NATO Ally Scraps Purchase of US Black Hawk Helicopters
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
Poland has scrapped plans to buy more S-70i Black Hawk helicopters as Warsaw rethinks its strategy for fighting a battle-hardened Russia pouring massive investment into its military.
Why It Matters
Poland has become a military powerhouse, leading the NATO alliance on defense spending.
The country, which is situated on NATO's eastern flank, has felt the reverberations of more than three years of war in Ukraine, repeatedly scrambling fighter jets in response to intensive Russian airstrikes on parts of western Ukraine. Warsaw has been one of Kyiv's most strident supporters.
NATO officials, particularly those from country's forming NATO's eastern edge, have increasingly warned Moscow could mount an attack against the alliance in the coming years, particularly if the U.S. succeeds in brokering a ceasefire in Ukraine.
What To Know
The Polish military changed its "priorities" for its upcoming purchases after "intensive" analysis, said General Wiesław Kukuła, the Chief of the General Staff for the Polish armed forces.
U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters support soldiers during the NATO Noble Jump exercise on a training range near Swietoszow Zagan in Poland on June 18, 2015.
U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters support soldiers during the NATO Noble Jump exercise on a training range near Swietoszow Zagan in Poland on June 18, 2015.
AP Photo/Alik Keplicz, file
"The aim of these changes is to better adapt to the challenges of the future battlefield," Kukuła told reporters on Friday.
Warsaw will prioritize training and combat helicopters, as well as multi-use helicopters able to land on ships, heavy transport helicopters for the country's land forces and search and rescue aircraft, Kukuła added.
Poland may look at buying other equipment, like drones or tanks, rather than the S-70i multirole helicopter, Grzegorz Polak, a spokesperson for the Polish Armament Agency, told Reuters.
The war in Ukraine has spurred on drone advancement at astonishing speeds, while both sides have still relied heavily on the use of tanks and armored vehicles.
Poland's previous government said in mid-2023 it was starting the process to buy more Black Hawk helicopters from PZL Mielec, a Polish branch of Lockheed Martin.
Secretary of State for Poland's Ministry of National Defense Paweł Bejda said reports that a contract for the Black Hawk helicopters had been "canceled" were false, but the country's Armament Agency had decided to "terminate the procurement process."
Kukuła pointed on Friday to the Polish purchase of 32 next-generation F-35 fighter jets and tens of advanced Apache helicopters that would soon "land on Polish soil" as part of preparations for the "future battlefield."
What People Are Saying
Paweł Bejda, Secretary of State for Poland's Ministry of National Defense, said during a press conference on Friday: "The geopolitical situation, the situation in the east—the war in Ukraine, what Russia is currently buying, equipping its army—and everything that our air forces are carrying out during tasks connected to the NATO system, is being analyzed."
Brigadier General Artur Kuptel, the head of Poland's Armaments Agency, told the media: "The priorities we have heard about today will give light for the coming days, for the coming months, in terms of the directions of activities in the area of helicopter aviation."
What Happens Next
Poland ordered nearly 100 AH-64E advanced Apache helicopters from Boeing in mid-2024, which the aerospace giant said would "strengthen Poland's operational capability and interoperability with the U.S., NATO and allied nations."
Warsaw is expected to receive its first F-35 fifth-generation fighter jets from the U.S. next year.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
14 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
European leaders to join Ukraine's Zelenskyy for White House meeting with Trump
KYIV (AP) — European and NATO leaders announced Sunday that they'll be joining President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington for crucial talks with President Donald Trump, rallying around the Ukrainian leader after his exclusion from Trump's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The remarkable move — with one European leader after another announcing that they'll be at Zelenskyy's side when he travels to the White House on Monday — was an apparent effort to ensure that the meeting goes better than the last one in February, when Trump berated the Ukrainian president in a heated Oval Office encounter. 'The Europeans are very afraid of the Oval Office scene being repeated and so they want to support Mr. Zelenskyy to the hilt,' said retired French Gen. Dominique Trinquand, a former head of France's military mission at the United Nations. 'It's a power struggle and a position of strength that might work with Trump," he said in a phone interview. The European leaders' presence at Zelenskyy's side, demonstrating Europe's support for Ukraine, could potentially help ease concerns in Kyiv and in other European capitals that Ukraine risks being railroaded into a peace deal that Trump says he wants to broker with Russia. It wasn't immediately clear whether all or just some of them would be taking part in the actual meeting with Trump. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on X that she will take part in the talks, "at the request of President Zelenskyy.' The secretary-general of the NATO military alliance, Mark Rutte, will also take part in the meeting, his press service said. The office of President Emmanuel Macron announced that the French leader will travel on Monday to Washington 'at the side of President Zelenskyy' although it didn't immediately specify that he'll be in the meeting. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will also be part of the European group, but the statement from his office likewise didn't specify that he will be in the talks with Trump. The grouped trip underscored European leaders' determination to ensure that Europe has a voice in Trump's attempted peace-making, after the U.S. president's summit on Friday with Putin — to which Zelenskyy wasn't invited.
