JASSMs To Equip Polish F-16s

[AMDR]

JASSMs To Equip Polish F-16s
JASSMs To Equip Polish F-16s | Defense News | defensenews.com

Poland will acquire joint air-to-surface standoff missiles for its F-16 fleet. (Lockheed Martin)

WARSAW — Poland’s Ministry of Defense has signed a deal with Lockheed Martin to acquire AGM-158 joint air-to-surface standoff missiles (JASSMs) for its fleet of 48 F-16 fighter jets. The contract is worth about US $250 million, the ministry said in a statement.

“We have never had as modern weapons as those that we will acquire through this contract,” Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak said Thursday at the signing ceremony.

Poland joins Australia and Finland as the third non-US country to acquire the missiles. The foreign military sale was approved by the US Congress in October.

The missiles will be delivered to Poland’s military from 2016 to 2019. Under the plan, the Polish Air Force will reach initial operational capability with the weapon in March 2017.

The procurement will be carried out as part of the Defense Ministry’s Polish Claws program, which is designed to significantly improve the country’s deterrence capacity.

On behalf of the Polish Defense Ministry, the deal was signed by Brig. Gen. Slawomir Szczepaniak, who heads its Armament Inspectorate.

Lockheed Martin says the JASSM is a long-range, semi-autonomously guided, conventional, air-to-ground, precision standoff missile, designed to destroy high-value, well-defended targets.

 

[ptldM3]

This is a game changer in standoff capability for Poland and in general puts Polish F-16s ahead of most other F-16 variants in terms of survivability against modern defenses.

 

[C130]

so we'll sell them to Poland but not South Korea

believe JASSM-ER will be modified for the Long Range Anti Ship Missile.

going to be seeing this baby a lot in the future.

 

[Hyperion]

Interesting indeed!

so we'll sell them to Poland but not South Korea

 

[Broccoli]

so we'll sell them to Poland but not South Korea

believe JASSM-ER will be modified for the Long Range Anti Ship Missile.

going to be seeing this baby a lot in the future.

US govt didn't allow JASSM to be sold for Finland in 2007. After Georgian war Finland asked again and this time sale was approved by US govt and politics clearly play large part in these JASSM deals... perhaps US is sending a message to Russia.

 

[Aepsilons]

Interesting indeed!

Some security issues need to be ironed out there (Korea).

 

[Aepsilons]

I understand Poland's need for the JASSM, the reason being the vast distance between it and anything of value in Russia, but what would South Korea's rational be. It's current stock covers North Korea, the JASSM would be a major upgrade, but not a radical shift in the South's capabilities. Add the US into the mix with its long-range capabilities, and the South just doesn't need anything like this. I don't know the US rational for barring South Korea from buying a weapon Finland and Poland can, perhaps it's related to Japan or China, but I can say that the South really doesn't need anything like this when the North can't properly defend its airspace in the first place. Why use a stealth cruise missile when your enemy doesn't have effective air defenses? And for anyone thinking, I doubt the South would be too willing to opt for a first strike against the North using stealthy missiles. The South doesn't want a war nor would the North be defeated before it would return fire.

There are various reasons why the United States would be obliged not to provide this system to South Korea. For one, there are security issues regarding South Korea and the possibility of this technology falling into the hands of for one, the Chinese. Secondly, the deployment of the JASSM to Seoul would further complicate relations with the Chinese, and even the Japanese. Given the recently protestation by Beijing on the deployment of THAAD system in the region, I would correlate that in this conjecture.

 

[Hindustani78]

 

[Secret Service]

this bird is a beauty