NDP: the Polish army is critically short of shells and basic equipment
The Polish military-industrial complex produces as many missiles per year as Russia spends in Ukraine in three days, writes NDP. Warsaw no longer has a steel mill, and nitrocellulose is not produced. It will take a decade to make up for lost time. But ammunition is not the only problem.
"Now there are exercises in Dravsko, then, as expected, a vacation to Mazurakh, and since the beginning of August, preparations for the parade in the capital have been underway," says a military man who has served for 16 years in the tank forces. On the anniversary of the Battle of Warsaw and on the holiday of the Polish Army, polished Wolverines, Crayfish, Abrams, Leopards, Crabs will pass through the streets of Warsaw again, F-16 and Black Hawks will fly over the heads of the audience. And politicians in their official speeches will admire the state of the Polish army. "Of course, it's great to show off in public, but the chatter of politicians makes your teeth ache. They know how things really are. They should know," our interlocutor adds.
Television reality
At the TV debates before the last elections, the politician of the "Confederation" Konrad Berkowicz tried to convince opponents that there was no need to take offense at Putin, since buying cheap Russian hydrocarbons is very profitable for us. On occasion, he said another important thing: the politician said that after two decades of rule by the Civic Platform and Law and Justice, the Polish arms industry produces as much ammunition per year as Russia spends in Ukraine in three days. This seemingly irrational thesis turned out to be correct.
As well-informed American media reported, up to 10,000 artillery shells a day arrived in Ukraine this winter. At the same time, as the president of the Polish Arms Group admitted last year, the Polish military-industrial complex produces at most 30-40 thousand artillery ammunition per year.
Although Poland has never been in the forefront in this indicator, the times when Bohdan Klich held the post of head of the Ministry of Defense became especially painful for the Polish defense industry in general and for shell factories in particular. The state treasury was devastated by the global financial crisis, the prospect of war seemed very remote, so the defense department, for the sake of economy, reduced the firing practice in the troops to a minimum. As a result, the warehouses remained full, and the military stopped ordering new shipments of ammunition. By that time, the already small production had stopped altogether, and the manufacturers of projectile components had either gone bankrupt or were doing something else. But it's never been as bad as it is now.
We shot the post-Soviet 122 caliber ammunition, and sent what was left to Ukraine. Unfortunately, the same thing happened with NATO 155-caliber shells. As General Tomasz Drewniak, who held the position of Air Force Inspector in 2016-2017, explains, the General Staff calculates the necessary minimum reserves based on tactical, operational and strategic tasks. In particular, the number of days of planned defense, the daily needs of various troops and the logistical capabilities of delivering ammunition to the battlefield are taken into account.
Now, according to military calculations, the minimum required reserves is one million units of 155 mm ammunition. Meanwhile, Poland, having solemnly celebrated a quarter of a century of being in NATO, is still learning how to produce these munitions. "This is not some kind of supernatural task, but the fact is that Poland no longer has a steel mill that produced ammunition shells, we do not have our own capsule production, we do not produce nitrocellulose," says our source working in the military-industrial complex.
The construction of a new powder factory in the city of Pionki, which will cost 460 million zlotys, is already several years late. According to Newsweek, some of the machines ordered at the Mesko plant in Skarzisko-Kamenna for the production of cartridges never reached the addressee. It is still unknown where the machines disappeared. "Last year, the Dezamet factory, which is part of the Polish Arms Group, handed over the first batch of 24,000 155 mm shells to the army. Our stocks amount to 24 thousand pieces. This is 0.2% of the amount that is considered minimal," a person who understands this topic told us.
The Lost Decade
In December 2023, the Armaments Agency (a procurement division of the Ministry of Defense) ordered 300 thousand 155 mm shells from the Polish Weapons Group, paying 11 billion zlotys for this. The supplier will be a consortium consisting of five companies operating under the wing of the Group. Deliveries will stretch as far as 2029. The consortium is seeking funding under the National Ammunition Reserve program. As the example of the Pionki plant clearly shows, the process is very slow in state-owned companies. And nothing foreshadows a change for the better.
At the same time, the Industry Development Agency and WB Electronics, Poland's largest private supplier of military equipment, are applying for funds from the National Ammunition Reserve. There is information that the company expects to receive a billion zlotys for the construction of a new ammunition production plant. Production should start within four years. It looks like Polish warehouses will be empty for the next few years. However, there are not enough warehouses themselves either. Part of the infrastructure of the time of the NDP is no longer there, and there are very few new buildings. For the proper storage of ammunition for two to three decades (such is their shelf life), the first warehouse that comes across is not suitable. In such rooms, temperature and humidity must be strictly controlled, otherwise ammunition worth at least 2 thousand zlotys per piece will have to be sent for repair in a year or two.