CNBC
15 minutes ago
- CNBC
Ukraine and allies left scrambling as Trump shifts toward Putin after Alaska summit
LONDON — Ukraine and its allies were scrambling Sunday to respond to President Donald Trump's apparent shift toward Vladimir Putin's hardline position after their summit in Alaska. European leaders announced that they would join Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington on Monday as they seek to navigate America's new approach to ending the war. Trump signaled Saturday that he was reversing his insistence on a ceasefire and instead pursuing a permanent peace deal — aligning the United States with the Kremlin rather than Kyiv and its European backers. As Ukraine and Europe work out how best to move forward, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, European Commission President Ursula von de Leyen, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced that they would be joining Zelenskyy, perhaps hoping to ensure there is no repeat of his last Oval Office meeting. "The trip will serve as an exchange of information" with Trump, Merz' office said. "The talks will address, among other things, security guarantees, territorial issues, and continued support for Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression." The news came ahead of a virtual meeting of the so-called "coalition of the willing," which includes more than 30 countries working together to support Ukraine. While Trump's reversal on pursuing a ceasefire before fuller peace talks fueled alarm on the continent, he did appear to have taken a step toward another position more aligned with the wishes of Ukraine and Europe. Trump directly engaged with Zelenskyy and European leaders by phone early Saturday morning about the U.S. taking part in a potential NATO-like security guarantee for Ukraine as part of a deal with Russia, two senior administration officials and three sources familiar with the discussions told NBC News. "European and American security guarantees were discussed," one source familiar with the discussions said. "U.S. troops on the ground was not discussed or entertained by [Trump]." The security guarantees would be made in the scenario that Russia were to invade Ukraine, again, after a would-be peace deal, the sources said. The sources said that those protections, as discussed by the White House, would not include NATO membership — despite European leaders saying in a joint statement Saturday that Ukraine should be given the right to seek NATO membership. But it was clear that the summit had left Ukraine feeling uneasy. Zelenskyy warned that the Russian leader was complicating efforts to end the war by refusing to halt the brutal fighting before holding further talks. "Russia rebuffs numerous calls for a ceasefire and has not yet determined when it will stop the killing. This complicates the situation," Zelenskyy said in a post on X late Saturday. For civilians on the ground, still under Russian attack even as the diplomatic maneuvering played out, it was not just the substance but the optics of the Alaska talks that caused frustration. "I was hoping that the U.S. wouldn't roll out the red carpet to the enemy," Kyiv resident Natalya Lypei said Saturday. "How can you welcome a tyrant like this?"
Politico
an hour ago
- Politico
Russia is quietly churning out fake content posing as US news
McKenzie Sadeghi, AI and foreign influence editor at NewsGuard, said in an interview that since early 2024, the group has been publishing 'pro-Kremlin content en masse in the form of videos' mimicking these organizations. 'If even just one or a few of their fake videos go viral per year, that makes all of the other videos worth it,' she said. While online Russian influence operations have existed for many years, security experts say artificial intelligence is making it harder for people to discern what's real. Storm-1679 developed a distinct technique in 2024 for combining videos with AI-generated audio impersonations of celebrity and expert voices, according to Microsoft's Threat Analysis Center. One high-profile example of this tactic surfaced ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics and included a fake documentary series featuring Netflix's logo and an AI-generated deepfake voice of actor Tom Cruise as the narrator. And in December 2024, the group used these tools to generate fake videos impersonating trusted sources like journalists, professors and law enforcement to sow seeds of distrust toward NATO member countries and Ukraine. 'They are just throwing spaghetti, trying to see what's going to stick on a wall,' said Ivana Stradner, a researcher on Russia at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank. Sadeghi said that 'timing and the news cycle' — events like elections, sporting events or wars — play a big role in Storm-1679's operations. 'It typically tends to surge and launch a wave of fakes around a particular news event,' she said. And while the majority of these videos rarely gain traction and are quickly debunked, the content occasionally takes off. The group was behind a fabricated E! News video in February that claimed the U.S. Agency for International Development paid for celebrities to visit Ukraine after Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.
