please stop bashing France

On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 14:37:01 +0200, lekomin inc wrote:

I agree that Polish armed forces (including the air forces) are
substandard compared to the major NATO members.. Poland is on par with
Spain, I would think. It cannot be compared with DE, US, UK, FR or IT.

Hmm. I'm not sure this is true? What fighter does Poland currently
use? I'm guessing it's the MiG-29, which is better than anything the
RAF has (until Typhoon becomes operational) or the elderly
Starfighters italy uses.

Yet
in comparsion to the Eastern Europe there is nothing except Russia (of
course...) Ukraine and maybe Belarus that can match Poland. The Polish army
is changing fast. We have 48 F16bl52+ on order, which will be quite a
capable plane (with Pantera XR pod, Aim-9X, JSOW, JDAM to name the more
novel systems). Army has around 700 Patria AMV on order, which are the most
up to date wheeled infantry carriers on the market.

That's similar to what Finland, Sweden and Norway use, IIRC. There's
also a 6x6 vehicle in the same family, the XA. It seems a capable
family of vehicles. I particularly like the idea of a dual 120 mm
mortar, shown he

http://members.surfeu.fi/stefan.allen/amv8x8.html

Note that this is better than the UK's new vehicle, which is
basically an overpriced and lightly armoured 4x4 truck.

The UK did have a program for an 8x8 vehicle, the Boxer. They spent
large amounts of money together with Germany and the netherlands
developing this vehicle (why? there's plenty of wheeled armoured
vehicles on the market -- the patria series, the MOWAG Piranha, the
BTR-80 and -90, etc. A new one is unlikely to be much better since
automotive technology is mature).

Then Britain decided it didn't want the Boxer, it wanted something
lighter that could be easily transported. So it's now paying over
the odds (GBP 400k per vehicle IIRC) for something that's likely to
be little better than the land rovers ans Saxons the British army
already uses (and are cheaper) or the Humvees the USA uses (and are
also cheaper).

So it seems to me that Poland is paying less overall and getting a
more combat-capable vehicle than Britain.

(The Patria vehicles are costing c. EUR 600k or GBP 400k per
vehicle, about what Britain is paying; but Britain has also thrown
away the money for the Boxer development).

We have just taken over
128 Leopard 2 A4 MTBs from Germany, and now there are talks of upgrading
them to the A5 or A6 standard.

This is a pretty decent tank, comparable to the British Challenger
II.

There are around 220 PT-91 Twardy MTBs in
line. Those are modifided T72Ms. More of the old T72 might get so called
NATO modification (including 120mm smoothbore gun).

Britain had some Challenger I tanks, not the latest thing, but
still a respectasble tank. Instead of storing them or using them for
reserve units, it stupidly gave them away (to Jordan).

Medium range anti tank
will be handled by Israeli Spike systems.. I know that Javelin is better but
the price is outragous.

Spike is longer-ranged than Javelin (4 km v. 2.5 km). Did Poland
consider the Russian Kornet (range 5 km)?

The UK is currently considering either Javelin or Spike.

They aren't (AFAIK) considering Kornet, presumably because it might
offer better value for money (longer range, and probably cheaper).
AFAICT, the UK govmt isn't interested in value-for-money when buying
military equipment.

Programs that might start sometime in near future
include a medium range UAV (Predator being the front runner of course)

In a sensible world Poland would look to jointly developing with
other European partners a family of cheap UAVs/UCAVs/cruise
missiles. (Finland would be a good partner, since like Poland it
doesn't have money to waste on over-priced development programs).
iof a guy in New Zealand can build a cruise missile in his garage
for $5000, this ought to be a sensible proposition.

medium and heavy lift helo (personally I love EH101 but I'm pretty sure we
will end up with UH-60L and hopefully some Chinooks)

Chinook is nice because it can carry heavy loads. EH101 is a good
general-purpose helicopter, that could be used for transport,
recce, or adapted as an attack helicopter.

(I am as yet unpersuaded that dedicated attack helicopters such as
the WAH-64 used by the UK are value for money).

To sum up, Poland might be a dwarf in comparsion to the UK

I dispute this point of view.

--
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people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(My real email address would be if you added 275
to it and reversed the last two letters).