Defence Policy
Poland with Cluster Munitions? Siewiera: Production Should be Resumed
The head of the National Security Bureau, Jacek Siewiera, suggested that in the face of the ongoing war in the East, the Polish state should consider resuming the production of cluster munitions.
Will Cluster Munitions Become a Part of the Polish Arsenal? Such a need was suggested by Jacek Siewiera, Head of the National Security Bureau, in the program “Rzecz w tym” and later in a post on social media.
“Against an adversary who does not recognize the moral norms of the Western world, one of the criteria for the state’s defence preparations should be the effectiveness of neutralizing the personnel. For this reason, we need both cluster munitions, anti-personnel mines, and white phosphorus munitions,” he said in an interview with “Rzeczpospolita”.
“We should have this type of ammunition in our stockpile, also because area effect strikes are an effective deterrent”, he added.
Cluster munitions are banned in more than 100 countries under a convention adopted on May 30, 2008, in Dublin. Poland is not a signatory to this agreement. Poland has some inventory of cluster munitions, but only for a small number of assets, and production was halted several years ago.
In Ukraine, cluster munitions supplied by the United States on a larger scale since mid-last year have proven very effective, as they allow for striking surface targets, both soldiers and equipment. It is worth noting that the Russian army has used them since the start of the war, and Ukraine also used its (and Turkish) stocks, albeit on a smaller scale for obvious reasons. The issue of cluster munitions has been repeatedly addressed on Defence24.pl.
However, the Ottawa Treaty applies to us, which is also relevant in the context of Jacek Siewiera’s comments on anti-personnel mines. The “Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production, and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction” was adopted on September 18, 1997 (the law came into force on March 1, 1999).
Poland was one of the signatories of the convention, but ratification from Warsaw only took place in 2012 (the Ottawa Treaty formally came into force for Poland on June 1, 2013 - editor). At the end of 2016, Poland announced the completion of the process of destroying all its stockpiles of anti-personnel mines. We wrote more about this in this article.