A maintenance centre for Lockheed Martin’s Patriot interceptor missiles will be established in Poland, Deputy Defence Minister Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka said on Tuesday.
– Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have strained stocks of air-defence interceptor missiles and caused delivery delays, prompting countries to seek maintenance and production capabilities closer to home.
– “Four countries competed for the European location of this investment: alongside Poland — Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway,” Sobkowiak-Czarnecka wrote on social media platform X. “This success was not a given,” she said.
– The centre in Poland will be the only one outside the United States, Sobkowiak-Czarnecka said.
– The Pentagon said, in a statement on its website, that the European Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) Missile Maintenance Facility (MMF) “will be underpinned by robust, transatlantic industrial cooperation, with critical supply chain integration led by Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden.”
– “By establishing regional maintenance, repair, and overhaul capabilities directly within the European theater, the MMF will dramatically shorten turnaround times and further secure critical supply lines,” the statement said.
– Sobkowiak-Czarnecka told reporters during a briefing in Brussels that the value of the investment would be around 1 billion zlotys ($253 million) and that it would take a dozen or so months to make the centre operational.