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Poland has signed a €211 million agreement to purchase Piorun man-portable air defense systems 12212162.
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Defence & Security News - Poland
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Poland has signed a €211 million agreement to purchase Piorun man-portable air defense systems.
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Poland's Defence Ministry on Tuesday, December 20, 2016, signed a PLN 932 million (EUR 211 million) agreement to purchase 1,300 Piorun (Thunderbolt) short-range anti-aircraft missiles from the Polish Company Mesko company, part of the state-run Polish Armament Group (PGZ).
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 The new Piorun (MAN-Portable Air-Defense Systems) MANPADS at the front of the picture. (Picture source http://spottedskarzysko.pl/) |
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The agreement was signed by the ministry’s Armament Inspectorate in the presence of Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz, who said that the new missiles would go to the country’s new Territorial Defence Force to be created at the beginning of next year.
The Piorun is a modernized version of the GROM MANPADS (MAN-Portable Air-Defense Systems) designed and manufactured by the Polish Company MESKO based on the Soviet-made 9K38 Igla (SA-18 Grail). The new GROM, code-named Piorun (Thunderbolt) has an entirely new set of characteristics meeting the future battlefield, including the planned air attack and jamming systems. The Piorun MANPADS missile weighs 2 kg, only 0.2 kg than the previous version of the GROM. It remains possible to be shoulder-launched by a single soldier. One of the main feature of the new Piorun MANPADS is the use of a new day/night optical sight mounted on the top of the tube launcher. The Piorun has now an hitting range of 6 km, 500m more than the GROM. |
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