The Armed Forces of Poland are currently conducting the most powerful rearmament in modern history, ordering hundreds of armored vehicles, self-propelled guns and HIMARS, aircraft and other weapons.
In this process, special attention was paid to the transition and significant increase of tanks in the Polish army, which is receiving and purchasing Abrams tanks in the USA and K2 in Korea. They, together with the German Leopard 2, should become the main armored fist of Poland.
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In particular, the Polish Army currently has at its disposal about 140 Leopard 2A4 tanks (which are being upgraded to the Leopard 2PL version) and 105 Leopard 2A5 tanks. At the same time, Warsaw officially transfers the Soviet T-72s and their modernization PT-91 Twardy to Ukraine, the total number of these machines as of 2021 according to Military Balance was 561 units, but they may not be taken into account in the future outline of the Polish Armed Forces.
At the same time, for this transfer of a significant number of T-72 and PT-91 Twardy to Ukraine, Poland will receive 116 Abrams M1A1 SA tanks from the USA. They should arrive in 2023.
But Poland also ordered 250 M1A2 Abrams SEPv3 tanks. The total cost of this contract, together with all related services and ammunition, was $1.14 billion, reports Defense24. At the same time, the deadlines for the order for 250 tanks are relatively far: 2025 and should be completed within a year.
Along with the American contract, Poland signed additional one with Korea for 180 K2 tanks. As the Minister of Defense of Poland Mariusz Blaszczak said in an interview with the "Polska Times", the value of the contract, including all services and the logistics complex, is 3.37 billion dollars. The deadline for the delivery of the first tanks is as early as 2022, and the deadline for the implementation of the agreement is until 2025.
The critical difference between the cost of Abrams and K2 immediately catches the eye, because it turns out that Warsaw is ready to pay 18.7 million dollars for one K2, and for the American Abrams 4.56 million per tank.
Such an anomaly in relation to the price of Korean tanks can be explained only by the fact that the contract provides the further independent production of the K2PL version by Poland. There was information that the number of Polish production of its own versions might reach 1,000 units. And also the fact that Warsaw most likely received a so-called "voucher" from Washington for the purchase of American weapons for the transfer of its existing weapons to Ukraine.
Thus, by the end of 2025, Poland should have 366 Abrams, about 250 Leopard 2 and 180 units of K2 in its inventory, with further increase in the production of K2PL. That is, in general, approximately 796 modern tanks, which almost corresponds to the total number of tanks in Poland for 2021 – 808 units, of which 70% were Soviet machines and their modernizations.
To conduct such an update, Warsaw will spend at least 4.51 billion dollars, to which it is necessary to add the cost of upgrading the Leopard 2A4 to the Leopard 2PL version, which was estimated at 480 million euros. Thus, we get to the price tag of 5 billion dollars and a three-year rearmament program. It could have been smaller, but Warsaw far-sightedly bets on the localization of production, which most likely caused the significantly higher cost of Korean cars.
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