Programme Orka: Poland Ready to Begin Negotiations with Other Partners
If Sweden’s final offer regarding the sale of submarines to Poland proves unsatisfactory, negotiations with other partners will begin — said Deputy Minister of National Defence Stanisław Wziątek at the parliamentary defence committee. He announced that the Ministry of National Defence will not disclose any information about the ongoing negotiations until they are concluded.
On Wednesday, the Sejm’s national defence committee convened at the request of a group of MPs to receive a briefing from the Ministry of National Defence on the process of acquiring new submarines for the Polish Navy — the so-called “Orka” (Eagle Owl) programme. At the end of last year, Sweden was selected as the partner for this programme, offering the A26-class submarines — currently being built for the Swedish Navy and manufactured by Saab.
Poland was set to receive three such vessels, and pending delivery of the first ones, the Swedes were to provide Polish submariners with an older A17 unit for training purposes and to maintain their skills. Negotiations regarding the actual order for the Swedish submarines are currently underway.
At one of the previous committee sessions on “Orka”, information emerged that the negotiations do not cover equipping the future Polish submarines with the capability to launch cruise missiles, which could be used, for example, to strike land targets. As MP Michał Jach (Law and Justice party) noted, this was among the issues that PiS MPs wanted to ask about on Wednesday — it was they who filed the request for the ministerial briefing.
Deputy Minister Stanisław Wziątek, representing the Defence Ministry, announced however that until negotiations conclude — scheduled for the end of June — the Ministry will not publicly disclose, including at open parliamentary committee sessions, the course of the negotiations, and certainly not matters concerning the armament with which the Polish submarines will be equipped. Wziątek assured only that these would be the most cutting-edge solutions available on the market.
Wziątek also added that if “the submitted documents defining the Swedish side’s offer prove unsatisfactory, there may be no signed contract and we will move on to further processing of other offers.” He recalled that other countries had also submitted their offers — including Italy, Germany, France, and South Korea — and that these had been assessed and ranked by a dedicated analytical team.
“But first we are obliged to negotiate the best terms with the supplier that was recommended to the Council of Ministers by the task force,” Wziątek stressed.
He recalled that the task force was composed of representatives from the Ministry of National Defence, the Ministries of Finance, Economy, and State Assets, as well as the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces and the Armament Agency.
The “Orka” programme, which has been underway for many years, is one of the key modernisation programmes for the Polish Navy. Currently, Polish submariners operate a single, obsolete vessel — the ORP Orzeł, built in 1985 in the USSR. For several years, this submarine has regularly required repairs, and if it is withdrawn from naval service, there will be — unless the Swedish proposal regarding the delivery of a so-called “gap-filler” comes to fruition — no vessel at all on which submarine crews could train or even maintain their capabilities.
Source: PortalMorski.pl
