On Tuesday, February 18, 2025, the Armament Agency announced the cancellation of the tender procedure for the short-range unmanned onboard rotorcraft program—vertical takeoff—codenamed Albatros. The military intended to purchase one set, with an option for an additional one.
Camcopter S-100 / Photo: Schiebel Elektronische Geräte
As stated in the justification, a single offer was submitted in the procedure, as reported on January 17 of this year. The Austrian company Schiebel Elektronische Geräte priced it at 321,033,172.95 PLN net (394,870,802.73 PLN gross), including 199,398,231.05 PLN net (245,259,824.19 PLN gross) for the base order and 121,634,941.90 PLN net (149,610,978.54 PLN gross) for the optional order. The contractor committed to completing the order within 15 months from the contract signing date and provided a 24-month warranty
However, the budget for the order was only PLN 42,000,000 gross. Due to the inability to increase the amount allocated by the contracting authority, the decision was made to cancel the tender.
The procurement of the UAV codenamed Albatros was included in the Operational Program: Image and Satellite Reconnaissance as part of the Technical Modernization Plan of the Polish Armed Forces for 2017–2022. During the analytical and conceptual phase launched in April 2016 and the technical dialogue initiated on July 25 of the same year, the plan was to acquire four UAV sets in 2019–2020.
The procedure for the delivery of one set (with an option for a second) was initiated by the then Armament Inspectorate of the Ministry of National Defense (now the Armament Agency) on December 15, 2020. The UAVs, with a maximum takeoff weight of 200 kg, were intended for day and night surveillance in various environments, including enemy force reconnaissance over the sea and coastline, land surveillance, and searching for castaways at sea using electro-optical sensors, as well as synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology.
According to information obtained by the editorial team of MILMAG Magazine on March 19, 2021, applications for participation in the procedure were submitted by the Swedish-Swiss joint venture UMS Skeldar (comprising UMS AERO Group and Saab Defence and Security), WB Electronics (part of WB Group), Wytwórnia Sprzętu Komunikacyjnego PZL-Świdnik together with the Italian company Leonardo, the Austrian group Schiebel, the Katowice-based company Works 11 in collaboration with the American Martin UAV, and Siltec from Pruszków. Later, on July 10, 2021, MILMAG learned that Schiebel Elektronische Geräte and the Polish company WB Electronics (part of WB Group) had been invited to submit offers.
On December 30, 2021, the then spokesperson of the Armament Inspectorate of the Ministry of National Defense, Major Krzysztof Płatek, announced on social media that only one bidder remained in the program—Schiebel Elektronische Geräte. From that time until the opening of bids at the beginning of this year, no further information on the matter was available.