Poland said to be eyeing missile defense decision in June, July

reuters.com ^ | May 13, 2014 | Andrea Shalal

[Tailgunner Joe]

Poland may choose a single winning bidder by June or July in a multi-billion dollar missile defense competition, months earlier than planned due to the crisis in Ukraine, a senior Lockheed Martin Corp executive said on Tuesday.

Marty Coyne, business development director for Lockheed's air and missile defense business, said he saw "a good chance" that a single foreign provider could be selected by early summer.

"There's clearly a sense of urgency," he said.

Coyne, who spoke to Reuters from a defense conference in Slovakia, said Polish concerns about Russia's annexation of Crimea and the crisis in Ukraine could further accelerate a decision in the Polish competition.

Polish Deputy Defense Minister Czeslaw Mroczek told Reuters in March that the country wanted to choose a winner by the end of the year, which already marked an acceleration from its initial plan to buy a new missile defense system in 2015.

President Barack Obama is due to visit Poland in June as part of a trip that will take him to a G7 summit in Brussels and to France for the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.

There are four bidders in the Polish tender: France's Thales , in a consortium with European group MBDA and the Polish state defence group; the Israeli government; Raytheon Co , and the MEADS consortium led by Lockheed.

MEADS has estimated the tender is worth about $5 billion, but experts say the whole missile defense system could be worth as much as 40 billion zlotys ($13 billion), including maintenance costs. It is to be completed by the end of 2022.

The crisis over Ukraine has deeply unsettled officials in Poland, which fell under Soviet domination after World War Two, but was one of the first countries to shake off Communist rule in 1989.

[Veggie Todd]

I thought we were running the shield in Poland, or is that Turkey?

[ThunderSleeps]

According to wikipedia there will be components of the system in Turkey, Romania, and Poland. Maybe Poland wants their own system to augment the NATO stuff. Say a system that will prioritize protecting Polish population centers over others.

[elhombrelibre]

Defense spending throughout Europe will be going up thanks to Putin's recklessness. He says he fears NATO, but he's done more to make it relevant than anyone has since the fall of communism. He's a fool and a tyrant.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117692/fascism-returns-ukraine

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks for the link.  I'm going back to read that more in depth later.


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[rbmillerjr]

nailhead

[Grzegorz 246]

“Maybe Poland wants their own system to augment the NATO stuff.”

It is not a real anti ballistic missile system, just an overall replacement of totally outdated Soviet era air defense technology and upper level will have some capabilities to destroy short-range ballistic missiles as that's what all modern solutions (Aster 30, PAC 3 etc.) offer.