Poland orders 146 more Borsuk fighting vehicles in $2B deal

Poland signed a contract for 146 more of its domestically built infantry fighting vehicles, expanding a rearmament program that has become one of the most significant ground force modernization efforts in NATO Europe, with a deal worth approximately 7.5 billion Polish zloty, equivalent to roughly $2.07 billion at current exchange rates, funded through Poland’s SAFE national security financing program.

The Polish Armaments Agency, the government body responsible for military procurement, signed the agreement with a consortium of Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa, the state-owned defense industrial group, and Huta Stalowa Wola, the steel and armaments factory in southeastern Poland that manufactures the Borsuk. Deliveries of all 146 vehicles will be completed by 2030. The contract represents the second executive production order for the Borsuk program, following a March 2025 agreement worth approximately 6.6 billion zloty covering 111 vehicles scheduled for delivery between 2025 and 2029. With the new contract included, Poland’s confirmed Borsuk orders now total 257 vehicles, enough to equip four mechanized infantry battalions alongside 25 vehicles allocated for reserve and training purposes.

The Borsuk, which translates to Badger in Polish, is Poland’s first domestically designed and built tracked infantry fighting vehicle, developed to replace the Soviet-era BMP-1 that Polish mechanized units have been operating since the Cold War era. The vehicle weighs approximately 28 metric tons (30.9 short tons), measures 7.6 meters (24.9 feet) in length, and accommodates a crew of three alongside six infantry troops who exit through a rear ramp. Its engine is an MTU 8V199 turbo diesel producing 720 horsepower, paired with an Allison 3040 MX automatic transmission, giving it a road speed of 65 km/h (40 mph) and an amphibious speed of 8 km/h (5 mph) using water jets, making it one of the few tracked infantry fighting vehicles currently in production that retains genuine open-water crossing capability.

The weapon system mounted on the Borsuk is the ZSSW-30 unmanned turret, developed jointly by Huta Stalowa Wola and WB Group, a Polish electronics and defense company. Unmanned turret means no crew member sits inside the turret itself during combat, reducing the vehicle’s profile, protecting the crew behind the vehicle’s main armor, and allowing integration of more sophisticated sensor and fire control systems in a smaller external package. The turret carries a 30mm Mk44S Bushmaster II autocannon, the same caliber used on American Bradley and Stryker platforms and Australian AS21 Redbacks, which fires ammunition common to NATO stocks. Two Spike-LR anti-tank guided missiles provide standoff capability against armored targets at ranges up to 4 kilometers (2.5 miles), and the fire control system integrates day and thermal observation channels giving the crew full 24-hour engagement capability.

The Borsuk program’s scale reflects a fundamental reassessment of Poland’s ground force requirements that began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Before the invasion, Poland’s mechanized force modernization timeline was measured in decades. After it, Warsaw dramatically accelerated purchasing across every major capability area while simultaneously expanding its overall defense budget toward a target of 5 percent of GDP, the highest proportion of any NATO member. The current long-term framework agreement for the Borsuk program, signed in February 2023, covers a potential total acquisition of nearly 1,400 vehicles on the Borsuk chassis, including infantry fighting variants and specialized command, reconnaissance, recovery, and engineering versions built on the same Universal Modular Tracked Platform. The total value of the framework agreement exceeds 10 billion euros across all variants if fully exercised.

Huta Stalowa Wola’s production capacity has been scaling to meet this demand. Industry sources cited by Army Recognition reported that serial production has been operating under a dual-shift model since the third quarter of 2025, with the facility expected to reach an output of approximately 100 vehicles annually by mid-2026 once peak efficiency is established. The December 2025 delivery of the first 15 Borsuk vehicles to the 15th Mechanized Brigade at Giżycko demonstrated that production-standard vehicles are leaving the factory floor. The new 146-vehicle contract will require sustaining and likely expanding that production rate through 2030.

Poland’s broader armor procurement picture provides context for how the Borsuk fits into a much larger buildup. Warsaw has been simultaneously acquiring South Korean K2 Black Panther main battle tanks and K9 Thunder self-propelled howitzers, American HIMARS rocket artillery, and F-35 stealth fighters, all while substantially expanding its army’s overall manpower. The Borsuk provides the mechanized infantry fighting vehicle layer that connects those heavy combat systems to the dismounted soldiers who actually have to hold ground, clear buildings, and secure objectives. An army can have the most capable tanks in the world, but without infantry fighting vehicles that can keep pace with those tanks and deliver protected infantry to the fight, the combined arms concept that modern warfare requires breaks down.