Air Force
Polish MoD: PLN 940 Million To Cover the Acquisition of JASSM-ER Missiles. Agreement “Guaranteeing” the Procurement - Concluded.
Polish Ministry of Defence announced that last week, an agreement which would “guarantee” delivery of the JASSM-ER missiles for the Polish F-16 jets, has been signed. The contract value has been defined as 940 million zlotys.
Spokesman for the Polish MoD, Bartłomiej Misiewicz, stressed it within the issued release that the range of the acquired missiles is as long as “almost 1000 kilometres”. Similarly to the basic variant of the JASSM missile, the AGM-158B version uses a combined INS/GPS/FLIR guidance system (with the thermal vision sensor used in the terminal phase of flight).
The Polish Ministry of Defence informs that recently, an agreement has been signed by and between the representatives of Poland and the United States, guaranteeing that Poland would receive the JASSM-ER missiles, the state of the art anti-missile weaponry, the range of which is close to 1000 kilometres. The agreement value is PLN 940 million.
Poland was granted a relevant consent by the Department of State, concerning the JASSM-ER acquisition, on 28th November. According to the release issued by DSCA, up to 70 missiles were to be acquired for up to 200 million dollars, the unofficial information that had been circulated before that suggested that Poland would buy 40 examples of the AGM-158B.
Several days ago, Secretary of State at the Polish Ministry of Defence, Bartosz Kownacki, has received the Letters of Acceptance in the United States, concerning the acquisition of the armament for the F-16 aircraft, within the framework of the Foreign Military Sales procedure. Alongside the JASSM-ER missiles, the aforesaid documents also covered the acquisition of medium range AIM-120 AMRAAM, and short range AIM-9X Sidewinder, air-to-air missiles
Poland is the first state, besides the United States of America, which acquired the ER version of the JASSM missile. AGM-158A variant, with a range of around 370 kilometres, have also been acquired by Finland and Australia. The missiles owned by these nations are used by the F/A-18 Hornet jets. The contract concerning the acquisition of 40 JASSM missiles for the Polish F-16C/D Block 52+ jets, along with a MLU package for the aircraft (M6.5 upgrades) has been signed in December 2014.