Reuters:
Poland expects to sign a deal worth up to $7.6 billion with U.S. firm Raytheon to buy eight Patriot missile defense systems by the end of the year, Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz said on Friday.
Warsaw sees the deal as central to a thorough modernization of its armed forces by 2023, in light of what Macierewicz called “growing aggression and a growing threat from the East.”
NATO member Poland has sped up efforts to overhaul its military following Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014 and in response to Moscow’s renewed military and political assertiveness in the region.
“Those systems allow us to guarantee the security of the Polish state,” Macierewicz told a news conference.
The contract still requires approval from the U.S. Congress, as it involves a purchase of advanced military technology for which special permission must be obtained.
“It’s premature to say that it is all done,” Bill Schmieder, Raytheon’s head for Europe, told the same briefing. “But we have very high hopes that the process will proceed normally.”
The Patriot mobile missile defense interceptors are designed to detect, track and engage unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), cruise missiles and short-range or tactical ballistic missiles…
