FlyFocus at MSPO: a 2017 Polish UAV firm with a full strike-and-ISR line

Kielce became the place where the Polish unmanned aircraft industry proved that it is more than just a collection of prototypes. At the FlyFocus booth, we were greeted by Albert Świerczyński, co-founder of the company, which has been in business for nine years and has become a manufacturer with a comprehensive product portfolio. The firm manufactures in Poland and builds on NATO-compliant components.

FlyFocus 

was founded in 2017 in Warsaw by engineers with backgrounds in aerospace and competitive aeromodelling, among them Igor Skawiński and Albert Świerczyński. The company designs and builds unmanned systems in Poland and sources components from NATO-aligned suppliers. That supply-chain choice is not a slogan added after the war in Ukraine. It is the industrial argument the company repeats at every exhibition: Europe cannot treat Chinese batteries, flight controllers and gimbals as an acceptable default if it wants drones that can be fielded, repaired and certified under allied procurement rules.

“We are a Polish manufacturer and designer of unmanned aerial vehicles,” Świerczyński said. “It is a company founded in 2017, with manufacturing sites in Poland. We partner with companies all over the European Union and outside of it, but still NATO-friendly countries only.”

The timing of MSPO 2026 matters. Earlier this year FlyFocus raised €4.5 million in its first institutional round, led by ffVC with participation from the NCBR Investment Fund. The money is meant for a dedicated factory in Poland, more export capacity, and new platforms. On the stand, the company is no longer selling a single flagship. It is selling a family.

A portfolio that now runs from FPV to deep strike

Świerczyński summarised that family in one sentence that would have sounded ambitious even two years ago. “In 2026 we can say that we have a full portfolio of UAVs from 3 kg FPVs through surveillance aircraft up to 150 kg one-way kamikaze UAVs.” The production line is only part of the story. Research projects with partners have already produced systems that, in his words, are “already a ready product.”

Fixed-wing aircraft remain the company’s centre of gravity. That is visible in Polaris, a lightweight ISR platform, and above all in Striker, the long-range loitering munition that first appeared publicly at MSPO 2024 and won the Defender prize. Rotary-wing and tethered work has grown around that core. FlyFocus developed CableGuard, a tethered system that can lift sensors for persistent observation.

“Fixed wings is our specialty,” Świerczyński said, “but we have established a team of UAV pilots and software engineers which are ready for any customizable use case, starting from tethered UAVs called CableGuard, which can lift any sensor that is needed, signal intelligence module sensors, radars.” The same engineering group, he added, has looked at civilian work such as high-pressure water cleaning of tall buildings — a reminder that dual-use skills still sit inside a defence-heavy firm. 

The product that defined the company’s public reputation is Striker. It is a flying-wing strike drone with a maximum take-off mass in the region of 140 kilograms. The piston-engine version is advertised with a range of up to 1,000 kilometres; a jet-turbine variant trades range for speed. Warhead options reported around the programme have been in the 40 to 60 kilogram class, depending on configuration. The aircraft has been evaluated in Ukraine and had drawn positive comments from Ukrainian operators.

“This is the Striker long-range kamikaze UAV, a range of up to 1,000 km on the internal combustion engine and a range of up to 400 km on a jet turbine version. This system was tested in electronic warfare in Ukraine.” The Defender prize from MSPO 2024 did not remain a show-floor trophy. In an industry where awards often outrun contracts, Striker has been treated less as a prototype on a pedestal and more as a product that had to find a factory floor. A few months after the prize, the company locked in a sales strategy and moved the aircraft toward industrial partners.

The commercial follow-through, he said, is now written down. “Right now we officially signed a memorandum of understanding with the Polish armament group, Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa S.A., and it’s one of the companies from the group, Wojskowe Zakłady Lotnicze Nr 2, WZL-2 in Bydgoszcz, for the production and sales of the Striker UAV.” An MoU is not a multi-year production contract. It is, however, the kind of industrial handshake Polish private UAV firms have spent years trying to obtain.

TASACK, exports, and wider Central European partnerships

The newest aircraft on the 2026 stand is TASACK, an electric loitering munition intended to sit between cheap FPV attack drones and the much larger Striker. Public specifications put the system at about 15 kilograms all-up, with a 5 kilogram payload, a range in the region of 110 kilometres, a datalink of around 80 kilometres, endurance of up to 90 minutes, and a top speed approaching 300 km/h.

“This year on the MSPO we are showcasing the newest product from our production UAV portfolio. It’s called TASACK and it’s a medium range, medium payload loitering munition in an X-wing configuration. It takes off from a small pneumatic launcher and it has a payload of 5 kg and a gimbal camera acting as a video seeker.” The selling point is not only range. FlyFocus presents TASACK as a point-and-click munition with a gimbal seeker, built so that an operator does not have to fly an FPV into a target by hand.

The company’s sales geography is less Polish than many visitors assume. “Since the beginning of the company we were exporting more than we were selling to the Polish market,” Świerczyński said. “Our goal is to increase the Polish sales as much as we can, but for smaller companies it is always easier to start to sell to European countries than to the Polish military, because the Polish military is a very demanding client because of the security reasons and defence goals that we here in Eastern Europe have.” Ukraine is the most visible user environment. Other NATO and European customers exist, even if names are scarce on a show-floor microphone. 

Among those conversations are collaborations with companies in the Czech Republic — talks that range across integration, industrial partnership and access to sales networks, rather than a single finished contract announced on the stand. The company is no longer arguing that Poland can design a drone. It is arguing that it can manufacture a range of them, keep the critical electronics inside allied supply chains, and turn a prize-winning prototype into a product that factories such as WZL-2 might actually build. MSPO is where that argument is staged.

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