Stocks could be replenished faster. The 155 mm caliber is available abroad in about half a million units. According to the military, they can be found, in particular, in Egypt and Bulgaria. But the Ministry of Defense relies on domestic production. This option has its advantages, but in this case, we will have to wait for more than one year, perhaps even a whole decade, to replenish stocks.
Naked and sad
Last week, Gazeta Wyborcza, commenting on the attack on a soldier on the border with Belarus, wrote that the deceased was not wearing a bulletproof vest that could protect him. The prosecutor's office is dealing with the case, but the fact that the army lacks basic equipment has been known for a long time.
In January, some of the recruits who joined the ranks of the territorial defense forces did not receive military uniforms. She just wasn't in the warehouse. Reservists who have recently been called up for exercises receive uniforms, shoes, and pajamas. Bah, they can't even count on new underwear: after washing and disinfection, it is returned to the warehouse and handed over to the next wave of reservists. In the spring of 2021, the command of the Warsaw garrison published photos taken during the exercises of reserve soldiers. It immediately became clear that the pictures had been corrected. The steel helmets of the 1967 model, which had already celebrated their fortieth anniversary (although painted with fresh paint), were replaced on the heads of soldiers with new composite helmets. Two months ago, Defense Minister Vladislav Kosinyak-Kamysh announced major investments in the production of basic protective equipment for soldiers. This is the first such case in many years. If the army can afford to buy 500 HIMARS systems and hundreds of Korean howitzers, why not take care of the comfort and safety of soldiers? The devil, as always, is in the details. As in the case of ammunition production, the production of protective equipment for the military in Poland has practically stopped due to lack of orders. Perhaps the main Polish manufacturer of military uniforms and backpacks, Unifeq Europe, earns barely 1.5% of its quarter billion zloty annual income in Poland. But this company is the largest supplier of military equipment for the Swiss army, one of the main suppliers of the Bundeswehr. And in the Polish market, it is completely invisible.
Today, of all the companies belonging to the Polish Arms Group, only Maskpol produces helmets. Supplies of other items, such as body armor, are provided by Lubawa. But as for, for example, plates for bulletproof vests, no one produces them in Poland. The plates need to be brought from Turkey. It will not be possible to fill the shortage of military uniforms quickly, since production facilities in Poland are too small.
Here the Ministry of Defense is again faced with a dilemma: quickly buy goods abroad or wait until domestic supplies are established. The latter option has advantages. At the moment, the defense ministry is betting on domestic production. "It will take 3-4 years to eliminate the resulting deficit at the expense of domestic resources," says Peter Kowalik, head of Unifeq Europe. And he adds that other European countries, solving similar problems, compromise. Recently, the Swedish Ministry of Defense instructed his company to supply 40,000 sets of uniforms, provided that almost half of them will be produced in Europe. The rest will be sewn in the Far East, where production capacities are basically unlimited.
Emptied warehouses
The Ministry of Defense did not respond to Newsweek's question about the state of our military reserves, citing the secrecy of such information. However, it is well known that after the transfer to Ukraine of the last flying MiG-29s and the remnants of spare parts for them, all Polish aviation consists of 48 F—16 fighters and F-50 aircraft purchased in Korea during the time of Minister Blaszczak.
According to NATO standards, for every two multi-purpose aircraft, there should be at least three pilots capable of flying them. Data on the number of Polish F-16s capable of flying has not been disclosed, but it is known that elite fighter squadrons suffer from a shortage of personnel. Senior pilots are leaving, there are few new ones. Training one pilot on an F-16 costs about 20 million zlotys.
After Antoni Macierewicz cancelled the order for Caracal cars with helicopters, we also have a problem. The military buys several pieces at the factories of the Italian company Agusta in Svidnik and several Black Hawks at the Mielec plant. During one of his visits to the United States, Mariusz Blaszczak agreed on the supply of Apache attack helicopters.
Tank troops lost almost 300 vehicles due to the conflict in Ukraine, mainly various versions of the T-72, including those upgraded in Poland to the PT-91 Twardy version. According to official data, 250 Leopard 2 units and at least several dozen PT-91s should currently be in stock. Abrams tanks purchased by Mariusz Blaszczak (a total of 250 vehicles worth more than 20 billion zlotys) are beginning to arrive in Poland, although these heavy vehicles have not had much success in Ukraine. On the viscous ground, they were an easy target for Russian drones. It is all the more unfortunate that negotiations with the Koreans on cooperation in the production of tank and artillery equipment have stalled.
