Poland’s aspiration to restore its long-lost Great Power status makes sense given that it’s the EU’s most populous eastern state, it has the largest economy among that group, and it now commands NATO’s third-largest army, but the last point isn’t what it seems. A recent article from Bloomberg revealed how embarrassingly underdeveloped Poland’s military-industrial complex (MIC) is despite the country doubling its defense budget. The present piece will review their article and then analyze its findings.
To begin with, Poland’s MIC is dominated by an over-50-company state-owned conglomerate known as Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa (PGZ, Polish Armaments Group), which was founded in 2013. For as large as PGZ is, it’s struggled for over a decade to expand production of propellants in a saga that was detailed by Bloomberg. In short, two separate plans for opening facilities of this sort – dubbed Project 44.7 and Project 400 – have yet to enter into operation, thus hamstringing Poland’s domestic shell production.
About that, the country plans to produce just 150,000 shells by the end of this year, while neighboring Germany’s Rheinmetall plans to produce five times as many at 750,000 after expanding production tenfold since 2022. To add insult to injury, “Ukrainian artillery fires 5,000 or more 155-millimeter rounds every day for an annual total of around 2 million shells” according to Forbes in February, so PGZ can only produce in one year what Ukraine fires against Russia in just one month.
Production of Piorun, the portable air-defense missile launcher that Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz described as Poland’s flagship product, is equally dismal. It’s been produced for nearly a decade already since 2016 but there’s still only a single production line. Kosiniak-Kamysz announced in early April that another production line is planned, but the previously mentioned precedent of Poland’s failed attempt to expand production of propellants over the past decade doesn’t inspire optimism.
Instead of prioritizing the domestic production of propellants, shells, air-defense missiles, and other equipment that Poland would need in the far-fetched scenario of defending against a Russian invasion, the majority of Poland’s defense expenditures have been spent on buying foreign equipment. Although Bloomberg noted how Poland wants to partially assemble some of the tanks that it plans to purchase from South Korea, these efforts “have foundered” due to stalled talks over the terms.
In any case, the partial assembling of mostly foreign-produced military equipment isn’t a solution to the problems that plague Poland’s MIC, which are clearly systemic by this point but owe their origins to its ruling duopoly preferring to purchase mostly American equipment as a means of cozying up to the US. Regardless of whether the liberal “Civic Platform” is in power or the comparatively (but very imperfectly) conservative “Law & Justice”, each has sought to make Poland the US’ top partner in Europe.
The rationale was that this would ensure that the US abides by its Article 5 mutual defense commitments to Poland in the extremely unlikely event of a Russian invasion, yet the opportunity cost of this political ploy was that the country’s MIC is embarrassingly underdeveloped. That wasn’t a problem for most Poles so long as Russia and the US remained at odds but is nowadays filling many of them with dread amidst the nascent Russian–US “New Détente” that Putin and Trump jointly envisage.
It’s unimportant that Russia has no plans to invade Poland and that the US wouldn’t realistically stand aside in the political fantasy of that happening since Poles as a whole have an almost pathological fear of Russia for historical reasons. In the minds of many, Russia could invade them all of a sudden on any given day, and the odds of this occurring would spike if the US gradually disengages from Europe and explicitly distances itself from providing for its continued security.
As it turns out, that’s precisely what the Trump Administration plans to do, though it’s unlikely to pull all US troops out of Central & Eastern Europe (CEE) as it redeploys some to Asia for more muscularly containing China or abandon its Article 5 commitments. Even so, Secretary of State Pete Hegseth just declared that the US will no longer be the sole guarantor of European security as he urged NATO members to shoulder more such responsibilities, which must have sent chills down most Poles’ spines.
Over half of them already consider the US to be an unreliable guarantor of Poland’s security per polling from a Polish newspaper of record in early March so even more might soon share this sentiment after what Hegseth just said. Later that same month, the chief of Poland’s National Security Bureau shockingly revealed that their country only has less than two weeks’ worth of ammo, which means that it would be completely dependent on the US’ commitment to Article 5 to survive as a state if Russia ever invaded.
Once again, Russia has no plans to do so and the US wouldn’t hang Poland out to dry if that happened, but the nascent Russian-US “New Détente”, Hegseth’s latest policy declaration, and Poland’s embarrassingly underdeveloped MIC have combined to maximally exacerbate Poles’ threat perception. Their country is unprecedentedly vulnerable because never had it been so dependent on foreign military equipment or security guarantees nor had its MIC ever been so unprepared to fight a war with Russia.
The silver lining from their perspective is that the authorities are finally serious about rectifying the MIC problems that form the core of this newly exacerbated paranoia about a future Russian invasion as evidenced by early April’s draft defense bill for fast-tracking defense projects. Nevertheless, it might still be too little, too late, plus Poland plans to sign a nearly $2 billion Patriot missile deal with the US sometime soon that’ll reinforce its dependence on the US’ MIC, including for maintenance and spares.
Considering all that was shared about Poland’s MIC, both facts and analysis thereof, its Great Power aspirations are therefore unrealistic since it’ll never be able to exert independent military influence anywhere in the broader region. Despite its boasts of commanding what’s now NATO’s third-largest army, it already emptied its entire stockpile after donating everything to Ukraine, and it sorely lacks the domestic military production capabilities for fighting a hypothetically protracted conflict with Russia.
These aren’t the characteristics of a Great Power but of a paper tiger, which is a harsh but accurate description of the Polish military, whose woes and the associated anxiety that society’s wider awareness of this creates are entirely the fault of its short-sighted ruling duopoly. They neglected their country’s MIC for years in favor of buying mostly American equipment, which created a dependence that’s now practically impossible to eliminate and might thus forever end Poland’s Great Power aspirations.
