Photo. Lockheed Martin
Two potential bids have been submitted in the Polish Ważka mini-VTOL UAV procurement programme. WZL Nr 2 S.A. company based in Bydgoszcz, and Lockheed Martin’s PZL Mielec facility are the bidders. The procurement procedure refers to the first 10 UAV “sets” that are expected to be used, primarily, in the mountainous and urbanized areas.
The procurement is being carried out as one that has a basic meaning for the national security interest – meaning that it is not subjected to the standard Public Procurement Law procedures. Nonetheless, a competitive process has been adopted for this acquisition. The offer submission deadline expired on 15th February. If the bidders meet the formal requirements, they would be allowed to submit bids that would then be negotiated, and finalized with a final offer. The procurement process pertains to 10 “sets”, translating into several UAV systems, however, given the requirements and looking at similar procurements abroad, this is just the beginning. Two entities have placed their offers, according to the information that we have received.
I hereby inform that two bidders submitted their requests to participate in the public procurement procedure pertaining to the acquisition of WAŻKA VTOL mini-class UAVs: Wojskowe Zakłady Lotnicze Nr 2 S.A. based in Bydgoszcz, and Polskie Zakłady Lotnicze Sp. z o.o. based in Mielec.
@ Lt. Col. Krzysztof Płatek, Spokesman for the Armament Agency
The detailed tactical and technical requirements would be provided directly to the bidders qualified to place their preliminary offers. According to the specification, the UAVs procured within the WAŻKA programme need to conform with the requirements as follows:
- Ability to take off and land without any extra infrastructure, or instruments;
- Electric propulsion;
- Ability to hover;
- Operational ceiling of no less than 3,000 meters ASL;
- The system needs to carry day/night IMINT sensors;
According to the current knowledge, none of the bidders has been delivering such systems so far. In the case of WZL Nr 2, we could expect one of the designs that has been developed by the Polish R&D facilities – such as the Air Force Institute of Technology (ITWL), that over the years has been working on the Atrax multi-copter system. In the case of the PZL-Mielec facility, the Indago-3 quadcopter manufactured by Lockheed Martin is the most probable choice The said backpack-sized UAV can be prepared for operations in 2 minutes. One should hope that the fact that the basic national security interest procedure is used would make it possible to quickly and efficiently proceed with the procurement.
