MSPO, Poland’s defence industry exhibition, opened in Kielce on 8 September with close to 1,000 exhibitors, the largest field in its 34 years. The floor sold out nearly two months before the doors opened.
Last year’s edition drew more than 800 companies from 35 countries and around 40,000 visitors. The growth is not a marketing story. Poland spends a larger share of its output on defence than any other NATO member, and Kielce is where that money meets the companies competing for it.
Canada is this year’s lead nation, the first from outside Europe to hold the slot. Eighty-two Canadian companies took a national pavilion covering optoelectronics through cybersecurity, and a lead nation conference ran on 9 September.
The timing explains the invitation. Canada is the only non-European country admitted to the European Union’s SAFE defence programme, which lets its firms compete for projects the programme funds. A national pavilion at Poland’s biggest show is what that admission looks like in practice.
Ukraine came as a supplier
More than 25 Ukrainian companies exhibited, and the list is closer to a catalogue of what four years of war has industrialised than to a delegation.
Fire Point brought the FP-1 strike drone, the FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile and the FP-7 ballistic missile. Athlon Avia showed the Furia reconnaissance system and the ST-35 Silent Thunder loitering munition. Deviro brought the Leleka-100. Kvertus, Defence Solution and Ptashka Drones were among the rest.
That is the reversal worth registering. Ukraine spent 2022 and 2023 at European defence shows asking for equipment. It arrived at this one selling it, with the only product line in Europe carrying continuous combat evidence behind it.
Poland’s own entries
WB Group used the show for the world premiere of GLADIUS II, a stealth jet unmanned system.
FlyFocus unveiled TASACK, a loitering munition it says weighs 15 kilograms, carries a 5-kilogram payload, reaches 110 kilometres, flies at up to 300 km/h and stays airborne for an hour and a half on an 80-kilometre datalink. The stated design goal is that the operator needs no piloting skill: a stabilised electro-optical and infrared gimbal handles identification and tracking, and the attack runs from a point-and-click interface rather than the manual flying an FPV demands. FlyFocus expects production readiness in the first quarter of 2027.
Those are the manufacturer’s figures for an aircraft that does not yet exist in production, and the interesting claim is the interface rather than the performance. Every European army buying loitering munitions now faces the same constraint, which is not the airframe but the number of people it can train to fly one.
South Korea’s Hanwha Aerospace and Hanwha Systems opened a joint stand on 8 September with air defence, unmanned and artillery systems, continuing a push into Polish contracts that began with the 2022 arms package.
The exhibition runs until 11 September.
