Poland signed the final contract for the acquisition of 48 Block 52M+ F-16C/D Fighting Falcons

All the countries in Eastern Europe need to replace their fighters. And that means all, including Greece and Turkey, who both use a relatively small number of old F-16 versions, while the bulk of their air forces is composed of old F-4 Phantom and F-5 fighters.
Poland used to have a large air force within this region. At a single air force base, during the 1980's, the PoAF had no less than 128 jet fighters, plus helicopters!
But nowadays, the armed forces, and that includes also the air forces, are reducing themselves 3-4 times to what they were just a decade ago.
Poland oscillated for a long time between purchasing American F-16's, French Mirage-2000s, Swedish JAS-39 Gripens and EADS Eurofighter 2000 Typhoons.
A lot of political pressure and backdoor games took part lately, everybody trying to get their hands on the 3.5 billion dollars contract. Although some would say the French and the Swedish offers were much better for Poland, offering better offset contracts, the Swedish package for example was offering more offset investments than the value of the contract itself, the final option was the F-16. No wonder it was, since "Poland looks to the United States as our main ally", the words of the Polish President, Alexandr Kwasnewski.
In the end, the only thing that matter, to my opinion, as well as the opinion of most analysts, was the political games and pressure that took part behind the "stages", as well as history. Let's not forget, it was the Europeans who allowed Poland to be scrapped down from the world map just six decades ago, while the Polish people see the Americans as the ones who put their country back together (what was left of it anyway, Romania, Poland and other countries still have provences which are not incorporated into Ukraine, Russia and Bielorussia).
In my opinion, Poland bought an obsolete and expensive plane. If all the Eastern European countries would have initiated a mass-negociation to commonly purchase the F-35 JSF, the situation would have been totally different: cheap and modern planes, plus full intercompatibility, as a bonus. However, whoever sells fighters to Eastern European countries, has more to gain THIS way, so... money talks, not justice.
However the Poland acquisition programs have not stopped here. Poland must still buy cargo planes (Romania is still, after eight years, the only country in the region to have strategic aviation capability, provided by its four C-130 Hercules planes, and the intention to buy five more), as well as to replace ground attack jets, possibly with more F-16s, or with some Eurofighters or even JSF's.
Links:
Hungary buys JAS-39C/D,
Future Eastern European Air Forces programs.

Copyright ©2003 Sorin A Crasmarelu

April 2003

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