Poland Leads NATO in Defense Spending, But 26 of Its 45 Warships Are Mine Warfare Vessels

The first of three Project 106 Miecznik frigates, ORP Wicher, was launched on 12 August 2026 at the PGZ Stocznia Wojenna yard in Gdynia. The ship is the largest surface combatant Poland has built for itself, and the first new frigate ordered by Poland since the end of the Cold War.

Wicher displaces roughly 7,700 tonnes at maximum load, measures 138 m long and is designed for 28 knots and a range of about 8,000 nautical miles with a core crew of 120. The armament is heavier than that of the British design it derives from: 32 Mk 41 cells for MBDA CAMM and longer-ranged CAMM-MR interceptors, eight Kongsberg Naval Strike Missiles with provision for eight more, two dual-tube MU90 torpedo launchers, a Leonardo 76 mm gun and two 35 mm mounts. Thales supplies the TACTICOS combat system, the multifunction radars and the sonar suite. The hull is an adaptation of Babcock International's Arrowhead 140, the same parent design as the Royal Navy's Type 31 frigate.

The scale of the change is easier to read against what Poland actually operates today. GlobalMilitary.net's inventory of the Polish Navy records 45 active hulls, and 26 of them — minehunters, minesweepers, minelayers and a mine countermeasures command ship — belong to the mine warfare force. That is more mine warfare vessels than any navy in the world except Russia (44) and China (37), fleets an order of magnitude larger overall. Mine warfare accounts for 58 percent of the Polish fleet; every other category combined accounts for the rest.

What sits above that force is thin and old. The two surface combatants Wicher and its sisters are meant to replace are Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates transferred from the US Navy, ORP Generał Kazimierz Pułaski in 2000 and ORP Generał Tadeusz Kościuszko in 2002, both from a class first commissioned in 1977. The submarine arm is a single boat, the Soviet-built Kilo-class ORP Orzeł, in service since 1986. Poland has no destroyers and no cruisers. Its only modern surface programs to reach the water in the past decade are three Kormoran II minehunters and, further back, three Orkan-class missile craft.

The gap is not one of money. Polish military expenditure reached 46.8 billion dollars in 2025, or 4.50 percent of GDP — the highest share of any NATO member, ahead of Latvia (3.61 percent), Estonia (3.37 percent) and the United States (3.12 percent), and roughly double Poland's own 2.20 percent in 2022. That spending has gone overwhelmingly to land and air power: Poland is 22nd in the global military power ranking largely on the strength of an army rebuilt around K2, Abrams and K9 orders, while the navy waited.

Two more Miecznik hulls follow. Burza is due to be launched in 2027 and commissioned in 2030, Huragan in 2028 and 2031, completing the class by the end of 2031; Wicher itself is scheduled to enter service in 2029. Poland selected Sweden's Saab A26 design in November 2025 to replace Orzeł with three boats under the Orka program, though a contract has yet to be signed. Until those deliveries arrive, the mine warfare force remains the part of the Polish Navy that is actually sized for the Baltic.