After having ordered and then canceled Airbus Caracal helicopters, then announced and denied an order for Black Hawks, Poland’ s MoD has now announced a new tender for 14 army helicopters to begin to replace its venerable Mi-17s and Sokol W-3s. (RBS photo)
The ministry said NATO member Poland would spend all the funds allocated in the state budget this year to modernise its armed forces, despite having cancelled a preliminary deal to buy 50 Caracal helicopters from France's Airbus.
Critics said cancelling the 13.5 billion zloty ($3.4 billion) Airbus deal would mean Poland could fail to spend all the funds earmarked for army modernisation and fall short of the NATO target of spending at least 2 percent of output on defence.
"The Ministry of Defence plans to spend over 61 billion zlotys on the programme of technical modernisation (of the armed forces) in the years 2017-2022," the ministry said in its statement on Thursday. (end of excerpt)
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from Defense Aerospace - Press releases http://ift.tt/2gHGZ37
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