As Poland builds Europe's largest army, Russia’s ongoing war reveals its gaps
Soldiers from the Military University of Technology (WAT) carry the flags of the European Union, Poland, and NATO during the Armed Forces Day parade in Warsaw, Poland, on Aug. 15, 2025. (Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Spurred by belligerent Russia and the war in Ukraine, Poland has raced to build the largest European army in NATO.
As Western officials warn about an open clash with Moscow within the next five years, Warsaw readies to bear the brunt of such a war.
But while the country moved to amass an impressive arsenal of tanks, aircraft, and long-range fires, the war in Ukraine has laid bare a number of persisting weaknesses.
Insufficient drone and anti-drone capabilities, spotty logistics, slowing recruitment, and cumbersome decision-making hamper Poland's effort to build a military ready to face a Russian onslaught, observers warn.
"The war in Ukraine is, of course, being closely observed, but the conclusions are implemented very slowly," says Robert Czulda, a security expert and professor at the University of Lodz.
Although the Russian invasion prompted a shopping spree of modern defense equipment, "these acquisitions are often focused on high-profile purchases rather than systemic reforms," he tells the Kyiv Independent.
Europe's largest army
Poland has more than doubled the size of its armed forces personnel between 2014 and 2025, going from roughly 100,000 to 216,000 — the third largest military in NATO after the U.S. and Turkey.
Poland's Homeland Defense Act, passed a few weeks after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, envisioned the military growing up to 300,000 men and women at arms.
In March 2025, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk unveiled a plan to "prepare large-scale military training for every adult male in Poland," aiming to build "an army of half a million in Poland, including the reservists."
Warsaw has also become the undisputed leader in defense spending, aiming to allocate 4.7% of its GDP this year, the highest share in NATO. This would amount to $35 billion, triple the sum devoted to defense in 2014.
The budding military power has been confidently spending this money on a remarkable defense inventory, sourced both at home and abroad.
By 2030, Poland plans to operate around 1,100 tanks, ranging from domestically-produced PT-91 to German Leopards, U.S. Abrams, and South Korean K2s. This tank fleet would be greater than that of the U.K., Germany, France, and Italy combined.
The shopping list also includes FA-50 light combat aircraft and K9 self-propelled howitzers from South Korea, as well as U.S. Apache helicopters and fifth-generation F-35 fighter jets.
After Ukraine was able to inflict massive damage on Russia with just a few dozen HIMARS rocket launchers, Poland ordered a staggering 486 pieces of this system.
NATO's eastern member also moved to reinforce its frontier. Sharing a border with the heavily fortified Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and with Moscow's ally Belarus, the Polish government launched the East Shield initiative last year to strengthen border security.
Like other countries on Russia's doorstep, Poland is withdrawing from the Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel landmines.
Weak spots under the spotlight
Despite the ambitious growth and even more ambitious plans, officials, experts, and journalists have drawn attention to apparent gaps in areas that have proven crucial in the Russia-Ukraine war.
Czulda names drones and anti-drone capabilities — such as electronic warfare systems — as one of the Polish military's key weaknesses.
"The absence of a robust drone and counter-drone ecosystem is particularly striking given the centrality of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) in Ukraine," the expert told the Kyiv Independent.
Unmanned systems have become one of the fastest-evolving aspects of the war, ranging from first-person-view (FPV) drones used on the battlefield to long-range drones for deep strikes.
Poland "has not yet developed sufficient domestic industry or doctrine for mass drone warfare," Czulda says.
On Aug. 20, a Russian drone crashed in the village of Osiny after flying undetected 100 kilometers (60 miles) in Polish airspace, an investigation by the Polish news outlet Onet says.
Poland fields only one anti-drone system, the domestically-produced SKYctrl, which, according to Onet's army sources and a Polish military memo, often malfunctions and fails to detect incoming drones.
As the system also protects the Polish air bases, this leaves Poland's F-16 air fleet and soon its incoming F-35s vulnerable to Russian drones, the news outlet argues.
