For several years, the ORKA program of Polish submarines was adept at moonwalking, pretending to move forward, but remaining indisputably frozen, and letting the French of Naval group, the Germans of TKMS and the Swedes of Kockums, chase what seemed well be just a hare.
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After this long and grueling period of procrastination, the program was relaunched, based on new specifications, in spring 2023, and open to new non-European players. In particular, this new program seemed to have been designed to allow Poland's new key defense partner, South Korea, to participate, and even impose itself. Judging by the proposals made in recent days by Hanwha Ocean, Seoul has no intention of passing up the opportunity to record a first export success for its KSS-III Dosan Anh Changho submarine.
Hanwha Ocean's very attractive offer for the Polish submarine fleet
I have to say that Hanwha Ocean did not hesitate to pull out all the stops to seduce Warsaw, regardless of which government will preside over the final decision. Thus, the proposed submarines will be equipped, in addition to an AIP system, with Lithium-ion batteries. This is a likely response to Naval Group's recent announcement regarding its Scorpene Evolved, also now equipped as standard with these new, much more efficient batteries.
In addition, the South Korean proposal includes a very important industrial component, as is also the case for the proposals concerning the local construction in Poland of K-2PL tanks, K-9PL self-propelled guns and K239 long-range artillery systems. . The offer notably includes the construction of a complex allowing the construction and maintenance of the submarine fleet, and even its extension if necessary.
But the most differentiating point, compared to European offers, concerns the armament of the submarines offered by Hanwha Océan. In fact, Seoul is proposing nothing more, nothing less, than transposing to Poland its three-axis doctrine, designed to give South Korea a significant conventional deterrence capacity in the face of the North Korean nuclear threat.
For this, the KSS-IIIs offered to the Polish Navy could be equipped with the same vertical silos, and same cruise and ballistic missiles, which arm and will arm South Korean ships. These will be able, according to the three-axis doctrine, to strike the adversary's nuclear launch sites, before they can launch their missiles, in order to reduce the number of potential vectors, to a number that can be contained by the country's anti-air and anti-missile defense (and of NATO).
Transposing the South Korean 3-axis doctrine to the European theater
This capability is so exclusive, while no European submarine is equipped with comparable munitions, that it seems attractive at first glance for Warsaw, which must face the rise in power of the Russian armies, including in the nuclear field. However, as we mentioned in an article devoted to the South Korean three-axis doctrine, this is very difficult to transpose to the European theater, facing Russia.
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