Polish army and navy officers on parade on Navy Day in front of the ORP Błyskawica Ship Museum in Gdynia, Poland on Nov. 28, 2024. Polish Ministry of Defense/Flickr
Poland prides itself on being the only nation to have conquered Moscow and not retreated—in the early 17th century—but in more recent years the boot has been on the other foot, and Poles have seen Russia as an existential threat to their independence.
When Russia occupied Crimea in 2014, Poland was spending 1.88 percent of its GDP on defense, but that rose to 4.1 percent last year and is due to reach 4.7 percent in 2025.
Poland’s Defense Ministry says the country’s army is now 207,500 strong, making it the third largest in NATO in terms of personnel after the United States and Turkey.
Does having a big army count for anything in modern warfare, and has Poland spent its bigger defense budget wisely?
Tim Ripley, a defense analyst and author of “Little Green Men: The Inside Story of Russia’s New Military Power,“ told The Epoch Times: ”The Polish armed forces have a degree of mass, in terms of numbers of people and equipment that other armed forces, including major countries in Europe, have lost.”
“They’ve also got significant reserve forces who they actively train, prepare, and equip. They also have a very large border defense organization. So they have lots of people and lots of capability,” he said.
Ripley said the Polish armed forces compared very favorably with the British Army, which has 73,000 regular troops, and 25,000 reserves.
On its website, the Polish Defense Ministry says its reserves, the 50,000-strong Territorial Defense Forces (TDF), were “an integral part of Poland’s defense and deterrence potential.”
The ministry says the reserves’ role is to conduct “counter hybrid and asymmetric warfare,” and provide support to host the reception of other NATO forces in Poland.
Poland abolished national service in 2010, so its army is fully professional.
Ripley said they also have a solid esprit de corps and a simple defense plan of keeping the enemy out.
“The important thing to remember about the Polish armed forces’ defense policy—it’s all about national defense. They don’t have any of these grandiose ambitions that the Brits and Americans have to be world policeman,” he said.
Ripley said Polish soldiers are focused only on protecting their homeland, unlike their American counterparts.
“That makes it far easier to motivate the troops to defend their homes than it does to die for some village in Afghanistan.”
However, Albert Swidzinski, director of analyses at Warsaw-based think tank Strategy & Future, told The Epoch Times the size of the Polish armed forces was misleading.
“In theory, it does sound impressive. However, the problem is it’s more of a political objective, rather than a military goal,” he said.
Although Russia represented an “existential threat,” he said, Polish politicians were, “trumping up those numbers beyond what they actually are.”
“They’re counting people that have very little to do with warfighting,” Swidzinski said.
In addition, he said, they were buying military equipment rather than thinking about the correct force structure.
“Buying a lot of equipment and saying you have a lot of troops is insufficient to make it a fighting force,” Swidzinski said.
In October, the armed forces chief of staff said Poland would need an even larger army. He said it might be difficult to recruit enough soldiers considering the country’s aging population.
“Everything is indicating that we are the generation that will stand up in arms to defend our country. And neither I nor any of you intend to lose this war,” General Wieslaw Kukula told an audience at the University of Land Forces in Wroclaw.
“We will win it, we will come back and we will continue to build Poland, but something has to happen. We have to build armed forces prepared for this type of action.”
Kukula said the demographic crisis would harm recruitment, but it has to happen.
“The adversary’s potential is so large that we must build a much larger army, which means that we must also implement the general service model.”
Ripley said Poland had made a concerted drive to produce more of its equipment at home, to boost their economy.
“It’s not seen as being a drain on the economy, because, you’re putting money back in, and it produces jobs, and it produces tax revenue and all that kind of stuff,” Ripley said.
Swidzinski pointed out that although Poland produces a lot of military hardware at home it still procures the vast majority of its big-ticket items abroad, mainly from the United States and South Korea.
Swidzinski said Poland still has a few MIG-29 fighter jets, which were bought in the 1980s, and was planning to pension them off in 2026 after talks about transferring them to Ukraine broke down.
In 2020, Poland signed a $4 billion deal to buy F-35 Lightning II jets from Lockheed Martin and revealed the first of them in August 2024.
Unveiling the plane on a visit to Lockheed Martin’s headquarters in Fort Worth, Poland’s Deputy Defense Minister Pawel Bejda said: “Facing the violations of our airspace, cyberattacks, and other provocations we have to commit the appropriate resources in order to defend ourselves from these direct threats.”
