Design and capabilities
GOBLIN is a multipurpose unmanned ground vehicle developed by the Warsaw-based robotics firm Macro-System, built for reconnaissance and casualty-evacuation roles that would otherwise expose soldiers to direct risk before a mission objective is reached. During Poland's Iron Gate 25 exercise with the 18th Mechanized Division, defence-trade reporting credited the platform with roughly 20 hours of endurance on a single battery charge and towed loads of up to 16 tonnes in manned-unmanned teaming alongside Rosomak armoured personnel carriers - figures that trace back to company and exercise reporting rather than independent testing. It has been developed in cooperation with NATO forces and tested at training grounds across several European countries, including France and Estonia.
Operational history
In April 2026, Belgium ran its first structured field exercise involving unmanned ground vehicles, fielding GOBLIN alongside Macro-System's smaller GNOM platform for round-the-clock reconnaissance, logistics, and target-identification missions. From 16 to 26 June 2026, Poland, Lithuania, and France conducted the multinational Gallant Boar 2026 exercise - reported in some outlets as Brave Boar 26 - involving roughly 6,500 troops and several hundred vehicles, including Borsuk infantry fighting vehicles and Krab self-propelled howitzers, explicitly testing whether allied forces could defend the Suwałki Gap, the roughly 65-kilometre land link between the Baltic states and the rest of NATO territory. GOBLIN was deployed there in reconnaissance and casualty-evacuation scenarios.
AirVeto context
GOBLIN is a ground system, not an airborne one, and has no wind-drift or airspace-intrusion relevance of its own. It appears in this glossary because the terrain it was tested to defend - the Suwałki Gap, flanked by Russia's Kaliningrad exclave to the west and Belarus to the east - is the same eastern-flank geography where AirVeto's airborne incidents, including Gerbera and Shahed-type drift cases, concentrate. Readers researching NATO's broader eastern-flank readiness posture are likely to encounter GOBLIN alongside those airborne incidents, even though the platform itself operates on the ground.