US to deploy Patriot missiles to Poland

I believe just the opposite. Without American or EU meddling into Polish affairs, Poland would make itself less likely a target for an attack. She should look after her own ass, first and foremost.

I feel there is to much at risk and with the revival of Stalin and Soviet ways I don't like leaving Poland a sitting target. If Putin were out of the picture I might aggree.

What nonsense!! Filios is so clearly right here, celinski. Meddling, like the US did in Georgia, will only complicate things. Face it, most of Poland doesn't want this shield. Iran poses no threat, that's all spin and hype.

Putin is a very reasonable man for the most part. One of the best politicians for getting things done. I don't like some of his heavy-handed decisions but, on balance, he is solid.

I would agree, if you put it like the Russian ways are undemocratic or sometimes even barbaric. But it's not really a revival. This is somewhat of a heritage, bad heritage that lessens with the time goes on as it takes a lot of time to wither away survivals of the past. All those talks about "revival of Stalinism" looks like a nice bed-time story learnt by heart by the West. Stalinism is mostly condemned in Russian media and there's no visible way to get back. It's all over. Btw it's one of the main reasons why Americans in Russia are considered stupid - total dependent and blind belief to what the government says. As for me... I wouldn't see it as a sign of stupidity. Afterall it's not your fault, this is all on your government. Moreover I see it as something that brings us closer to each other. I do find the dialogue "politicians-people" very close in both our countries.

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That's interesting because from what I see in the media it paints a different picture. It really helps to hear that much of what we read is false. Thanks for sharing this insight.

As only something something "nostlagic" appears in Russian Media, the West Media obliged to say "there's stalinism revival in Russia". I can't recall any articles whitewashing stalin's personality. Even progovernmental media tries to avoid talking about his figure.

Nostalgia, Russia was great back then, its no longer great, everyone likes to have a chat and give it a praise but no one really wants it back, victory at Kursk was fun, Gulags were not, when not pressed Russians remember the good stuff but when they do remember the bad stuff too.

Currently Russians are going through an identity crysis, they dont want Stalinism or communism, democracy western style is out of the question and the nation is not ready for democracy as such.

Why not moderate socialism then, Sokrates? They are accustomed to communism so why not tone it down a fraction? Look at Hungary, they yearn for the days of communism as many fell by the wayside under capitalism.

Anyway, Patriot missiles is the topic. Poland doesn't need these to be honest. It is equipped enough to deal with modern contingencies.

No one here has much spoken of Poland's military capabilities...

Yeah, strange that.

Because they cant afford it, few people realise that Russia has NO economy, zip, nothing, they're operating as a state almost entirely due to their resources and its still not enough.

There's also a problem of Russia having no national or political elites who would trigger such changes, basically all of goverment are either old commies, military personnel or mafia, none of these people are ready or willing to do anything that could even remotely lessen their power.


Militarily we need them and while initially i was against the shield once its decided we should roll with it to simply defy Russia otherwise they will think their "veto" still has political leverage here and use it more often.


Well our military needs patriots, currently Polish airforce is relatively small but modern and trained to a point where our pilots are arguably the best in Europe but we do not have anti-ballistic sams, thats a pretty big defense gap and if we did not get them for free we would have to buy them and since our military is in the process of gigantic modernisation we have enough stuff to spend money on without additional expensive assets to buy.

Installing a shield to snub Russia is not good business really. Obama has the right idea although I'm not sure what dividends it will yield.

Russia's problem is that others like India and China have the know-how advantage and are establishing themselves ever more.

I wonder what Russia's reaction to the Iranian pipeline proposal is. I know Unocal and Chevron/Texaco were peeved at not winning that contract.

So they don’t have anything to defend against even like Scuds? What about the Polish Navy? Any missile defenses there? Any missile cruisers, aircraft carriers or nuke subs? (Lol… an old joke had the Polish Navy with screen doors on their subs!)

Is Polish military service volunteer or compulsory?

I think conscription has recently been abolished, Randal. You had to sign up but I think they revised the position in Nov last year. There were instances where you could get out of military service but now the position appears to be clearer.

There's 2K12, SA2, ships defend with lighter missiles, the problem is that all Polish SAMs are either medium or short ranged and many of those are older slower models which makes interception difficult, one way or the other we would have to buy Patriots, now we we have them for free.

Also these other systems are used to protect troops, they're tactical defense systems so yes we could defend against scuds but we were defensless against more modern ballistic missiles.


Aircraft carriers or cruisers on Baltic? You get across that sea in something like 2 days.

Currently Polish navy constitutes 2 Oliver Hazard frigates, 4 corvettes, 3 fast attack rocket ships, 4 attack submarines, 18 de-mining ships, 5 landing ships,1 logistic support ship and about 50 smaller support vessels. Subs are not nuclear, not even Germany uses nuclear subs, its not worth it on such a small and shallow sea.


It was compulsory till this year, like i said we're undergoing huge modernisation which includes the armed forces going completely professional effective from this year onwards.

