With a reference to "sources familiar with the matter," The Wall Street Journal states Poland handed about 10 attack helicopters of Mi-24 type over to the Armed Forces of Ukraine in an unannounced military aid provision.
There is no follow-up on how it impacted the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south. The only thing mentioned is, Ukraine is still outnumbered in aircraft by russian forces, so Ukrainians try to use their army aviation very carefully.
Read more: Poland’s Path In Switching Mi-24 to Apache Helicopter, Can Ukraine Repeat It
If the information obtained from WSJ sources was correct, we should draw attention to the possibility that these 10 Polish Mi-24s could have unique features. And the complexity of these features depends on the level of Mi-24 modernization that the Polish defense industry managed to achieve before the helicopters were handed over.
For starters, let's make clear that according to The Military Balance 2022, the Armed Forces of Poland at the beginning of 2022 had a fleet of 28 Mi-24 helicopters in D and V modifications in total, made up of rotorcraft obtained from various sources. During Warsaw Pact times, Poland bought 32 helicopters from the USSR, plus 8 more from Germany who inherited former East Germany's arsenals. The number decreased over the years though due to various reasons.
In 2016, the Polish military pointed out the main drawbacks of their Mi-24 fleet – they had been in service for 30 years already and couldn't use guided anti-tank missiles. Therefore, in early 2017 the Ministry of Defense of Poland launched the Perkoz program on procurement of Western-type helicopters; it concluded in September 2022 with a contract on 96 AH-64E Apache helicopters from the United States.
Meanwhile, in 2019, Polish defense concern PGZ presented an interim solution while the procurement of Western helicopters was in process: a project of Mi-24 modernization that extends the aircraft service life for additional 5,000 hours, gives it an electro-optical targeting pod and Spike anti-tank missiles.
But later in July 2022, it turned out that Polish authorities couldn't decide whether they even need to modernize their Mi-24s and what kind of functions were required for the upgraded helicopters. The schedule of testing the modernized helicopter's lifespan had a one-year delay and it resulted in another three-year delay for starting the serial modernization.
All things considered, we can expect that Ukraine has received Polish Mi-24 attack helicopters in either of three gradations of general condition: a) the rotorcraft had seen no modernization at all, b) they had at least had their service life extended, or c) at least some of them got modern sensors necessary for using guided missiles.
Read more: Czech Republic Will Give Attack Helicopters to Ukraine, Help With F-16 Training
