this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

NATO is growing stronger, Poland is growing an army that’s honestly terrifying.

As a Pole, that's pure saberratling and illusion. Regular army is weaker than ever with old and faulty equipment, not enough recruits (on top of already greatly reduced numbers, like entire critical regions are manned by half strenght non-line brigades), corruption is greater than ever as evidenced by all big contracts being either outright failure (like Polish army managed to botch every single contract to buy helicopters ever) or mirred with many problems (like the F-16 fiasco).
Navy is basically barely existent at this point, we have more admirals than battle ready sea ships, zero submarines, the most battleworthy naval unit is the coastal missile battery and some landing ships (why we even have landing ships though). One single corvette that was about to spreahead the resurrection of Polish navy was in construction for 19 years and ended up not even as corvette but barely armed patrol boat. Core of the fleet are two old ex-US Perry class frigates but everything is doubtful about them, we even have to buy fuel for them in US, and when one of them actually managed to slowly creep out of port to recent NATO maneuvers everyone was surprised it even happened because it's very rare occurence. And so on and on.

What did got built is the Territorial Defense Army, but it's laughing stock. They have numbers and some decent equipment... for a light infantry without any support. They were designed to be PiS private army and their combat worth is probably around what you would expect from a politically motivated formation without proper heavy equipment - that is they are good for shooting the migrants on the border and were probably being prepared to squash the potential social unrest when shit hits the fan in Poland (though it didn't happened yet because Poles are the most domesticated population on planet).