- Standing Committee of the Council of Ministers has adopted a plan, the aim of which is to acquire the VIP [aircraft] fleet; The Ministry of Defence is going to be responsible for the fleet, there is a chance of 2017 acquisition – as it was stated by the Secretary of State via Twitter.

According to the information published by “Nasz Dziennik”, the Ministry of Defence is planning to procure two smaller aircraft which would be capable of carrying ca. 20 passengers onboard. The Ministry is also going to purchase two medium aircraft, tailored to transport around 100 passengers each. As it is being stressed by the journalists, the smaller airframes are going to be employed for transport tasks within the limits of Poland and Europe, while the medium ones are destined to be used to transport the President, PM and the Ministers to remote locations, such as the Middle East or the Americans. 

In case of the medium airframes, acquisition of a single second hand aircraft is also being considered. As it was noted by Kownacki, the tender has been accepted by the Standing Committee of the Council of Ministers. Next, documents related to this issue are going to be transferred to the Council of Ministers. The organ is then expected to discuss their content during a relevant meeting. 

Secretary of State stressed the fact that relevant resolution by the Council of Ministers may be adopted either until the end of this week, or on upcoming Tuesday. We do know though that the Ministry is making intense efforts to announce the VIP jets tender as early as possible – best if everything is finalized by September. This would enable the government to acquire the smaller jets within one year, and medium ones within three years. As it was noted by Kownacki, in his interview for “Nasz Dziennik”, the above “is related to the longer production period and a need to equip [the jets] with a variety of systems, including the passive and active countermeasures”.

The estimated purchase cost is defined as PLN 1.7 billion. The money is going to come from the pool of assets destined to be used within the Armed Forces Modernization Programme.