Patria and BELMA sign MoU to develop unmanned minelayer

Patria TRACKX unmanned ground vehicle concept unveiled at Eurosatory 2026. (Janes/Christopher Petrov)

Finland's Patria and Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa's (PGZ's) Bydgoskie Zakłady Elektromechaniczne (BELMA) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the first day of the International Defence Industry Exhibition MSPO 2026 held in Kielce, Poland, on 8-11 September to evaluate the development of an unmanned minelaying system based on Patria's TRACKX tracked all-terrain vehicle.

TRACKX was developed under the European Defence Fund's European Future Highly Mobile Augmented Armoured Systems (FAMOUS) programme.

BELMA said on its website on 14 September that the proposed concept involves integrating four mine-laying systems developed by BELMA onto the TRACKX chassis, with each system equipped with a set of 20 cassettes containing MN-123 scatterable mines, giving each vehicle the capacity to deploy a total of 400 of the mines.

In a press release on 9 September, Patria identified the flatbed TRACKX variant as a possible platform for integrating mission systems such as BELMA's modular mine-laying solution, which it described as “a fully automated minefield deployment solution capable of laying up to 600 anti-tank mines in less than 20 minutes”.

A Patria spokesperson told Janes , “Patria and BELMA have initiated cooperation by exchanging information to assess the potential integration of BELMA's modular mine-laying system with Patria TRACKX. The scope, timeline, and other details of the cooperation have not yet been agreed.

“At this stage, Patria and BELMA remain independently responsible for the R&D activities related to their respective systems and technologies. The potential integration is still under evaluation, and no agreement has been reached regarding either the integration concept or the location of any related R&D activities.”