Our defence manufacture is now at a landmark historical moment. Many factors have given us a large chance to catch up on our distance to France, Germany and the UK. Can the late signed treaty on strategical cooperation with France consequence in the acquisition of fresh outlets by Polish defence companies? Yeah, as long as we actually look at our possible by measuring our strength at intent.
Different types of warships. Planes and helicopters. Tanks, combat infantry wagons, wheeled armored transporters and all logistics vehicles. Artillery systems – both rocket and barrel. individual weapons. Communications systems, radio-electronic combat and command support. Radars. At this point, let me finish this calculation due to the fact that listing all products offered by the French arms manufacture would be very difficult. For tricolours produce almost everything their army needs, and if they do not produce something themselves, they effort to make their companies subcontract key elements.
I would like to stress right distant that I am not going to compare the current possible of Polish and French armaments. For many reasons, it would be absolutely unwarranted – starting from the political conditions, through historical conditions, to geopolitical ones. For the last 2 100 years (since the industrial revolution), our defence manufacture has not had the same conditions for improvement as its French counterpart. We were lifting up after the partitions, then we collided with German and Russian imperialism, so that after almost 5 decades under the russian shoe we would conflict with a systemic reconstruction of the country.
What was France doing at the time? In both planet wars she was on the side of the winners and on this wave in the 1960s she began building her own military power, having the ambition of being a superpower. Most importantly, she based herself in this quest on her own economy, on strong arms companies that were to be independent of both possible enemies and allies. As determined as France was in this quest, it is best shown that in 1966 she decided to step out of NATO, not agreeing – in its knowing – with dominance in the US and UK Alliance.
The effects of specified a superpowered policy resulted in the French manufacture developing at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s for the local army its own tanks, aircraft and helicopters, submarines and submarines, rocket and barrel artillery systems, a hugely short-lived weapon, the production of which was then equivalent to full technological independency from the US.
The question of whether France can be spoken of present in the same context is no longer so simple. The three-colored in fresh decades have put specified a strong emphasis on European integration that they have disposed of a large part of national industrial capacity for multinational initiatives – specified as the French-German KNDS company, which produces tanks and BWPs for them, or the French-German-Spanish Airbus company (manufacturing aircraft, helicopters and drones). But even considering that present a large part of the French armory is arrogant of the EU flag on its products, this does not change the fact that it is simply a close global top.
The question here is: how is the Polish armory? Well, we should be realistic – apart from a fewer exceptions, we are a “European middleman”. However, I firmly believe that this is only an assessment of "here and now" due to the fact that our defence manufacture is at a crucial historical moment. Many factors have given us a large chance to catch up on our distance to France, Germany and the UK.
Yes, the easiest thing to say is that it was the war in Ukraine that made us spend more on arms, that is, buying more weapons in Polish companies. However, this is simply a immense simplification, very unfair to subsequent Polish governments. This is not in 2022, but much earlier we launched a program of method modernization of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland, which assumes (in large short) the replacement of outdated military technology for fresh solutions – from tanks to ships.
It was for the purposes of modernization of the army that a fresh Polish was created crab cannonhaubica, fresh Polish Badger Infantry Truck, modern air defence strategy called the Polish Shield, fresh min destroyers Kormoran II, Grotto carbines, Lightning rockets, drones FlyEye and Warmate. And without hesitation after this calculation you can say – these are truly products of the planet format, or not giving up abroad counterparts, or better than them. So in 1 word, we know about fresh military technologies.
A fewer days ago, Poland signed a treaty on strategical cooperation with France. I hope that it will be utilized to strengthen our defence manufacture by stepping up cooperation with the French counterpart. due to the fact that as I do not see much chance that our three-colour allies will abruptly start buying Polish weapons in bulk, so I am firmly convinced that we can be valuable partners for French companies, their subcontractors (not in products bought by us, but on a purely business basis). I besides hope that the treaty will translate into joint defence projects – for example, we could enter the program of a fresh primary tank or another generation of combat aircraft, becoming its full participants. I don't think it's naive of me to believe that close defence and industrial cooperation with France, based on partnership alternatively than "clientism", can be the flywheel we need.
