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Poland Arms Procurement
When communism fell, Poland's military equipment and
arms
supply changed as dramatically as its strategic position.
In the
Warsaw Pact era, the Soviet Union had been Poland's main
supplier
at prices far below world standards. Once the political
advantage
of offering such bargains disappeared, however, the
Soviet/Russian arms industry ended preferential treatment.
In the
late 1980s, for example, the top-of-the-line MiG-29
fighter was
offered to Soviet allies for US$2 million each; in 1991
the same
aircraft was offered to the same customers at the
approximate
world market value of US$18 million. Given severe cuts in
its
military budget and the impending obsolescence of many of
its
existing armaments, Poland faces critical procurement
choices
that generated heated debate in the military establishment
in the
early 1990s. Those choices are also conditioned by the
technical
requirements of Poland's new strategic defense doctrine of
high
mobility and flexibility--qualities lacking in many
critical
systems remaining from the Soviet supply line.
The debate centered on how much Poland should rely on
supplies
from its own arms industry (thrown into crisis by the
cutbacks
that began in the late 1980s), how much on purchases from
Western
suppliers, and how much on previous connections with
Soviet/Russian suppliers. Production at home offered two
significant advantages: technological continuity and lower
cost.
In 1990 some 64 percent of the equipment used by the
Polish armed
forces was domestically produced, and most Polish-produced
armaments were compatible with existing Soviet-supplied
products.
(In 1991 the cost of an M-1-A1 Abrams tank from the United
States
was nearly ten times that of a Polish-made tank in the
T-72
line.) Also a major planning factor were the arms
reductions that
would be required of former Warsaw Pact nations in nearly
every
category by the terms of the CFE Treaty.
According to statistics often cited in the arms-policy
debates of the early 1990s, the ratio of equipment to
personnel
in the Polish Army was significantly smaller than
comparable
ratios in former Warsaw Pact allies Bulgaria, the CSFR,
East
Germany, and Romania and much smaller than those of NATO
countries. Planned personnel cuts in the Polish Army would
improve the overall ratio, but significant technical
modernization was needed to bring the percentage of
state-of-the-
art equipment to the desired 35 to 40 percent. In 1991
Chief of
Staff General Zdzislaw Stelmaszuk rated less than 25
percent of
the Polish Army's equipment in this category, and over 40
percent
of towed artillery and naval vessels were classified as
obsolete.
According to a General Staff analysis in 1991, about 500
trillion
zloty of armaments purchases would be needed by the year
2000 to
reach the desired level of modernity. This figure dwarfed
the
1991 Ministry of National Defense budget allotment of 16
trillion
zloty passed by Parliament.
In 1991 Stelmaszuk, who was also chairman of the Group
for
Restructuring the Polish Armed Forces, projected the
following
armament goals for the mid-1990s after restructuring and
reductions to meet CFE requirements: 1,730 tanks; 2,150
armored
vehicles, of which 1,700 would be infantry combat
vehicles; 1,610
artillery systems over 100mm; 1,430 antitank systems;
3,175
antiaircraft systems (including 1,455 missile systems);
130
combat assault helicopters; and eighty naval vessels
(including
forty combat vessels).
In the early 1990s, the uncertainty of available annual
funding complicated procurement. Although some specific
longrange procurement goals had been determined by 1991, in
1992
civilian and military leaders had not yet reached a
consensus
about the best way to achieve those goals.
Data as of October 1992
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