Fire hits Polish drone parts plant, arson suspected

A fire broke out overnight Sunday at a WB Electronics facility in Skarżysko-Kamienna, Poland, adding another name to a growing list of European defense manufacturers hit by fires, explosions and suspected sabotage in 2026.

The blaze started shortly after midnight in the plant’s assembly department, according to Radio Kielce, which cited a spokeswoman for local police. Five fire crews and police responded to the scene. The facility was not operating at the time, and no injuries were reported. Firefighters extinguished the fire, and police are now investigating the possibility of arson.

Journalist Jakub Wiech reported that surveillance footage showed a masked person entering the site shortly before the fire began, a detail that has drawn Polish security agencies into the investigation alongside police.

WB Electronics is one of Poland’s largest domestic defense manufacturers. The company builds loitering munitions, drone components and battlefield communications systems, including equipment supplied directly to Ukraine’s armed forces, making it a producer of exactly the kind of hardware that has become a recurring target across Europe this year.

The Skarżysko-Kamienna fire is not an isolated case. It joins at least five other incidents The Defence Blog has tracked in 2026 at defense-related sites across the continent, from Estonia in the north to Bulgaria and Italy in the south.

In March, a predawn fire at LPP Holding’s optics and drone facility in Pardubice, Czechia, damaged production buildings but did not stop a planned delivery of 40 attack drones to Ukraine. Czech police investigated it as possible terrorism after a previously unknown pro-Palestinian group claimed responsibility, though the company itself suggested the claim may have been designed to mask an operation actually aimed at its Ukraine-related work.

In April, fires struck electrical infrastructure in central France, damaging transformers and a power pylon feeding networks that serve KNDS and MBDA facilities. About 3,000 homes lost power. Investigators found graffiti reading “Actions against the war” at one site, but French authorities have not publicly attributed the operation to any state.

In August alone, the pattern accelerated. A fire and explosion destroyed an ammunition storage building at EMCO’s plant near Belitsa, Bulgaria, on August 10. Three days later, a fire and explosion hit the KNDS Ammo Italy plant at Colleferro, a facility that produces medium- and large-caliber ammunition. On August 15, a building used by Milrem Robotics in Tallinn, Estonia, a maker of THeMIS unmanned ground vehicles supplied to Ukraine, caught fire in what Estonian prosecutors called a deliberate, premeditated act. Three suspects were later detained in Latvia.

Western intelligence sources have increasingly described this pattern as part of a Russian campaign designed to disrupt European military supply chains while preserving plausible deniability, using recruited local proxies and attacks that can be dismissed as accidents, criminal activity or domestic activism. Authorities in Czechia and Estonia have publicly acknowledged Russian involvement as one line of inquiry in their respective cases. Officials in Italy and Bulgaria, by contrast, have said they have found no evidence linking their incidents to Moscow.

The Kremlin has not been silent on the subject. In April, Russia’s Defense Ministry published the names and addresses of European companies it accused of building drones or components for Ukraine. Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, called the facilities potential military targets, writing: “When strikes become a reality depends on what comes next. Sleep well, European partners!”

A separate Munich Security Report analysis counted roughly 150 suspected Russian hybrid incidents, including arson, sabotage and cyber operations, across EU and NATO countries between January 2022 and December 2025, describing many of them as deliberately constructed to remain ambiguous and hard to attribute.

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