For decades, the biggest competition for state-owned military manufacturing plants was foreign purchases. Private arms companies remained out of favor, although they were and still are several times more efficient than state-owned companies. The government promises that this is changing.
SektorObronny.pl talks to retired Brigadier General Professor Stanisław Koziej, former head of the National Security Bureau about why Poland is not in the NATO Nuclear Sharing programme, whether we have a chance of becoming its member in the future and how this should be done.
– Poland still doesn’t have a new political/defence doctrine. Our economy is also not prepared for securing the needs of war – says retired Major General Leon Komornicki, former deputy chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, president of the Fallen and Murdered in the East Foundation and member of the Euro-Atlantic Association, in an interview with the SektorObronny.pl portal.
Why must the parochial way of thinking of some CEOs of the Polish defence industry change; should Polish Patriots should go to Ukraine; and does participation in the construction of the European “iron dome” air defence system make sense? – the SektorObronny.pl portal asked these and other questions of retired Lieutenant General Waldemar Skrzypczak, former commander of the land forces and undersecretary of state at the Ministry of National Defence in 2012–2013.
Skepticism that the Polish industry is not able to invent and construct anything innovative on its own is a thing of the past. Such achievements were often treated very suspiciously, because if it was such a revelation, the Japanese would have invented it a long time ago. Today, we have Polish companies whose technologies are known in the world. The Gdynia-based company Advanced Protection Systems – a supplier of radar and anti-drone systems technology – is breaking stereotypes and conquering new arms markets.
From the first days of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, nuclear weapons have come back into play. Russia has started to blackmail the West with its use. Putin is doing this effectively to this day, skillfully creating fear step by step. Consequently, Kiev is being advised not to attack targets deep inside Russia, and is not receiving long-range missiles. The Doomsday Clock warns of a nuclear threat.
As early as in 2021, academics from the University of Chicago forecast that, according to the famous symbolic doomsday clock, the threat caused by climate change and nuclear weapons mean we are only a hundred seconds away from disaster. This is 20 seconds less than in January 2020 and over a quarter of an hour less than in the early 1990s. Experts also warned that it was becoming increasingly difficult to develop control mechanisms related to this terrible weapon.
