increase that to 90%.
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| 1011 Frankenburg Mk 1 The minature air defence missile that can counter a drone attacks |
But these limitations are its strength. By driving down capabilities, Frankenburg has driven down the price. While Salm won't give an exact figure, he says the Mark 1 comes in at roughly one-tenth the cost of existing rocket air defense systems, like a Stinger missile (which costs around $\pounds 400,000$).
Factories are already being set up in two NATO nations with the goal of producing hundreds of missiles per day.
Solving the Manpower Problem
The West has another problem that Ukraine doesn't: a lack of trained operators. In Ukraine, teams of skilled pilots fly "interceptor" drones which are cheap ($\approx \pounds 2,500$ each) to hunt Russian drones, a defense that relies heavily on pilot skill.
At just 65cm from top to tail, the missile is roughly the size of a baguette
"While Kyiv has thousands of trained experts, the West has startlingly few," Salm explains. There are certainly not enough to protect the 2,100 critical infrastructure sites along NATO's eastern border around the clock.
The Mark 1 solves this by being guided to its target by AI. Its launchers can, to an extent, be left to their own devices.
"Rocket Science for Dummies" Doesn't Exist
This isn't easy. Cramming a warhead, sensor, and fuel into a missile not much longer than a keyboard is a unique challenge. As the tiny rocket burns fuel, its change in weight dramatically affects its center of gravity and flight path.
"There are no 'Rocket Science for Dummies' books that you can order from Amazon," Salm quips, contrasting his project with the "YouTube videos" that can teach someone to build a drone.
To solve this, Frankenburg hired some of the biggest brains in the field.
The chief engineer is Andreas Bappert, the man who designed the highly sought-after Iris-T air defense system, now protecting skies in Ukraine.
They plucked the chief engineer from MBDA UK who was working on the Spear III missile project.
They have, as Salm says, "Latvian geniuses."
Fabian Hoffmann, a missile technology expert, explains why this talent is so crucial. "There are not that many people who can integrate all these sub-systems into a functioning, workable missile probably a few dozen."
Factories have been set up in two Nato nations with the aim of producing hundreds of ‘Mark 1’ missiles per day
This expertise becomes critical when, inevitably, something goes wrong.
"When everyone has a big question mark on their face... the one guy with 30 years' experience, for example, remembers a trial he did in 2006 that revealed there was a small issue with a bolt that had a crack and it’s the same here."
For Salm, getting this level of talent to join his mission is simple.
"There’s a lot of people who wake up in the morning, read the news and are angered by the injustice going on in the world," he says. "And we’re one of the very few places in Europe where you can put your talent to work in somehow ending this madness."