On April 18, 2003, Poland signed an agreement with manufacturer Lockheed Martin for 48 F-16C/D Block-52 fighter aircraft for around 3.5 billion euros, making it the first country in the former Warsaw Pact to switch to the Fighting Falcon. The aircraft are now to be extensively modernized.
Following the order, the 36 F-16Cs and twelve twin-seater F-16Ds landed at the Poznan and Lask bases from 2006 to 2009. Since then, they have been repeatedly deployed to the north for Baltic Air Policing and have taken part in airshows and multinational exercises in many places, most recently a few weeks ago in Andravida, Greece (-> Military News at NATO exercise “Ramstein-Flag 2024”). The fleet is still complete and now the Polish Air Force (Sily Powietrzne) has decided to upgrade it – as well as the Greek and Turkish Falcons – to the latest technical standard F-16V (Viper Midlife Upgrade), which will bring it – as far as possible – up to the standard currently used for Slovakia, for example (-> Lockheed: First F-16 trained for Slovakia) or Bulgaria to the new Block-70/72 standard.
Centerpieces are new radar and EloKa kits
The main assemblies of the program are 58 sets of AN/APG-83 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) Scalable Agile Beam Radars (SABR) derived from the AN/APG-80 of the VAE F-16E/F Block 60 (48 installed, 10 in reserve) from Northrop-Grumman, 73 AN/ALQ-257 Integrated Viper Electronic Warfare Suites (IVEWS) from RTX and 73 AN/ALQ-254V(1) Viper Shield advanced EW kits (or equivalent) (63 installed, 10 in reserve) from L3-Harris. In addition, further avionics upgrades and technical support, software and maintenance equipment.
However, the stated volume of this order – 6.7 billion euros and therefore double the original procurement sum for the entire fleet – raises questions in the Polish media. However, it is often overlooked that the DSCA announcements approved by the US State Department always represent a maximum “shopping list”. Often – see the Slovakian F-16/70 – it is only half of the volumes listed there.
Soon to be the strongest armed forces in Europe
It had been a topic of discussion among experts for several years – including at a Eurofighter event in Paris in 2023 – that Warsaw had ordered 32 F-35As (-> Poland’s F-35A is called Husarz) worth 4.2 billion euros, which are to be delivered between 2026 and 2030, as well as the 48 Korean FA-50s, Warsaw is planning additional Eurofighters or F-15EXs specifically for the air-to-air role. It is not clear at the moment whether these plans have now been halted in view of the F-16 MLU modernization or whether they will be pursued independently of it. One thing is certain, however: The Polish MiG-29s have gone or will go to Ukraine.
Poland has been making huge efforts to expand and modernize its entire armed forces for several years, even independently of the fighter jet sector. Against this backdrop, Colonel Markus Reisner believes that the country is already well on the way to soon having the strongest military in Europe. The budget for this has risen from 9.2 billion euros (1.9 percent of gross domestic product, GDP) in 2016 to 36.8 billion euros and almost 4.2 percent of GDP this year. For Warsaw – half of which was annexed and wiped out by the USSR in 1939 and under Soviet rule from 1945 to 1991 – this is a widely accepted reaction to the Russian threat on NATO’s eastern border, which is intended to deter Moscow from adventuring on Polish territory. And this – also an experience from 1939 – without having to rely excessively on the protection of allies.
