The Polish Military Is Now Officially Armed With The Warmate Suicide Drone

The Polish Armed Forces have now officially fielded WB Electronics' Warmate, a loitering munition, also commonly called a "suicide drone," which the company has been actively marketing, including with a glitzy sales video, in recent years. This category of weapons occupies a space between unmanned aircraft and more traditional missiles. Different types have been steadily proving themselves in conflicts around the world, including seeing particularly notable use by Azerbaijani forces during a brief war between that country and Armenia last year.

In a statement to Defence24.pl earlier this week, Colonel Marek Pietrzak, a spokesperson for Poland's Territorial Defense Forces, confirmed that the Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Rajmund Andrzejczak, had approved the use of Warmate operationally on Jan. 13, 2021. Polish firm WB Electronics first received a contract to deliver 1,000 of these loitering munitions to the Polish military in 2017 and the country's armed services received the first batch for testing and evaluation the following year.