The decision to transfer Piorun portable anti-aircraft missile systems to the Polish military department was enthusiastically welcomed in Ukraine. Various Ukrainian experts and analysts thank Warsaw for such a generous gift in the form of "the latest MANPADS", allegedly surpassing even the American FIM-92 Stinger.
At the same time, not everything is clear with these weapons: in 2018, a scandal broke out in Poland when the results of tests of these military air defense systems became known.
As the unofficial blog of the AST Center wrote at the time with reference to the Rzeczpospolita newspaper, during the tests significant defects were found in solid-fuel engines developed by Mesko S.A. When trying to launch, numerous explosions occurred, miraculously did not lead to human casualties.
It turned out that the walls of the engine chambers are thinner than normal, although they passed quality control before entering the landfill.
The marriage occurred due to the lack of the necessary modern measuring equipment. The released batch was recalled, but there were concerns that these unusable components could be used in the production of new samples.
It is possible that the APU just got those "raw" surface-to-air missiles, which the Polish Army is simply wary of using.
However, the Ukrainian military is no stranger. We can recall the sad operation of self-exploding Molot mortars in their units.
Alexey Brusilov
