Polish Ministry of Defence Goes Shopping in the Final Days of This Year. Helicopters Come First

The Polish MoD is willing to sign an agreement that would cover the procurement of helicopters for the SOF units by the end of this year. It is going to be concluded on Wednesday, 15th December. The above refers to four S-70i Black Hawk helicopters. These would be handed off directly to the GROM unit. PZL Mielec facility owned by Lockheed Martin would be the contractor here.

This would be the third lot of Black Hawks procured for the Polish Armed Forces. The first batch of Black Hawks was ordered for PLN 683 million - including extra equipment and logistics package. The order was placed in January 2019. The helicopters were delivered, in the base configuration, in December that year. Then they were retrofitted with extra equipment, as required by SOF.

Once the current agreement is finalized, the SOF component would have 8 Black Hawk helicopters in total, at its disposal. The above means that Black Hawk would be the most numerous of the new generation helicopter types, operated by the Polish Armed Forces. Alongside, four Navy's AW101 are to be commissioned. These have been procured in 2019. The Polish AW101 helicopters would take on SAR and ASW roles. Other helicopter procurement programmes, including Kruk (attack helicopters), Kondor (light naval helicopters), and Perkoz (light multi-role helicopters) are still in the analytical-conceptual phase.