BLAZE

The one that got the orders — BLAZE is the counter-drone interceptor from Latvia's Origin Robotics that, in a field crowded with well-funded prototypes, actually did the hard part: it got bought. A radar-guided, man-portable drone that flies a vector fed straight from a defense radar toward an incoming Shahed, then closes with AI vision and an 800-gram warhead, BLAZE is NATO-codified, ITAR-free, and already fielded by four NATO states — Latvia, Belgium, Estonia and now France — all built on a shoestring ~€4 million budget rather than a mega-round. In Europe's interceptor wave, it is the order-first, low-capital outlier: less hyped than its rivals, further into service than any of them.

Overview

BLAZE is a radar-guided autonomous counter-drone interceptor built by Origin Robotics of Riga, Latvia — the member of Europe's 2026 affordable-interceptor wave that has converted trials into fielded orders faster than any peer. A man-portable, VTOL drone under 6 kg, it is cued by radar data fed directly from a command-and-control system, flies autonomously along that radar vector toward the target, then within proximity switches to EO/IR sensors and AI computer vision for identification and lock-on, with a human operator confirming the engagement and retaining a wave-off until the final approach. It carries an 800 g high-explosive fragmentation warhead (impact or airburst), deploys from a transport case that doubles as launch-and-charge station in under ten minutes, and a mesh radio lets one operator run multiple interceptors against multiple threats. Its selling points are institutional as much as technical: NATO-codified, STANAG-compliant and ITAR-free (no US export strings), pitched at "10× cheaper" than the ~$70,000 Shahed-class drones it kills. Origin built it on the back of its combat-deployed BEAK loitering munition, and — crucially — on a tiny capital base (~€4 million pre-seed plus EU and Latvian grants, no large VC round), scaling instead on orders: Latvia (first delivery October 2025), Belgium (a €50M urgent counter-drone program, November 2025), Estonia (late 2025), and France (June 2026, via a "Made in France" build with integrator DSV). It is also being integrated into Alpine Eagle's Sentinel system as that airborne mothership's ground-launched effector. The honest caveat: BLAZE is genuinely fielded, but its combat-kill record is not public — the proven combat history belongs to its BEAK predecessor.

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