Tests of Glide Bomb Interceptors to Be Held in Poland in November

NATO, in cooperation with Ukraine, will conduct live trials of drones designed to intercept Russian glide bombs this November in Poland.

Defense Network reported on this.

In March 2025, NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (ACT), together with the Joint Analysis, Training and Education Center (JATEC) and Ukraine, launched a competition to develop drone interceptors to counter Russian glide bombs.

The judging panel included representatives from Ukraine’s innovation sector and experts from the Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Forty companies competed in the October trials, from which three winners were selected: the French firm Alta Ares, the German Tytan Technologies, and the French ATREYD.

The trials focused primarily on using kamikaze drones (loitering munitions) against glide bombs – a next step in the development of interceptor drones following efforts to counter other types of unmanned aircraft.

During experiments at a military proving ground in France, developer teams tested various means of countering enemy glide bombs combined with radar, artificial intelligence software, and an interceptor drone – sometimes under challenging weather conditions.

“Intercepting relatively fast glide bombs was previously considered beyond what interceptor drones could effectively engage. In the view of NATO ACT/JATEC and the (Ukrainian) jury, our interceptors, together with French startup partners and thanks to their specific flight characteristics and integrated AI, also proved suitable for this,” a Tytan Technologies representative shared with Defense Network.

According to Colonel Valerii Vyshnivskyi, Director for Program Implementation at the NATO–Ukraine Joint Center, the technologies developed to counter glide bombs still require further refinement. However, the solutions have already proven highly effective against various types of drones, including the Shahed type.

He also emphasized that all three finalists’ systems have already been tested in Ukraine and added that all three companies can now be considered “European-Ukrainian.”

“By the way, all three companies have already been tested in Ukraine – they went through brigades and specific units on the battlefield. I can’t give you the details, but they are already European-Ukrainian,” Vyshnivskyi emphasized.

A series of live trials is now scheduled to take place in Poland, approximately at the end of November; the specific details of the tests are still being finalized.