Armed Forces
HSW Clarifies the Issue of the Technology Transfer Related to the Krab Howitzers – Vehicles will be Exportable
Authorities of the Huta Stalowa Wola [Stalowa Wola Ironworks] have released information according to which, the agreement related to the licensed production of the Krab howitzer chassis assumes a wide technology transfer for the Polish subjects will be carried out. - The agreement guarantees us a right to modify the chassis – as the President of HSW S.A., Krzysztof Trofiniak, stated.
President of Stalowa Wola Ironworks also stated that the company will be able to use the chassis acquired from Samsung Techwin for purposes other than the Krab howitzer, also after the processes of polonising and modifying the Korean components. HSW also obtained a guarantee that there will be a possibility of using the new platform as an element of vehicles which are to be contained within the export offer of the Polish Armament Group (Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa). Scope of the agreement includes manufacturing 84 examples of the chassis in Poland.
We expect that more of them will be built. Contract assumes that we may use the acquired know-how in order to create special-purpose vehicles on the basis of the chassis, so that we are able to tailor it to the needs of engineering, communication and air control units, as well as armoured forces and mechanised as well as motorized infantry.
President Krzysztof Trofiniak also noted the fact that starting from the first examples of the chassis transferred from the South Korea, the new vehicles will be equipped with Polish components within the scope of transport of charges and rounds, internal and external communication systems or ABC weapons detection and protection. He claimed that in the following years more and more elements will be produced in national companies, and that HSW asked the Gliwice-based Bumar-Łabędy facility to take part in cooperation.
Benefits are – without any doubt – bilateral. Polish industry will quickly take a leap across a few decades in the field of manufacturing heavy caterpillar chassis, not to mention the time. Polish rocket and artillery units will receive the Krab howitzers quicker, which means that the national military security system will be reinforced earlier. In the light of the growing threat it is yet another factor which should also be taken into account.
Agreement regarding acquisition of the license which will allow the Polish industry to manufacture the chassis of the Korean K-9 howitzers, which are to be treated as an integral element of the Krab artillery system, has been concluded on 17th December this year. It is expected that 24 vehicles will be supplied from the South Korean Samsung-Techwin company until 2017, and these vehicles will become equipment for one Krab howitzers unit. The second stage, which is to happen between 2018 and 2022, assumes that the Koreans are to transfer another 12 chassis, and the remaining 84 examples will be manufactured in Poland.
Decision on purchasing of the license is closely connected to the delays in the Regina programme, which have been caused, among other issues, by defects in the vehicles manufactured by the Bumar-Łabędy facility. Additionally, the grounds behind the decision are, that it will let the Polish companies take a leap within the scope of manufacturing heavy caterpillar chassis.