A Polish pilot makes the first flight at the controls of an F-35 Lightning II fighter jet—known as a Husarz—at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith, Ark., on Jan. 31, 2025. Courtesy of Polish Ministry of Defense/Flickr
“I am happy that defense spending is met with popular approval. This spending allows us to pursue an ambitious program of modernization and transformation of the Polish armed forces,” he said.
In 2022 Warsaw also signed a $4.75 billion agreement to buy 250 M1A2 Abrams tanks and later signed a $1.4 billion deal to acquire 116 older M1A1s.
Whether bought from abroad or produced locally, it all costs huge sums of money. Poland’s annual defense budget is $35 billion.
On Feb. 4, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said Poland’s high defense spending, along with raised expenditure on health and social care, required sustained fiscal adjustment to reduce the budget deficit.
In a Feb. 4 report, the OECD predicted Poland’s economy would grow by 3.4 percent in 2025, and 3 percent in 2026. However, according to the report, “Fiscal support measures, combined with additional spending on social policies, health and defense, have opened up a substantial fiscal deficit.”
Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine—first annexing Crimea in 2014, then mounting a full invasion in February 2022 and seizing a large chunk of territory in the south and east—has clearly spooked Poland, the Baltic nations, and several other countries, which as recently as the early 1990s, were part of Moscow’s “sphere of influence.”
Ripley said the principal threat to Poland comes from Russia and its ally, Belarus.
He said the Belarus/Poland border was blocked by thick primeval forests, which would be difficult to traverse.
If Warsaw Falls, Poland Falls
However, Swidzinski thinks Poland is very vulnerable because the Belarus border is only 200 kilometers (130 miles) from Warsaw on good roads that take only three hours to drive.
“Historically the way it works is basically once Warsaw falls the war ends. It’s the center of the system, and once it collapses the war is over. It’s only 200 kilometers, and there’s no terrain barriers,” Swidzinski said.
A drone-carrying vehicle—manufactured in Poland for the Polish Army—is pictured in Stalowa Wola, Poland, on Dec. 23, 2024. Wojciech Król/Polish Ministry of Defence
“If you lose terrain, if you lose too much then Warsaw is under threat,” he said.
“What it boils down to is what sort of war are you going to fight? A conflagration with Russia? That is not enough.”
Swidzinski said the Ukrainians came very close, in the early months of the war, to losing Kyiv.
He said if Russians had captured Hostomel airport, on the outskirts of Kyiv in February 2022 they could have brought in big transport planes, carrying troops and equipment, and probably taken the Ukrainian capital.
“The Russians got very close. They got extremely close. It was a coin toss. It was misfortune, that is not to under-estimate the Ukrainians,” Swidzinski said.
Swidzinski said Poland might be mistaken to assume its NATO allies would immediately come to its defense.
He pointed out Article 5 of the NATO charter that says they would assist the invaded country by taking, “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”
Swidzinski said that “such action as it deems necessary” may not mean sending their troops in.
“It would take a while, even if there was political will among all the members of NATO,” he said.
Swidzinski said he thought Poland had made a mistake in investing so heavily in tanks, which had proved during the Ukraine conflict to be so vulnerable to drones.
He pointed out that Poland only had 96 drones, and they were mainly large Reaper drones, while Ukraine had built thousands and was deploying them to great effect.
The general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said on Feb. 7, in a post on Facebook, that it had destroyed 24,815 Russian drones since the start of the war.
“We have not thought about the war we are going to fight and haven’t learned the lessons of the Ukrainians’ fight. Tanks aren’t going to win a war,” Swidzinski said.
A Polish Defense Ministry spokesman said, in a statement sent to The Epoch Times by email, that increasing the country’s defense spending is “an investment in peace and prosperity through deterrence.”
“Through this spending, Poland recognizes its role as an important NATO member both for the region and the continent as a whole,” he said.
“It is an example to our partners that security is not something that can be achieved alone.
“It requires a greater shift in thinking that focuses on the benefits of investing in maintaining peace, revitalizing industries, and strengthening by cooperating with our partners and showing real commitment to our values.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
Chris Summers
Author
Chris Summers is a UK-based journalist covering a wide range of national stories, with a particular interest in crime, policing and the law.
