In late January 2026, as the final signatures were placed on the record €3.5 billion contract for the ‘San’ anti-drone shield, the Polish government hailed it as a historic breakthrough for national sovereignty (Polskie Radio, 2026). However, behind the celebration lies an important industrial gambit.
Today, Poland is investing heavily in the defence sector and rearming faster than any other European country. Warsaw is now NATO’s leader in relative military investment, spending close to 5 per cent of GDP in 2026 (Warsaw Business Journal, 2024). Indeed, Poland is facing war on its borders and has a major defensive role within NATO and the EU, which directly explains Warsaw’s significant investments in tanks, artillery, and ammunition. This urgency is therefore justified, but raises an important question: Will this arms race be beneficial for Poland in the long term?
The strategy Poland should pursue lies between two extremes: co-production and integration into European supply chains. This approach relies on joint purchasing, standardised equipment used across allied armies, and a degree of dependence on allies in order to build national capabilities where added value and expertise are crucial. Poland should move beyond simply assembling foreign-designed weapons under licence and prioritise higher-skilled activities such as electronic components, certification, maintenance, and modernisation. Indeed, Poland’s heavy reliance on imports has so far limited the economic returns of its defence surge to less than 0.2 percent of GDP growth per year (Capital Economics, 2025). This would turn defence spending into a tool for strengthening Poland’s industrial base rather than a series of disconnected purchases.
To achieve this, Warsaw must navigate two distinct paths. On the one hand, defence spending currently goes hand in hand with imports and dependence. Between 2020 and 2024, nearly 64 per cent of the weapons imported by European countries came from the United States (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2025). In Poland, this figure is even more unbalanced because Warsaw bypassed European group purchases and decided to favour bilateral agreements with Washington and Seoul (RAND, 2025). To be sure, buying off-the-shelf is the fastest way to secure a border, but it risks confining Poland to the role of an arms assembler. Recent contracts for the K2PL tank at the Bumar-Łabędy plant demonstrate efforts to avoid this (Breaking Defense, 2025). However, even if the tanks are produced locally, Poland should use them to acquire the technology and not just assemble Korean kits. Without a guarantee of participation in maintenance, modernisation, and production of subsystems, Poland could find itself deploying sophisticated equipment without having the industrial capacity to maintain it in wartime. 
On the other hand, Poland has a very large industrial capacity compared to its European neighbours. It benefits from a large and skilled workforce in mechanical engineering, electronics, and automotive sectors, with manufacturing accounting for nearly one in five jobs in the country (EURES/Eurostat, 2024). If managed well, this demand can promote training and technological modernisation (CEPR, 2025). Poor management, however, risks becoming a permanent financial drain (Deloitte, 2025). This raises the risk of what could be called a defence trap: a cycle where you spend like a superpower, but you remain as dependent as a customer. Importing everything would guarantee short-term readiness but create long-term vulnerability, a temporary shield in exchange for an eternal leash. The window for choice is still open, but decisions taken over the next few years will quietly, and perhaps irreversibly, shut it.
