Estonia Develops Miniature Air Defence Missile for C-UAS

Estonia-based Frankenburg Technologies announced the Mark 1 miniature air defence missiles against saturation attacks with UAVs.
ERR reported that the new missile, capable of reaching an altitude of two kilometres, is intended for use against cheap kamikaze UAVs like the Shaheed/Geran series used against Ukraine.
Frankenburg Technologies aims to introduce AI to missile guidance. Thus, it can be inferred that Mark 1 will be an optically guided missile that can discriminate UAVs through AI incorporated into the seeker.
Ukraine is in talks with the firm to start utilising the missile, with the tests set to begin in 2025.
Frankenburg plans to start producing a few dozen per week, but this might increase to hundreds in the third quarter of 2025.
Mark 1 is not the first time optically guided miniature missiles have been proposed against UAVs. Lockheed Martin and MBDA have proposed similar concepts.
Lockheed Martin's Miniature Hit-to-Kill (MHTK) missile with semi-active and active RF seeker options was developed for C-RAM and short-range air defence. The missile, with a diameter of 40 mm, has an effective range of 3 km and is compatible with the Army's Multi-Mission launcher that can hold 135 missiles (15 nine-round packages).
MBDA's proposal is the optically guided Small Anti-Drone Missile (SADM), which can be used on short-range air defence systems like Skyranger 30 with a greater missile count per vehicle compared to MANPADS missiles (nine-round launcher in place of a four-round FIM-92 Stinger Launcher).
The testing stage will tell if the missile can succeed in its intended role, as no firing test has been conducted against a UAV.
Ukraine's alternative tactics to counter UAVs in the ongoing war include jammers and heavy machine guns with improvised improvements such as searchlights and optics.
The emergence of fibre-optic controlled UAVs resistant to jamming and the short effective range of machine guns can explain the problems with these methods. Thus, a need for a hard-kill option at longer ranges remains.
Conventional air defence missiles are inevitably not sustainable options against the rising UAV threat, and a new kind of air defence missile with lower production cost is necessary for hard-kill at longer ranges.