Eleven bidders enter tender for submarines for Polish Navy
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In mid-July, the Minister of National Defense, Mariusz Błaszczak, announced the commencement of the ORKA program. He emphasized that this program, involving the purchase of new submarines for the Polish Navy, is one of the most significant modernization programs for the Polish Armed Forces.
The spokesman for the Armament Agency informed the Polish Press Agency (PAP) that eleven entities have participated in the process. “These are primarily European countries: Spain, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Italy, as well as the Republic of Korea,” Lt. Col. Polak noted.
Polak also stated that all of the aforementioned manufacturers are among the world’s elite. “These are top-tier companies and producers,” he observed. He added that the Armament Agency will now conduct a thorough verification and analysis of the submitted offers. “We will have to wait a bit longer for a decision,” Lt. Col. Polak summarized.
The minister of National Defense stated at the end of May that the goal of the process of equipping the Polish Navy with new submarines would be to “purchase submarines along with the transfer of necessary technologies, which we want to obtain through an offset order.”
The purchase of new submarines has been part of successive editions of the Technical Modernization Plan for years. The ORKA Program was a priority in the Technical Modernization Plan for the years 2013-2022, and it was also included in subsequent plans for the years 2017-2026 and 2021-2035.
Originally, within the ORKA Program, the Ministry of National Defense planned to acquire three or four new submarines, with the program’s value estimated at EUR 2.25 bln. According to previous announcements, Poland intended to purchase new submarines armed with long-range maneuvering missiles.
Currently, the Polish Armed Forces have one submarine in service - ORP Orzeł, which was built in the Soviet Union and entered service in the Polish Army in the mid-1980s. Additionally, since 2002, the Polish Navy has also utilized small submarines of the Kobben type acquired from Norway - a total of four units, two of which were retired from service in 2021.