Weibel Wins €84m Radar Order for Poland's SAN

Weibel Scientific, a Danish radar maker, has won an €84m contract to supply its XENTA-M5 radar to SAN, Poland’s national counter-drone programme, the company said this week. The order comes from PIT-RADWAR, a Polish defence electronics company, and is the largest in Weibel’s history, according to Weibel’s release.

Weibel’s role is the sensor layer: its radars feed an air picture to the command-and-control systems that other suppliers provide. In the version distributed on Business Wire, Weibel puts the contract at about DKK 625m and names the Polish Armed Forces as end user. It did not say how many radars are involved or when they will be delivered.

What Weibel is supplying

According to the release, the XENTA-M5 detects, tracks and classifies “a broad range of airborne threats, from small, low-flying drones to aircraft and other aerial targets”. Its continuously updated picture gives operators “more time and information to assess threats and determine an appropriate response”. Weibel says it has delivered more than 6,000 radar systems to customers in over 45 countries.

“Turning Counter-UAS ambition into operational capability starts with the ability to see and understand the threat,” said Peter Røpke, Weibel’s chief executive. He said the selection “puts Weibel radar technology at a critical point in the operational chain”.

Røpke also framed the deal as a test of the company’s capacity. “European defense is moving fast, and industry has to move with it,” he said. “This contract raises the bar for what we must deliver as a company.” The release says the order places “new demands on industrial capacity, production and delivery”. The company announced it on LinkedIn on 27 October, calling SAN “Europe’s largest anti-drone system”.

What SAN is

SAN’s main contracts were signed in January. According to the Polish prime minister’s office, a consortium led by state-owned Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa (PGZ) with Norway’s Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace will deliver 18 counter-drone batteries, made up of 52 firing platoons, 18 command platoons and 703 vehicles. The order is worth about PLN 15bn net, mostly funded through SAFE, the EU’s defence loan programme. The government says the first elements will reach the armed forces in 2026.

PIT-RADWAR is listed among the Polish suppliers. The government also said foreign participation would be limited to components Polish industry cannot provide in the required quantity and time. Weibel’s radar appears to be one of those components.

Why a Danish sensor won a Polish-first programme

The structure of SAN explains the deal. Warsaw built it around domestic industry, with PGZ in charge and Polish companies supplying vehicles, ammunition and electronics. Foreign firms get in only where Polish capacity falls short. That a Danish company’s radar made the cut says something about how specialised short-range drone detection has become. Spotting a small, slow, low-flying object against ground clutter is a different problem from tracking aircraft, and it is a specialist field.

For Weibel, whose radars are used for instrumentation and space tracking as well as drone detection, an order of this size is a step change. Its own statement admits as much by stressing production and delivery. The open question is whether it can scale output fast enough. Poland wants first elements this year, and other European buyers are shopping for similar layers at the same time, from Germany’s TYTAN counter-drone order to proposals to give European utilities their own counter-drone powers.

Money is following the same sensors-to-interceptors chain at the start-up end. North Vector Dynamics recently raised over US$20m for its CM-70 interceptor, and NATO’s procurement agency has picked Sky-Watch’s RQ-35 under a framework deal. Every interceptor in those systems needs a sensor to cue it, which is why radar makers are winning some of the largest single orders.

Missing details remain. Neither Weibel nor PIT-RADWAR has given a radar count, a delivery schedule or the contract length. The next disclosure to watch is a delivery milestone from PGZ or the Polish Armament Agency showing XENTA-M5 units in service.