Russian drones and missiles have repeatedly violated Polish airspace during the full-scale war — and, to public knowledge, not a single one was shot down. Most recently, two drones entered Poland overnight on Sept. 3, with Warsaw claiming they were not downed because they posed no danger.
The push to build a massive army has also hit roadblocks. Despite initiatives like the Territorial Defense Force, the recruitment drive has slowed down. Some 16,000 new recruits joined the army in 2023, and only 10,000 by mid-2024, according to TVP's analysis.
The Russia-Ukraine war has underscored the importance of sheer manpower.
Even though Ukraine fields some 800,000-900,000 soldiers — a number that dwarfs all other European armies — it struggles with personnel shortages in the face of Russia's 1.5 million-strong army, more than a third of which is concentrated in the front-line areas of Ukraine.
"The war in Ukraine shows, among other things, that you must have an efficient system for replacing soldiers who are at the front," Czulda says.
"We still have not created such a system, including training people for the needs of the reserve system," the expert adds, dismissing Tusk's proclamation about a nationwide military training as "populism for the needs of the moment."
Other weaknesses in the face of a potential clash with Russia include cyber and space-based intelligence, the lack of domestic capabilities to produce artillery ammunition, the civil defense system, and logistics, Czulda notes.
Earlier this year, the Polish government adopted a new program for strengthening civil protection in 2025-2026, earmarking 16 billion zlotys ($4.4 billion) for the effort in this year's budget.
"Poland has expanded its army quickly, but ensuring ammunition stockpiles, repair facilities, and secure supply chains for a prolonged conflict is still insufficiently addressed," Czulda says.
In March, the head of Poland's National Security Bureau, Dariusz Lukowski, warned that the Polish military has enough supplies to resist an enemy attack for up to two weeks before NATO reinforcements arrive — a claim the Polish Defense Ministry later denied as "outrageous."
This brief timespan stands in sharp contrast to three and a half years of attritional warfare in Ukraine, where extensive and steady supplies of ammunition, such as artillery shells, have proven essential for Kyiv.
Polish soldiers are also yet to receive modern personnel equipment, Czulda says, adding: "Since 2022, many people in Poland have laughed at the poor equipment of Russian soldiers, but unfortunately, in our case, it would be similar."
The Kyiv Independent has reached out to the Polish Defense Ministry for comment.
Where Poland learns its lesson
Nevertheless, there have been visible efforts in Poland and other NATO allies to draw lessons from the war in Ukraine.
In July, the Polish Defense Ministry announced a "revolution" in the country's drone capabilities, dedicating 200 million zloty ($55 million) to drone purchases this year. The sum could be doubled if the domestic industry is ready to deliver, officials said.
A new NATO-Ukraine Joint Analysis, Training, and Education Center (JATEC) was also launched in the Polish city of Bydgoszcz this February to share the experiences of the war with allied armies.
"NATO countries are carefully watching the Russian way of fighting in Ukraine," says Piotr Szymanski, a defense analyst at the Center for Eastern Studies in Warsaw.
Poland's emphasis has been on developing stand-off deep strike capabilities like the U.S. JASSM missile or the European Long-Range Strike Approach program, as well as "on maneuver warfare in order to avoid trenches," the expert says.
Similarly, Czulda notes that investments in modern tanks, long-range artillery, missile defense, and F-35 aircraft reflect lessons drawn from Ukraine, for example, "about the importance of precision strikes and air superiority."
Furthermore, Szymanski cautions that Poland and Ukraine are difficult to compare, as a potential Polish-Russian war would be a fundamentally different conflict from the one in Ukraine.
"Poland's warfighting doctrine has been formed by factors that are different from the Ukrainian experience," he says. "As a NATO member state, we put emphasis on allied operations and interoperability," and Poland would enjoy air superiority due to the alliance's dominance in this area.
But even as Warsaw has taken steps to address some of the weaknesses, from building reserves to boosting civil defense, Czulda warns that the decisions are being implemented far too slowly, hampered by conservative mentality and legal constraints.
"Without comprehensive reforms, the Polish Armed Forces risk being modern on paper but less effective in practice during a full-scale war."
Hi, this is Martin Fornusek. I hope you enjoyed this article.
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