Poland has NATO’s third largest military, new figures show

Poland has NATO’s third-largest military and the alliance’s largest in Europe, newly released figures show.

The Polish armed forces contain 216,100 personnel, according to NATO’s estimates for this year. That is behind only the United States (1.3 million) and Turkey (481,000).

Poland is followed by France (204,700), Germany (185,600), Italy (171,400) and the United Kingdom (138,100).

The size of Poland’s military has more than doubled over the last decade. It stood at 99,000 personnel in 2014, when it was only the ninth largest in NATO.

That figure rose slowly over the following years, reaching 116,200 in 2020, when it was still only NATO’s eighth largest.

However, since then, the number of personnel has risen rapidly, overtaking all other countries besides the US and Turkey.

In March 2022, a new Homeland Defence Act set a target of doubling the size of Poland’s armed forces to 300,000 personnel, including 250,000 professional soldiers and 50,000 territorials. That year saw the highest number of new recruits since the end of compulsory military service.

The then-defence minister, Mariusz Błaszczak, declared at the time that “the Polish army will become the most powerful land force in Europe” thanks to expanded recruitment, procurement and modernisation.

Jacek Siewiera, the head of Poland’s National Security Bureau (BBN), today declared that the new NATO figures show that “Poland [having] the largest army in Europe has become a fact”. He added that increasing the size of Poland’s military is “a factor that averts the spectre of war”.

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That drive to enhance Poland’s military was started under the former Law and Justice (PiS) government but has been continued under Donald Tusk’s new ruling coalition that took power in December 2023.

This year, Poland will spend the equivalent of 4.12% of GDP on defence, which is the highest level in NATO. Foreign minister Radosław Sikorski recently revealed plans for that figure to reach 5% next year.

As well as recruiting more personnel, Poland has spent heavily on procurement, buying large numbers of modern tanks, self-propelled howitzers, air defence systems and other hardware, primarily from the US, South Korea and the UK.

NATO’s figures show that 51% of Poland’s defence spending this year will be on major equipment, including research and development. That is the highest relevative figure in the alliance.

Main image credit: KPRM/Flickr (under public domain)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.