Belgium's defence ministry bought V-BAT drone systems worth €46.9 million without a public call for competition, according to contract award notice 614081-2026, published on 7 September in Tenders Electronic Daily (TED), the EU's public procurement journal1. The notice is titled "urgent acquisition of drone systems (V-BAT)" and names Stellar Ordnance, a Belgian supplier, as the contractor. Shield AI, the American company that builds the V-BAT, does not appear on it. The V-BAT is a surveillance drone that takes off and lands vertically, so a ship or an army unit can fly it without a runway or launcher.
The Royal Netherlands Navy declared the same aircraft operational in March, so in practice Belgium is buying a type its neighbour already flies. The notice gives no quantity. Without one, nobody outside the ministry can work out a unit price or compare it with what the Dutch paid.
Belgium's award is one of five national defence or security drone awards that Lowdown found in a sweep of TED notices published since 21 August. Four of the five, in Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany, went to a named supplier with no competition beforehand. The single open procedure, for a Czech vertical take-off drone, carried the smallest published value. Contracts placed under the EU treaty's national-security exemption never reach TED at all, so the true share of uncontested buying could be higher or lower.
EU defence procurement rules allow a buyer to skip competition where urgency or a single capable supplier justifies it, provided a notice follows, as all four did. A notice published after the award tells rival makers what was bought only once the contract is signed. Makers without a type already in European service therefore never get the chance to bid.
