Georgia starts producing combat drones

Georgian Defence Minister Juansher Burchuladze has said that Georgia will produce from 1,000 to 1,500 reconnaissance and combat drones annually from the summer of 2023.

“The first reconnaissance and combat UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] had already been produced and tested in the presence of Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili,” Burchuladze told the pro-governmental Rustavi-2 TV channel, according to Kommersant.

UAV production was launched at a joint Georgian-Polish enterprise near Tbilisi, the construction of which was completed in December 2022. The owner of the plant is the Delta-WB company, founded by the Georgian Delta company and the Polish WB Electronics S.A. in 2022.

“The joint venture is a very successful project. We started working with the Polish side in 2020,” Burchuladze noted.

He said that moreover, a training centre is being created to train military personnel to operate reconnaissance and combat UAVs within the project. Polish specialists will also be invited as specialists.

Several thousand Warmate kamikaze combat drones and Flyeye reconnaissance UAVs are planned to be produced.

Warmate will be able to barrage in the air in any weather and hit targets with high accuracy, according to the Georgian Defence Ministry.

Moreover, Warmate can be equipped with a warhead of various types, including fragmentation and high-explosive. This drone is launched into the air from a special launcher.

Flyeye is a UAV for covert surveillance in all meteorological conditions and in all climatic zones. It rapidly processes and transmits intelligence data both day and night.

Preparing Flyeye for launch takes 7–8 minutes. As opposed to the Warmate, it is manually launched into the air.