With the order of 486 additional HIMARS launchers, Poland will have 60 times more rocket launchers than France in 2030.

This had been expected for several weeks, and in particular since Mariusz Błaszczak's visit to the Lockheed-Martin HIMARS assembly site in Camden, Arkansas, last May. It is now done.

On September 11, the same Mariusz Błaszczak, the Polish Minister of Defense, announced that he had approved a very large order for additional HIMARS systems, as well as ammunition, from Lockheed-Martin, all for a budget of up to $10 billion.

486 HIMARS launchers and thousands of munitions for Poland

According to the press release, Poland will therefore order, through the FMS, 486 HIMARS launchers, in addition to the 20 already ordered in 2019, as well as several tens of thousands of GMLRS, GMLRS-ER, ATACMS and PrSM missiles, according to Lockheed-Martin .

Called HOMAR-A (America), these systems will reinforce the approximately 290 K239 Chunmoo rocket launcher systems ordered a year ago from South Korea, and designated by the code name HOMAR-K (Korea) in the Polish armies.

The Polish systems will arm 27 long-range artillery squadrons, the vast majority of which will have to be created in the years to come, as the Polish armies only operated around a hundred locally designed multiple rocket launchers. or Soviet so far.

The exact outline of the order has not yet been presented by the Polish authorities. In particular, we do not know the delivery schedule, as well as the part of local design which will be negotiated between LM and the Polish authorities.

Obviously, this new announcement cannot be considered outside of Polish electoral context, with legislative elections with uncertain results approaching their deadline on October 15. In fact, the Polish PiS government, increase the number of announcements of this type, aiming to flatter its nationalist electorate.

On the other hand, if this announcement were to materialize, the Polish armies would then have firepower three times greater than that of all European armies combined.

60 times more multiple rocket launchers than the French Army in 2030

Let us recall, in this respect, that the LPM 2024-2040 provides, for the French Army, the replacement of the 8 LRU currently in service, with 13 new long-range rocket launcher systems in 2030, 60 times less than the Polish armies will have it.

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