Poland plans to buy new generation US cruise missiles: Premier

By Jo Harper

WARSAW (AA) - Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that his country plans to buy new generation JASSM-XR cruise missiles from US company Lockheed Martin.

“We want to be the first or one of the first to acquire these missiles that can be launched from combat aircraft,” Morawiecki said on a visit to a Lockheed Martin plant in Marietta in the US.

Poland – one of Washington’s closest allies in Europe – has promised to increase defense spending to at least 3% of GDP, to meet NATO demands, one of the few members to do so.

Lockheed Martin has released two generations of the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles and the Polish army has purchased several dozen of each of them.

The first generation JASSM AGM-158A entered service in 2009. Five years later, JASSM-ER (extra range) was developed, designated AGM-158B. The latest generation is the AGM-158D, dubbed JASSM-XR (extended extra range).

The first could hit the target from 370 kilometers (230 miles), the next from over 900 kilometers (559 miles). The third generation may have a range of 1,600-1,900 kilometers (994-1,181 miles), according to media reports.

The missiles are made with the use of stealth technology, which makes it much harder to detect them by radar.

The new range has not even been acquired yet by the US army though it plans to purchase 100 such missiles next year.

The purchase of missiles by Poland will be quite complicated. The sale must be approved by the State Department and the US Congress, and Lockheed Martin can only produce a limited number of 500 JASSMs per year.