Key partner

polska-zbrojna.pl 6 months ago

In terms of defence cooperation, Poland is the most crucial strategical partner of South Korea in Europe – representatives of the 3 largest Korean companies provided at a gathering with journalists: Hyundai Rotem, Korea Aerospace Industries, and Hanwha Aerospace, which supply weapons and equipment to the Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland.

Following Russia's attack on Ukraine in February 2022, Poland's strategical military partner became South Korea. The army there, having a hostile neighbour from the north, had not only supplies of modern weapons, but, above all, had an arms manufacture capable of rapidly producing and supplying the essential weapons systems.
The Polish Ministry of Defence, in order to replace the equipment handed over to Ukraine as shortly as possible, decided to get weapons for the air forces and the ground troops from South Korea. The choice is on Primary tanks K2 Black Panther, 155-millimeter cannonhaubice K9 Thunder, school and combat aircraft FA-50 and multi-guided K239 Chunmoo rocket launchers. Importantly, each of these schemes was initially to be supplied in a Korean variety, but subsequent tranches should be more or little poloniumed.

On Friday, the South Korean Embassy in Poland organised a press conference with representatives of 3 arms companies: Hyundai Rotem, Korea Aerospace Industries and Hanwha Aerospace. During the meeting, the Koreans discussed the degree of implementation of framework and executive contracts signed with our government and the broadly understood Polishization of Korean equipment.

RECLAMA

Hyundai Rotem's typical stressed that the pace of implementation of the K2 tank agreement is simply a global phenomenon. In his opinion, no another maker made deliveries of basic tanks as rapidly as a Korean company. He recalled that in 2 years after signing the contract (July 2022), the maker had already donated over 100 out of 180 ordered machines.

At the same time, a typical of Hyundai Rotem admitted that the negotiations of the second executive agreement for K2 tanks, which assumes production (or co-production) in our country of the Polishized version of this vehicle, proceed and are "difficult". However, he hoped that the talks could be finalized by the end of the year.

Representatives of Hanwha Aerospace, producing cannonhaubice K9, assured that K9's deliveries to Poland were carried out according to agenda and the company had already handed over half of the contracted division to the Polish army. Unfortunately, the negotiations of another executive agreement, which is to include the production of a Polishized variety of this weapon system, have inactive not been finalised.

More optimistic information related to multi-guided Chunmoo K239 rocket launchers. The launch systems of this weapon for 122 mm projectiles are to be manufactured in Poland, by Huta Stalowa Wola, and larger caliber missiles by the company formed jointly by the WB Group and Hanwha.

On the another hand, KAI reported that delivered all the aircraft ordered by our army in the FA-50GF version, and the production of the first 2 Polishized FA-50PL models (i.e. configured according to our expectations) began a fewer weeks ago in Korean plants. KAI representatives are now encouraging the Polish side to acquisition fresh generation KF-21 aircraft.

Krzysztof Wilewski
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