On Friday, May 30, 2025, the Polish Armaments Agency announced the selection of the most favorable offer for the delivery of satellite navigation jamming systems under the codename Heliotrop.
Satellite of the Russian GLONASS navigation system / Illustration: ISS Reshetnev
The selection follows the opening of final bids on March 21 of this year (with a contract budget of 18,000,000 PLN gross):
- Czech company URC Systems, based in Prostějov, submitted a net offer of 15,624,388 PLN (19,217,997.24 gross), with a delivery timeline of 24 months and a warranty period of 36 months;
- Polish company GISS, based in Warsaw, submitted an offer worth 63,659,984.87 PLN gross, with the same 24-month delivery timeline and a 60-month warranty period.
The selection criteria were price (90%) and warranty period (10%). According to the information released last Friday, the URC Systems offer received 90 points for price and 0.5 points for warranty, totaling 90.5 points. In comparison, the GISS offer received 27.3 points for price and 10 points for warranty, totaling 37.3 points out of a possible 100.
This means that a contract with URC Systems will be signed in the coming weeks.
The procurement procedure under the Heliotrop program, conducted under a negotiated procedure, was launched on November 25, 2020, by the then Armament Inspectorate of the Ministry of National Defence (now the Armaments Agency). Later, on March 19, 2021, the then spokesperson for the Inspectorate, Major Krzysztof Płatek, informed MILMAG that the following entities had submitted requests to participate in the procedure: the aforementioned Czech company URC Systems, Mex Technologies (Warsaw), Hertz Systems Ltd (Zielona Góra), Israeli company Elta Systems (part of Israel Aerospace Industries, IAI), GISS (Warsaw), Siltec (Pruszków), and Ibcol (Warsaw).
The procedure concerns the purchase of 18 satellite navigation jamming systems under a two-year contract. The scope of the contract includes testing, personnel training, delivery of spare parts kits, development of technical documentation, and licensing of the documentation to the contracting authority.
Heliotrop is to be a portable/mobile system capable of generating jamming signals against satellite navigation systems, either omnidirectionally or sectorally, depending on the target. Technical details of the system were provided to contractors invited to submit initial bids.
Currently operating satellite navigation systems include the global systems: U.S. GPS–NAVSTAR, European Galileo, Russian GLONASS, and Chinese BeiDou-3, as well as the regional Indian NavIC system.
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