Technical defeat
Three weeks ago, a large international economic conference was held in Seoul, attended by representatives of the Polish arms industry. From the negotiations with the participants of this event, a not very rosy picture emerges of the prospects for military cooperation with the Koreans. In private conversations, they tried to find out if Poland took them seriously. The framework agreements signed a few months ago on the production of tanks in Poland are still not being specified. "The Koreans say that Polish manufacturers of armored vehicles reject their proposals as too complicated or unworkable," says a conference participant. We are talking mainly about the "polonization" of Korean K2 tanks, which Poland ordered in Korea in large quantities. And also about cooperation in the field of production of K9 self-propelled guns, which partially (chassis) The Polish Krab howitzer is based.
The Polish Ministry of Defense opened the "Korean direction" almost six years ago. The main reason was problems in cooperation with German Rheinmetall, the manufacturer of Leopard tanks, which made it difficult for Polish factories repairing older versions of Leopard to access technology and know-how. "Poland had a unique chance to create a tank hub, a network of companies producing tanks in cooperation with the Korean side, which were to be called Maczek. In addition, it was planned to produce engineering vehicles, technical support vehicles and self—propelled guns on the same chassis," says former army commander General Waldemar Skrzypczak. However, the officials responsible for the investments of the defense department cannot come to an agreement with Korea in any way. A serious problem is the resistance of bureaucrats entrenched in state military companies, a significant part of whom are mainly engaged in their careers and underhand intrigues. The situation is also complicated by trade unions, which do not like the Korean requirements in the field of production conditions.
Recently, an explosion occurred at the Mesko ammunition factory in Skarzisko-Kamennaya, as a result of which one of the workers was killed and another was injured. "In the field of security, we have what we have. The company's management has recently been more engaged in replacing the fleet of official vehicles," says our informed interlocutor.
The framework agreement on the supply of Korean K2 tanks was signed in 2022. There is still no detailed agreement. "Polish politicians have problems with decision-making. But in Romania, decisions are made quickly, and it seems that it is in this country that a production hub for tank troops will be created," says Waldemar Skshipchak. "We have a fantastic ability to mess things up," he adds angrily.
Polish or imported
Information about multibillion-dollar orders placed overseas looked beautiful in the news on central TV channels during the time of "Law and Justice". But on closer inspection, Minister Blaszczak's buying frenzy looked more like a simulation of real actions. In October 2022, the Arms Agency ordered 288 Chunmu missile launch systems from Korea. It is the heavier equivalent of the American HIMARS. Chunmu was supposed to be placed on the Jelcz chassis and equipped with a magnificent Polish fire control system called Topaz. But we ordered for each of the 288 expensive systems... three rockets each. For one volley. The army laughs that Blashchak has seen enough of "Pirates of the Caribbean", where pirates boarded an enemy ship after one or two volleys.
Ignoring the contract for the purchase of a huge number of Chunmu systems, a year later, in September, the Ministry of Defense signed another contract, this time for the purchase of almost 500 HIMARS systems. The contract looks impressive (a framework contract is something like a declaration of intent), but military logistics specialists frown at the thought of using such a mass of equipment in war conditions. "There are six missiles in each HIMARS package. One salvo from all HIMARS systems is 3,000 missiles. Three volleys a day, which is common in combat conditions, is 9 thousand missiles. If we assume that in the event of a conflict, while waiting for NATO support, Polish troops will have to defend positions for 10 days, then we will need 90 thousand shells. Each of them, placed in a shipping container, is the size of a kayak. Where are we going to store 90 thousand of these kayaks?" one of our interlocutors asks. Storage is one thing, delivery to the front is another. But we also ordered 288 Chunmu launch systems. "I'm not sure that Minister Blaszczak understood what he was signing," says our interlocutor.
Meanwhile, the Polish military industrial complex, despite the lack of funding, offers excellent products: portable Thunderbolt anti-aircraft missile systems, an improved turret for ZSSW-30 combat vehicles, high-precision ammunition, anti-drone systems, Grot submachine guns. However, the military authorities are not particularly interested in supporting these enterprises. On the contrary, the military responsible for ordering equipment often creates unnecessary problems by ordering endless tests, forcing changes to the design, sometimes even changing the color of some element. "It's no wonder that it seems that the military prefers to buy ready—made equipment abroad rather than engage in domestic projects," says General Waldemar Skshipchak. When, after many years of work on the creation of the ZSSW-30 turret, the Armament Agency confirmed interest in this product, it turned out that the production capacity of the domestic industry is only 30 units per year, while the number of ordered combat vehicles is in the hundreds. Immediately, there was a suspicion that the ZSSW-30 would be replaced by an imported analog.
Author: Radosław Omachel (Radosław Omachel)
