Polish Army Set to be Largest in Europe

Executive Summary:

Facilitating this effort is the Polish SAFE loan agreement. Poland and the European Commission signed an agreement under which Poland would receive loans amounting to nearly 43.7 billion euros ($50.9 billion) for the army and the arms industry, to begin receiving by the end of the month (Polish Ministry of Finance, May 8). At the signing ceremony in Warsaw, Polish Minister of Finance and Economy Andrzej Domański commented that the objectives of the SAFE program are to strengthen security and modernize the army, to build a strong, innovative, and modern defense industry, and to create jobs. According to Domański, this is the highest rate among NATO member countries. In monetary terms, Poland was ahead of NATO members such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France.

The SAFE loan was not without last-minute political drama. Polish President Karol Nawrocki announced that he would not sign the law implementing the European Union’s SAFE defense loan program (Bankier.pl, March 13). The same day, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced that the government would adopt a resolution based on which the Polish Armed Forces program would be implemented, commenting, “It will be more difficult, but we will proceed; the president’s veto of the bill implementing the SAFE program will not stop us” (Bankier.pl, March 13). The veto was overridden and the SAFE program consequently adopted.

In just five years, Polish defense spending quadrupled, from $13.6 billion (50 billion zloty) to more than $54.6 billion (200 billion zloty) a year (Rzeczpospolita, August 14, 2025). U.S. armaments purchases include a September 2023 bilateral contract to purchase 486 M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) light multiple rocket launchers, developed in the late 1990s for the U.S. Army, making Poland one of the largest HIMARS operators in the world (International Institute for Strategic Studies, November 2025). In contrast, Ukraine fields 39 HIMARS launchers, firing GPS-guided 227-millimeter M30/31 rockets as far as 57 miles, which Russia has found difficult to destroy (Forbes, January 1, 2024). Additionally, Poland previously purchased about 100 U.S. AH-64E Apache helicopters, 366 M1A2 Abrams tanks, 32 F-35A fighters, two Patriot batteries, and an air defense control system (Izvestiia, August 30, 2025).

The latest SAFE agreement is the culmination of six years of government efforts to upgrade the military. On March 1, 2019, then Polish Minister of National Defense Mariusz Blaszczak signed the “Plan for the Technical Modernization of the Polish Armed Forces until 2026,” providing for the purchase of 32 fifth-generation fighters, commenting, “The fifth-generation multi-purpose aircraft is needed as it will strengthen the current fleet. We are determined to replace post-Soviet aircraft that do not represent military value.” Other priorities in the plan included acquiring assault helicopters and the Narev program to acquire short-range air defense systems to counter unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), in combination with the “Vistula” program, in which Poland acquires a Patriot air defense system from the United States (Vesti, March 1, 2019). The Polish Air Force (Siły Powietrzne) currently maintains roughly a dozen Soviet MiG-29 aircraft in service, which will be transferred to Ukraine in the coming years as more modern jet fighters arrive. The Polish air force also has 48 F-16 aircraft awaiting modernization by the end of 2030 (Rzeczpospolita, August 14, 2025). On May 22, Poland received a pair of the first F-35 Husarsz (X/@KosiniakKamysz; Notes from Poland, May 22).

The Polish air force has also been looking to Asia to upgrade its aircraft. Before the end of the year, the first of 36 South Korean-built FA-50PL aircraft are also to be sent to the Polish air force under a contract lasting until 2028. The 36 FA-50PL aircraft will mount the modern Phantom Strike radar, capable of using the medium-range air-to-air missile AIM-120 AMRAAM. Despite earlier reports that the United States was delaying the integration of AMRAAM-equipped aircraft, the manufacturer of the FA-50PL, KAI, announced the successful conclusion of negotiations and the start of the integration of the aircraft with U.S. missiles (WP Tech, May 12).

The Polish military, despite its 24-year membership in NATO, retains Soviet-era equipment from its time in the Warsaw Pact. Blaszczak commented that the year after Russia’s war against Ukraine began, he considered it the “Achilles heel” in the country’s defense (News.ru, March 15, 2023). The Polish government asserted that its efforts to completely re-equip the country’s military had been heightened by not wanting to undergo the fate of neighboring Ukraine, which lost a fifth of its territory in a matter of weeks during the outset of Russia’s “special military operation” (SVO) in February 2022.

In a recent Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) report, Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2025, Poland again ranked 14th in the world. This is a 23 percent increase from its 2023 defense expenditures to $46.8 billion (169.92 billion zloty), equivalent to 4.5 percent of the country’s GDP. Compared to 2016, Poland’s 2025 defense expenditures increased by 207 percent (SIPRI, April 2026; MILMAG, April 26). In 2025, spending on the military targets of European NATO members increased faster than ever since 1953.

Beyond its air force and ground forces, Poland is also seeking to upgrade its navy. The Polish Navy currently operates one outdated boat, the 41-year-old ORP Orzeł, built in 1985 in the Soviet Union. On December 17 last year, Kosiniak-Kamysz and his Swedish counterpart, Minister of Defense Pål Jonson, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Warsaw outlining the goals of the Sweden–Poland submarines acquisition program. The MoU defines the acquisition of the A26 submarines as enabling Poland’s armaments complex to learn from technology transfer, maintain, repair, and service the submarines throughout the entire life cycle. At the same time, Sweden will include Polish defense companies in manufacturing armaments for Sweden’s military (Polish Ministry of National Defense, December 17, 2025).  

Poland is one of NATO’s frontline states most impacted by the evolving U.S. presence in Europe. On May 1, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that U.S. President Donald Trump decided to withdraw about 5,000 soldiers from Germany. Eight days later, Trump did not rule out the transfer of withdrawn soldiers from Germany to Poland (MILMAG, May 13). A U.S. defense official speaking on condition of anonymity, however, confirmed that a planned redeployment already underway of the U.S. Army’s 2nd Armored “Black Jack” 4,000-man Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, based in Fort Hood, Texas, had been put on hold, even though most of the brigade’s equipment had already been shipped to Europe. The redeployment was to be a nine-month mission aimed at deterring Russian aggression in Europe, with the soldiers slated to take up positions in Poland and other NATO eastern flank countries (Stars and Stripes, May 13).

An inevitable and unpleasant outcome for Russia of its war against Ukraine has been NATO’s rapid militarization of the Baltic, assisted by Finland and Sweden joining the alliance as its 31st and 32nd members in 2024. Poland, with its Baltic coastline of 328 miles, is a most unwelcome addition, given its eastern frontier with Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave. Poland’s ambitious plan to develop its armed forces will make them second only to the United States in NATO combat capability, leaving Putin with a military conundrum of his own making long after the war ends.

Dr. John C. K. Daly is a Eurasian foreign affairs and defense policy expert for The Jamestown Foundation and a non-resident fellow at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Washington DC.

This article appeared originally at The Jamestown Foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor.