Ukraine’s Ukroboronprom to help bring Poland’s T-72 tanks up to NATO standards
The state-owned concern Ukroboronprom plans to be involved in the program to upgrade the T-72 tanks in the Polish Armed Forces so that they comply with NATO standards.
As reported by Ukroboronprom’s press service on Thursday, one of the options for upgrading the Polish T-72s, a PT-17 tank, upgraded jointly by Ukroboronprom and Polish Zaklady Mechaniczne “Bumar-Labedy” S.A, was presented to a potential client during the International Defense Industry Exhibition MSPO 2017, held in Kielce (Poland) on September 5-8.
According to the report, the modernization was done within the framework of the agreement made between the parties in April, replacing the tank’s guns with NATO 120 mm and upgrading the autoloaders, engine, transmission, fire control systems and dynamic tank defense. The key systems of the upgraded T-72 were developed and prepared by the Ukrainian party.
As Ukroboronprom points out, the positive decision by the Polish Defense Ministry to purchase PT-17s will make it possible for Ukraine’s defense and industrial complex to take part in the massive program to upgrade Poland’s T-72 fleet, which will cost several hundreds of million US dollars.
In January 2016, Ukroboronprom disclosed plans to participate in the program to modernize the Polish PT-91 MBTs, which are licensed versions of the Soviet T-72M1 tanks.
According to open source information, the Polish Armed Forces currently have more than 700 T-72 tanks, of which more than 200 are PT-91 tanks. Ukraine’s T-72 fleet contains an estimated 400 tanks.
The International Defense Industry Exhibition MSPO is one of the largest defense industry exhibitions in Europe, held under the patronage of the Polish President.
This year the central topic of Ukroboronprom’s stand at the exhibition was precision ground weaponry: one of the assets of the bilateral military and technological collaboration is the Pirat laser anti-tank missile system with a range of 2.5 km, developed by the State Kyiv Construction Bureau “Luch” and Polish Mesko.
As reported, Ukraine and Poland initiated a military and technological collaboration in the new geopolitical situation, and are currently working on plans to collaborate in the areas of joint creation of precision ground weaponry, means of anti-air defense, unmanned equipment, as well as the joint modernization of aviation and armored equipment. The collaboration also envisages joint modernization of weaponry for third country markets, including promoting new weaponry on EU markets.