The talks refer to procurement of helicopters within the framework of the “urgent operational needs” procedure, referring to the urgent needs announced by the Army, which means that the said procurement is going to proceed without any tender, and that the agreement is going to be signed by the end of this year. This is especially important, since the Ministry of Defence has one billion zlotys at its disposal within its budget, the sum was to be allocated to procure 50 H225M Caracal helicopters, however, the agreement with Airbus Helicopters will not be concluded in the end. The offset negotiation carried out by the Ministry of Development ended up in a fiasco, and the procurement has been officially closed by the Armament Inspectorate on 7th October 2016.

Relevant invitations for the entities to be involved in the new procurement procedure were sent to PZL Świdnik, PZL Mielec and to the Airbus company. The talks refer to procurement of helicopters within the framework of the “urgent operational needs” procedure, referring to the urgent needs announced by the Army.

As Beata Perkowska, Deputy Director of the MoD’s Centre of Operations noted, commenting on the reasons which contributed to the fact that the previous tender came to an end, within the scope of the said tender one of the entities was privileged, so the Minister of Defence acting at the time “illegally modified the initial tactical and technical assumptions”. It was also stressed that negotiation was concluded, not broken by the Poles.

The announcement pertaining to the initiation of the new procedure lacks details which, in line with the law, will have to be soon disclosed by the Armament Inspectorate of the Polish MoD. Probably then we will be able to get acquainted with the public part of the defined requirements, including number and type of the acquired helicopters, along with procurement deadline. The remaining portion of the information will only be available to the entities who are going to be accepted to take part in the procedures.