Poland Opts for Raytheon's Patriot Missile System

WARSAW--Poland has opted for Raytheon Co.'s Patriot system for its planned missile defense shield said President Bronislaw Komorowski on Tuesday as the country looks to modernize its armed forces in the face of a more assertive Russian foreign policy.

Concerned that the smoldering separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine will erupt into a full-scale military conflict, Poland has pledged to increase its military spending.

Warsaw plans to return to its earlier policy of spending 2% of gross domestic product on its armed forces in 2016, after it scaled back spending in recent years to shore up its public finances.

Along with the Raytheon Patriot Air and Missile Defense System estimated to cost as much as 26 billion zlotys ($7 billion) the government has chosen Airbus Helicopters H225M Caracal for testing in a continuing tender for 50 multipurpose helicopters. Warsaw had originally planned to buy 70 helicopters

"There will be more contracts because we have a professional army," Mr. Komorowski said. "A professional army without state-of-the-art equipment makes no sense."

Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak will visit Washington, D.C. in May to negotiate an inter-government agreement under which Poland will buy the missile system, Mr. Komorowski said. Raytheon faced French consortium Eurosam in the last phase of the tender.

Warsaw wants to receive two patriot batteries within three years after the deal is signed and five more by 2025, the Defense Ministry said on its website Tuesday.

The missile shield is expected to be a part of NATO's long-running project to deter missile attacks in Europe. The project is hotly contested by Moscow which argues its aim is to threaten Russia rather than to protect itself from a potential threat from Iran, as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has said in the past.

Last week General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, said missile defense systems planned for installation in Poland and Romania represented a threat and Moscow had to prepare to respond.

Poland's Defense Ministry reiterated the missile shield is purely a defensive weapon system.

Write to Patryk Wasilewski at [e-mail]

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