Interesting, Sok. I really had no knowledge of it. I guess I could have researched all that myself but thanks.


That’s how it is here. You have to register but active service is voluntary.

How many personnel in the Polish Military?

Geez, I can't answer that question. My answer would be, um, many :)

100 thousand professional soldiers, 20 thousand active reserve (something like US national guard)

12700 navy personnel.

34000 airforce personnel.

The reserve will probably get larger once the equipment is modernized but till 2018 the land forces stay at 120 thousand.

I think all told we have about 1.2 million. I’m not sure exactly but I recall that was the number getting bandied about a couple years ago in discussions of troop deployment numbers.

So our troops in Iraq really only account for about 10% of our total personnel.

You currently have 138 thousands in Iraq, your regular army has approximately 580 thousand men, National Guard some 320 thousand, of these some 350 thousand are fighting men, combine them with the army reserve and you have about 20% of your total active fighting men in Iraq, add to this approximately 30 thousand in Afganistan and you have about 1/4th of the total active strength of U.S army engaged in conflict.

Well, according to Wiki my number was low. Turns out we have a little more than 1.4 million active personnel and another 1.4 million reserves. With 138,000 in Iraq, that’s still only about 10% of our total active duty personnel.

Still, there is talk of sending more troops to Afghanistan. Currently, 1,600 Polish troops serve there and they want to hike it up to over 2,000. A very small number but I heard that they sent some GROM units. They kick butt.

Actually i like the idea of sending units to Afganistan, screw supporting US, screw the non-existant war on terror, its important to have soldiers who fought in a war.


US army has one of the highest support-fighting rations in the world which means that for over a milion men you have something like 300-400thousand people doing the actuall fighting, out of them at least 90 thousand people are all engaged, whats left home is national guard and reserve, do not look at total numbers because even with hudreds of thousands of servicemen back home US is still with pants down at the moment.

Are you saying that the Taliban don't terrorise? I'd argue that holding sb for months under the belief that they are going to be beheaded at any moment is terrorising. Yes, there were political motives behind Afghanistan (appointing a former Unocal consultant, Karzai, to be PM for a start) but it doesn't change the nature of their actions.

I think it's good that soldiers get practice but you have tripped yourself up. Why send soldiers into a 'non-existent' war? For what cause are they fighting? You know, you can defend troops in court in wartime, but sending soldiers to kill for no stated reason is just murder.

What if the US just wanted combat practice too? You can't have double standards.

Yes they do but thats because they're backwater barbarians rolling in their own shit and moaning to Allah rather than some great evil terrorist organization, if we just kept out of Pakistan and Afganistan and let them rot in their own crap they'd leave us alone as well.


Oh the war very much exists, its just that we fight to fuel agendas of certain groups rather than to actually combat international terror.


Its not enough to invade country just for practice but since it already invaded and in a total mess why not join in?


For nothing, i'll be cynical and go out of the limb saying i'm completely willing to get some random afganistan folks get shot up so my army gets experienced personnel, i know i'm in the wrong and so on but i simply dont care, as for war in Afganistan its not completely for nothing.

One of its purposes is to destabilise Pakistan for example, Pakistan which is a prospective nuclear ally to China, but thats US and UK, we're not big enough to even have a presence in such large scale plans, yet.

Why must you argue with me about everything? I said nothing about ground fighting forces only; I have repeatedly said total military personnel. My statement is correct while you used bad numbers on your stat before. You mentioned Army fighting forces. We here have four branches of military: Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. Plus Coast Guard, Reserves and National Guard troops.

We also have about one million domestic police officers and a bunch of border patrol agents –not that they have anything to do with this discussion but they are first responders in homeland security.

Please, you're trying to show that America's military preparedness is compromised and this is simply not the case. That is little more than anti-Bush Democrat propaganda.

The war in Afghan is stupid. Unlike the urban warfare in Iraq, the fighting region is so rural that our Air Force alone should be able to take care of the job.

I'm trying to show you that certain forces in U.S are compromising your military preparadness in order to justify further militarisation of USA and eventual limitation of freedoms.

Eventually they'll say "hey look we dont have enough soldiers to fight all those terrorists, lets start a draft".

I am all for compulsory military service in some form. For all the freebies lazy American ingrates enjoy –from free medical care to college tuition paid- I think everyone should have to serve, say, two years of some service between high school and college, like some other countries do. A simple give-back for all they get for free. They would also learn things that would benefit society as a whole, such as discipline, self reliance and respect, things much lacking in our Liberalized society today.

Randal here's food for thought, how about instead of forcing people to become efficient simply teach them, create an educated self aware society rather than militarize a nation.

People say that most Americans are stupid and thats absolutely true but you're not stupid by default, you were made stupid so you would not appreciate what you have and would not resist it being taken away, your comments are testament to how deeply indoctrinated people in US are.

Many Poles are unable to appreciate the advantages of this and look to violence as the answer to their problem

You just have to look at the frequency of 'crush them' posted on the forum to realise this