According to the portal Defence24, Swedish Defense Minister Paul Jonson visited the facilities of the Polish concern WB Group. He stated that his country intends to purchase a batch of the manufacturer’s drones to be transferred to Ukraine as part of the next military aid package. It is not yet known which models are in question. But the Armed Forces of Ukraine are already using Polish Warmate kamikaze drones and FlyEye reconnaissance UAVs on the battlefield. Here’s what we know about them.
WB Electronics first showed its Warmate («combatant») barrage drone at the MSPO-2014 international exhibition. In 2017, the Polish Armed Forces purchased a batch of ten kits. The system officially entered service in January 2021. The manufacturer presents it as an alternative to guided anti-tank missiles, which allows destroying targets at greater distances and simplifies the process of detecting them.
Warmate belongs to the class of barrage munitions — this means that it can automatically reach a point selected on the map and then automatically circle the area of potential enemy location for 30 minutes, waiting for the target to be detected and the right moment to hit it. Guided by the operator to the target, the kamikaze drone dives at it and explodes on impact.
Structurally, the Warmate is an aircraft with a 1.1-meter-long tubular fuselage, 1.6-meter-wide detachable wings, a V-shaped tail fin, and a twin-blade propeller at the rear of the body that drives a silent electric motor. The drone is launched by a pneumatic catapult and then flown by a ground operator.
In addition to the Warmate munition, the system includes a touchscreen control console and a digitally encrypted ground data terminal that allows for real-time video transmission. Two people are enough to carry, assemble the drone and deploy the system in the field within 5 minutes.
The aircraft can operate within 15 km (radio communication range) of the operator, stay in the air for 30 to 50 minutes and travel at a speed of 50-150 km/h at an altitude of up to 300 meters. The maximum takeoff weight of the vehicle is 5.3 kg with a payload of 1.4 kg, which can consist of a high-explosive, anti-tank or thermobaric warhead.
Warmate can also be used for surveillance and reconnaissance. In this case, the combat part is replaced by a remote-controlled camera unit. The reconnaissance version is called Warmate-R and, after completing the mission, returns to the base or lands in any other place where it can be picked up by the operator.
Considering the combat experience of the Warmate, WB Electronics engineers have made many improvements to its design and developed a more powerful version of the Warmate 2, which is designed to be launched from vehicles. This model has an increased weight of up to 30 kg, a range of up to 240 km and a warhead weighing up to 5 kg.
And this is not the limit. Recently, the Warmate family has been expanded with the even larger Warmate 20 with a 20-kilogram warhead and the Warmate 50 with a 50-kilogram warhead. The latter is also said to have an exceptional range of 1000 km, allowing it to hit targets in the strategic depths of enemy defenses.
The FlyEye unmanned aerial vehicle system from WB Electronics was first introduced in 2010 and tested in missions of Polish special forces in Afghanistan. Since March 2015, FlyEye has been used in combat operations in eastern Ukraine, where it has been able to locate militant positions and automatically transmit their coordinates to Ukrainian artillery.
The reconnaissance UAV is hand-launched and has larger dimensions than its kamikaze counterpart — a wingspan of 3.6 meters, a length of almost 2 meters, and a takeoff weight of 12 kg. Like the Warmate, the system can fit into two backpacks and consists of an aircraft, a control terminal, a transmit and receive antenna, and interchangeable observation heads with daytime and infrared cameras.
FlyEye has a maximum speed of 60-120 km/h. It can operate at an altitude of up to 3500 meters, and its radio range is — 180 km. The flight time of FlyEye is more than 2.5 hours. An electric motor and composite airframe make the UAV quiet and invisible to radar. As a result, it is successfully used to target enemy air defense systems.
The drone’s integration with the Polish control system (Topaz) simplifies its interaction with Warmate attack drones and artillery systems (such as the Polish Krab) in service with the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Together with a simple interface and a significant level of automation, this increases efficiency and reduces the risk of human error.
The manufacturer quotes one of the Ukrainian military, whose artillery brigade flew more than 700 hours of FlyEye over the course of several months of the war and detected more than 1,000 enemy targets. According to him, the biggest advantages of the Polish drone are encrypted communication, quiet gliding flight (the machine’s electric motor usually works only 25 percent of the time), and resistance to strong wind gusts.
The Warmate kamikaze drones began contributing to the victory immediately after the Russian invasion. In July 2022, the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine released a video showing Polish-made barrage munitions jewel-like destroying a Russian BM-21 «Grad» multiple rocket launcher.
The second devastating strike was on a tent city in occupied Enerhodar, near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Rashists placed a mobile gas station there, which burned to the ground due to a precise hit by Warmate.
In the fall of 2023, an episode was captured on video when a Ukrainian FlyEye was fired upon by an occupier’s «Arrow-10» anti-aircraft missile system during a reconnaissance mission.
The UAV made a maneuver and managed to avoid the missile, after which the Russian system hid in the forest. However, FlyEye operators searched the area and discovered a new position of the «Arrow-10», where it was soon destroyed by an attack drone.