"Military And Military Sub-Plane" author: Lu Zhi
On the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, man-portable air defense missiles are a hot topic, and many Russian helicopters have been shot down by Stinger missiles, and the scene is very tragic. There is one missile in all the man-portable air defense missiles in the world that is very strange, and the strangeness here does not refer to its shape and performance, but to the process of development and equipment, which is the Polish Grom missile.
▲ Polish Grom missile
Looking at the earlier history, the Soviet Union and the United States also attached great importance to the development and equipment of man-portable air defense missiles, such as the 9K32 used in the early Soviet Union. The performance of this missile was relatively ordinary, so the Soviet Union later developed a new man-portable air defense missile code-named 9K38, and also derived a variety of improved models. This type of missile, which first entered service in the Soviet army in 1981, is a portable air defense missile with similar performance to the Stinger missile.
▲ 9K38 in the West code name is SA18
Then we have to talk about Poland. During the Cold War, Poland's relations with the Soviet Union were good, so Poland could produce portable surface-to-air missiles under Soviet licenses. However, as mentioned earlier, the performance of early man-portable missiles after entering the 1980s was average, so Poland wanted to produce the newly developed 9K38 missile developed by the Soviet Union. However, in 1990, the relations between Poland and the Soviet Union deteriorated, and since it betrayed the Soviet Union, it was impossible for the Soviet Union to hand over the advanced 9K38 missile to them. According to the thinking of normal countries, since they are not given, they will find ways to obtain the same kind of missiles in the West. However, Poland's choice was very strange, dead or alive to see the 9K38 missile, and then let its own advanced design bureau join forces to study a new weapon similar to the 9K38 missile, vowing to compete with the Soviet Union. The question is, Poland's technical reserves are limited, how do they develop new missiles? The answer is even stealing!
When Poland was about to develop its own 9K38 missile, the Soviet Union collapsed. So Polish intelligence agencies purchased drawings and technical information for the 9K38 missile from the Soviet factory that produced the 9K38 missile. With the data, Poland can develop its own 9K38 missile. But the problem is that Poland's industrial production capacity is not comparable to that of the Soviet Union after all, and many important missile components cannot be produced, so Poland imports missile parts from Russia after the disintegration, which shows that the relationship between Poland and Russia was still OK at that time. In the late 1990s, when Poland was about to join NATO, it was finally able to produce its own Grom missile completely independently. If it is like the story, it is still a relatively good ending at this point, but the turn of events has occurred.
▲ Brazilian soldiers using 9K38 missiles
After joining NATO, Poland clearly wanted to be the enemy of Russia. As an advanced man-portable air defense missile with good performance, Poland actually wanted to make money from these weapons after its successful development. So Georgia bought 30 launchers and more than 100 missiles from Poland for a very simple purpose: the Russo-Georgian War. Georgia fired about 12 missiles during the war and hit 9 air targets, including Su-25 attack aircraft. Poland's practice of stabbing the knife in the back obviously made Russia very dissatisfied, but Poland did not stop its own operations, and successively provided new missiles to Indonesia and Lithuania, and even Japan and the United States also purchased this missile for testing and evaluation, after all, it is almost exactly the same as the 9K38 missile used by Russia itself, which is equivalent to saying that the United States has fully mastered the technical performance of the 9K38 missile.
If Georgia explicitly bought missiles from Poland for war with Russia, Poland can say that it can be justified without direct mischief, and what happened later has made Russia extremely annoyed, and perhaps every reader who sees such a country will feel that this is a husky that is upside down.
Polish soldiers are using Gorom missiles
The war between Russia and Chechnya is known to everyone, it is very bloody, and Russia has suffered heavy losses. In 2008, Russia actually found a Grom missile from Poland among the weapons of captured Chechen militants. Russia immediately denounced Poland, after all, any country hates this kind of covert bad practice. Poland was quick to explain, claiming that Russia had deliberately linked Poland to Chechnya, and that Russia had deliberately put them on Chechnya after capturing similar missiles from the Georgians. Although this matter is inconclusive, and the media of the two countries report on each other, it can be seen from the performance of Poland since the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War that the country is obviously a very unpacking wall grass.
Before the Russo-Ukrainian War had even begun, Poland had purchased 250 advanced M1 tanks, and the reason was to prevent Russian tanks from entering Poland. After Ukraine's navy and air force were crushed, Poland claimed to provide fighter jets and airfields for Ukraine to use against Russia. Although many countries want to join NATO in order to find a bigger backer, it is indeed rare for countries like Poland to jump left and right after joining NATO.