Poland delivered 40 more drones "Comrade in Combat" to Ukraine

Alexander Sychev

Warmate drones appeared in the Polish army a few years ago. Now the command plans to receive a thousand of these drones, developed by the Polish company WB Electronics and the Military Institute of Weapons Technology in 2014.

The length of the aircraft is a little over a meter, and the wingspan is 1.6 meters. The maximum takeoff weight reaches five kilograms, of which the warhead is about one and a half kilograms.

It takes no more than ten minutes to deploy the system. The drone is launched using a pneumatic installation and driven by an electric motor. It can stay in the air for about half an hour and flies ten kilometers. The range of the modification with the letter R is 15 kilometers.

In a given area, the drone follows a pre-programmed route. But the operator constantly monitors it and receives a video image from the built-in camera, which can deviate 90 degrees from the direction of movement. Thermal imaging cameras and laser target illumination can also be installed on the drone.

After detecting the enemy, the drone approaches at a low speed, which allows you to more accurately aim at the target, and after capturing it goes into a steep dive and develops a speed of up to 150 kilometers per hour. After capturing the target, the automated video tracker allows you to accurately hit the object, even if communication with the operator is lost.

The gunner controls the attack through the drone's onboard optics and can cancel the mission, and even return the drone to base. True, this function is intended for drones that went on reconnaissance. Loitering ammunition is not subject to return.

Warmate can be armed with cumulative ammunition that burns through armor up to 120 millimeters thick, thermobaric and high-explosive fragmentation, designed to destroy enemy manpower. The spread of fragments reaches ten meters.

In June 2016, the Chernihiv enterprise CheZaRa (Ukraine) purchased a copy of the Warmate UAV in Poland, as well as a license for mass production. Whether the plant, which once played one of the leading roles in the space industry of the USSR, managed to assemble Polish attack drones and in what quantity is not reported.