A decade on the front line: Poland's FlyEye drone with Ukraine's 25th Air Assault Brigade

Eleven kilograms, two backpacks and 50 km of range

FlyEye is an electrically powered motor glider developed in 2010. It weighs 11 kg, fits into two backpacks and is launched by hand, with no launcher or runway. It operates up to 50 km from the operator and stays airborne for two to three hours. An interchangeable mission module carries day and thermal cameras, so the drone can observe the battlefield around the clock.

The third generation adds an automatic convoy escort mode and target tracking. In Ukraine FlyEye is used above all for reconnaissance and artillery spotting, feeding imagery into systems that cut the time between detecting a target and engaging it.

On the front since 2015, built in Ukraine since 2025

WB Group has exported its systems to Ukraine since 2014, and the first FlyEye platforms reached Ukrainian users in 2015. Over more than a decade the group has built close relations with the Ukrainian armed forces and receives direct feedback from the battlefield, which returns to its engineers as successive modifications. Ukraine is today one of the system's largest users, with FlyEye arriving through government contracts, international aid and crowdfunding alike.

In early 2025 FlyEye production began at the plant of WB Ukraine, a subsidiary established in the late 2010s that had previously handled servicing, repairs and spare parts. Serial production has been running since August 2025. For security reasons the production was not announced until a visit by Piotr Łukasiewicz, head of Poland's diplomatic mission in Kyiv. The plant's location has not been disclosed.

Poland's largest private defence manufacturer

WB Group is the second-largest player in Poland's defence industry after the state-owned Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa and by far the largest private one. It employs 3,000 people, half of them engineers. Alongside FlyEye it produces the Warmate loitering munition and communications systems, and exports to military customers in Europe and Asia. Its experience in Ukraine, where drones must operate under heavy jamming and electronic warfare, is now one of the group's strongest assets on export markets.

FlyEye is also a proven system in the Polish armed forces, used for years by the land forces. Lessons from Ukraine feed directly into how Polish operators train for contested electromagnetic environments, including on the coast and over the sea, where unmanned reconnaissance is growing in importance.