British radar firm pushes for more sales across Eastern Europe

British radar maker Blighter is pushing for more sales in Central and Eastern Europe, showcasing its border and low-altitude air surveillance radars this week at the MSPO defense exhibition in Kielce, Poland.

The company builds ground-based radars that use electronic scanning array antennas rather than the mechanically rotating dishes found on older radar systems, letting them track multiple targets while running on very little power. Blighter’s B422 long-range radar, for example, uses just 4 watts of transmit power and can detect and track people, vehicles and low-flying drones out to 32 km (20 miles), even in cluttered terrain and fog, according to the company.

“Central and Eastern European countries are investing significantly in strengthening their borders against an increasingly diverse range of threats,” said Mark Radford, co-founder and chief technology officer at Blighter. “Operators must be able to detect people, vehicles and, in coastal regions, small and covert vessels.”

“It’s been another strong year for sales of our border surveillance radars across Central and Eastern Europe, as customers recognise the advantages of adopting our COTS-based radar products along their borders,” Radford said. “At MSPO, we aim to establish new contacts, strengthen existing partnerships, and discuss the highly effective drone-detecting capability of ground radars.”

Blighter says its engineering addresses a specific gap in typical air defense coverage: drones that fly low enough to exploit ground clutter and radar signal bounce, letting them slip past conventional air defense radars and many counter-drone systems built to watch higher altitudes. The company’s radars use micro-Doppler signal processing, which reads the distinct vibration patterns of small propellers and rotors, to pick these low-flying threats out from ground noise.

The company won a contract in March to supply its B400 series radars and BlighterNexus software to an unnamed Eastern European army, deploying the systems to fixed border posts and onto army reconnaissance vehicles. That win followed what Blighter’s chief executive at the time called a record 2025 order book, alongside deals in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific.

Blighter says its radars are already used by the UK Ministry of Defence for forward operating base protection, by South Korea’s army along the Demilitarized Zone, and by the U.S. Air Force for drone detection. The company has deployed more than 800 units in over 40 countries.

During MSPO, Blighter representatives also met with senior UK government officials to discuss the company’s expanding presence in Central and Eastern Europe. The company has not disclosed the value of its recent regional contracts or named specific customers beyond the March deal with the unidentified Eastern European army.