Posted on 08/07/2014 6:44:08 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Faced with a worsening security situation in neighboring Ukraine, Poland has issued a requirement for new attack helicopters that could be worth more than $1.3 billion. Meanwhile, however, the country’s choice of 72 new multirole helicopters worth nearly $2.7 billion is still undecided. Budget problems continue to frustrate the armed forces’ desire for new equipment. Earlier this year, Poland decided to retain one squadron of aging Su-22 strike aircraft for up to 10 more years, since it cannot afford a replacement.
Poland currently operates 28 Mil Mi-24 attack helicopters, the remnants of 52 acquired since 1978. The new proposal is to buy about 32 replacements in two stages, with an initial 20 to be followed by 12 more beginning in 2022. Candidates include the AgustaWestland AW129 or its Turkish sibling, the TAI T-129; the Airbus Helicopters EC665 Tiger; and the Boeing AH-64E Apache. Offers are due to be considered next year.
Meanwhile, the multirole helicopter contract award has been postponed until next year, two years later than originally envisioned. The AgustaWestland AW149, Airbus Helicopters EC725 Caracel, and Sikorsky S-70i Black Hawk are in contention, each OEM having partnered with a local company for production and support (PZL-Swidnik, Heli-Invest and Mielec, respectively). The army is due to receive 48 helicopters for troop transport, with the air force receiving 10 for SAR, and the navy receiving another six for SAR plus six for the ASW role. They will replace about 16 Mi-8s, 10 Mi-14s and 20 Mi-17s that remain in service from much larger numbers acquired previously.
The decision to retain 12 single-seat and six two-seat Su-22Ms for another 10 years was taken last February and was driven by the choice of the Aermacchi M346 as the air force’s new jet trainer. Had the rival more powerful KAI T-50 Golden Eagle been selected, some would have been allocated as the Su-22 replacement. The air force received 110 Su-22s beginning in 1984; 32 remain in service. They have received only minor avionics upgrades.
The Lockheed Martin F-16C/D Block 52 is Poland’s frontline fighter, with 48 delivered between 2006 and 2008. In a presentation to The Fighter Conference in London in 2012, organized by Defence IQ, air force Col. Tadeusz Pieciukiewicz said that Poland hoped to share the development cost of future upgrades, such as an AESA radar, with the U.S. Air Force. However, the U.S. F-16 upgrade program faces an uncertain future. The air force also operates two squadrons of MiG-29s.
There was a time when the US would be there ready to provide everything the Poles required to defend themselves.
Use them for Top Gun training?
They have serious money problems but the Apache is on the table???
Yeah, sure it is...
It is much more related to a generation gap on the market. There's no sense to buy more F-16s at this point and F-35s are not going to be available for non-partner countries any time soon, so to keep 1 squadron in the air, it will use SU-22s for a few years more and then have them replaced together with MiG-29s.
As we learned during the Battle of Britain, it isn’t the plane, it’s the pilot.
“There was a time when the US would be there ready to provide everything the Poles required to defend themselves.”
When... ?
1950 through 1973 the US spent a hundred thousand American lives and billions of dollars defending countries from Russian expansionism. Had you forgotten?
Isn’t it obvious that this is a highly provocative decision and Russia now has no choice but defend herself ?
Poor Poland, always neighbor to the Beast next door.
Germany already stabbed Poland and Ukraine in the back by building the Baltic gas pipeline under Chancellor Gazprom (Schroeder).
It's amazing to me that most Germans don't seem to see anything wrong with a former chancellor and foreign minister being on Gazprom's payroll.
Is that and updated version of the Fishbed??
Nope-it’s a different aircraft, a larger swing-wing strike aircraft.
While the Poles have saved Europe on a number of occasions, neither the Europeans or US have returned the favor when the Poles were the ones in desperate straits although they have all gotten together and agreed to redraw the borders of Poland with stunning regularity.
Maybe your comment was directed to me. If so, please point out to me the specific error in what I wrote.
There has never been a time in the history of Poland when Poland was not occupied by a foreign power or controlled by a foreign power that the US was ready to provide whatever they needed to defend themselves.
So, you know, all of what you wrote You posit a hypothetical that has no basis in historical fact other than your personal opinion with regard to or assessment of what what national policy and unnamed national policy makers would have done at some unspecified point in the past.
On the rare occasions the US helped a free and independent Poland (i.e. just prior to WWII and since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact) we have done so strictly to the extent we felt it was in our interest to do so as sauce for the bigger fish we were frying rather than in keeping with their own ideas of what they required to defend themselves and were willing to pay for.
Poland is and always has been far more willing to sacrifice on behalf of others than others have been to sacrifice on behalf of Poland and if you disagree, fine, feel free to spit in the wind of history.
have a nice day
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