Poland to Ramp Up Ammunition Production

Soldiers sit in military vehicles during NATO's Steadfast Defender Brilliant Jump 2024 military exercise in Drawsko Pomorskie, Poland, on Feb. 26, 2024. Cezary Aszkielowicz/Agencja Wyborcza.pl via Reuters

Poland is looking to ramp up production of ammunition rounds in case Russia attacks a NATO member country, according to a senior official.

“Our ambition ... is to have the ability to fill up Polish warehouses in parallel to achieving a full, independent capacity to produce ammunition in Poland, within five to eight years,” Maciej Idzik, board member of the state-owned Polish Armaments Group (PGZ), told Reuters on Sept. 4.

Idzik said PGZ needed 24 months to launch production of all of the necessary parts in order to be able to turn out about 100,000 rounds per year.

The country has sent some of its 155 mm artillery rounds to Ukraine, but it lacks the capacity to produce them from scratch.

“The ambition of Poland, but also of PGZ in this context, is for the warehouses to be full and for there to be enough ammunition to repel the enemy,” Idzik said.

Poland has NATO’s third-largest military and the alliance’s largest in Europe. It spends 3.9 percent of its gross domestic product on the military—almost twice NATO’s current 2 percent target.

In July, NATO issued a statement saying that Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and invasion of Ukraine in 2022 have “fundamentally changed the security environment in Europe.”

It said that it has responded by “significantly strengthening its readiness to protect and defend all Allies.”

In March, the European Commission allocated 500 million euros in funds to allow the European defense industry to ramp up its ammunition production capacity to 2 million per year by the end of 2025.

Five to Eight Years

In April, Germany’s top military official Lt. Gen. Carsten Breuer told reporters during a visit to Poland that he saw a potential threat once Russia has rebuilt its forces from the war in Ukraine.

“By then, based on our analysis, Russia [will have] reconstituted its own forces to a degree that an attack against NATO soil could be possible,” Breuer said.

He said Russia is producing a great deal of war-fighting material, and that it’s not all going to the front line in Ukraine.

“What we see is a threat in five to eight years,” Breuer said.

Of NATO’s 32 members, the six European nations of Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland share a border with Russia.

In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he had no plans to attack any NATO country.

“The idea that we will attack some other country—Poland, the Baltic States, and the Czechs are also being scared—is complete nonsense,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a meeting with senior editors from international news agencies at Lakhta Centre business tower in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on June 5, 2024. Sputnik/Valentina Pevtsova/Pool via Reuters

According to defense expert Steven Pifer, writing for the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, the probability that Putin would challenge a NATO member militarily is not high, but NATO should not underestimate Russia.

“Putin does not like NATO, although evidence suggests he does not fear an attack,” Pifer wrote in a July report.

He said that Russia already has engaged NATO members in a hybrid conflict, using disinformation campaigns, election interference, cyberattacks, and physical sabotage, among other tools.

“Putin has done the unexpected and miscalculated before. Underestimating Putin’s ambitions would seem a risky proposition,” Pifer said.

Reuters contributed to this report.