Awash with defense cash, Poland rolls out red carpet for US tech firms

WARSAW, Poland — Poland is working to expand its cooperation with Silicon Valley-rooted U.S. defense tech companies such as Palantir and Anduril, eyeing new unmanned and artificial-intelligence capabilities as well as local production of cruise missiles.

The move comes in addition to Warsaw fostering ties with traditional American defense titans like Lockheed, from which Poland is purchasing fighter jets , tanks , helicopters and missiles .

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed the government to boost its defense spending and accelerate acquisitions of new weapons and gear for the armed forces. With the Polish 2025 military budget expected to reach an unprecedented level in the nation’s history, at 4.7% of GDP, or PLN 186.6 billion ($51.1 billion), the two U.S. tech firms are joining an expanding lineup of defense groups supplying their products to Warsaw.

Poland is seeking additional funds for military purchases, with the European Union recently allocating some €43.7 billion ($50.7 billion) in low-cost loans for Poland’s defense acquisitions under the bloc’s Security Action For Europe (SAFE) scheme. In the coming years, unmanned technology will be one of the priorities of the Polish Ministry of National Defence in the field of military procurement, according to senior government officials.

Speaking at a Nov. 20 session of the National Defence Committee of the Sejm, the parliament’s lower chamber, Polish Deputy Defence Minister Cezary Tomczyk said the ministry aims to spend at least PLN 15 billion ($3.5 billion) on unmanned systems and anti-drone solutions over the next three years. At the same time, the ministry is intensifying its investments in AI with this year’s launch of the AI Implementation Center for the Polish military.

On Oct. 27, the Polish ministry and Palantir signed a letter of intent to implement the company’s solutions in AI, information technology and cybersecurity in Poland’s military units. On the same day, the country’s state-run defense group PGZ signed an agreement with Anduril to cooperate on autonomous and missile systems.

A spokesperson for the Polish ministry told Defense News the letter of intent with Palantir is an extension of the workshops and exercises that allowed defense officials to evaluate AI-based automation tools for the country’s military.

“The modern battlefield and the state-of-the-art combat equipment being introduced into service, combined with sensors, generate enormous amounts of data,” the spokesperson said. “With such a rich data pool, human perception, without automation, is unable to conduct effective analysis.”

Palantir’s wares, the hope goes, will help commanders make sense of it all.

Experts from the Polish military are to implement Palantir’s tools into their activities, “ensuring full control over the security of the production environment and integrated information resources,” the defense spokesperson said. No “external entities” would be required to run the systems, meaning Poland is expected to retain control of all data being processed, they added.

During the official signing event for the letter of intent here, Palantir CEO and co-founder Alex Karp said his company is interested in investing in Poland partly to develop dual-use technologies.

In a social media post, Palantir said the letter of intent paves the way for the company’s “AI-enabled defense technology to begin rapidly supporting the country’s armed forces, as they innovate at the forefront of an increasingly complex threat environment and strengthen Poland’s position as a sovereign leader in defense.”

In the United States, Palantir’s business with the Defense Department has grown substantially since 2019. That year, Palantir won in a heated competition with Raytheon, the company now branded as RTX, a U.S. Army contract to supply a new tactical version of its flagship intelligence analysis platform, Distributed Common Ground System-Army, or DCGS-A.

Alongside the defense ministry’s strengthened cooperation with Palantir, Poland is also positioning PGZ, which supplies the vast majority of its output to the Polish military, as the local partner for Anduril Industries.

PGZ’s October 2025 memorandum of understanding with Anduril follows the June visit of its CEO and co-founder Brian Schimpf to Warsaw. During a June 9 press briefing in the Polish capital, Schimpf said Anduril is interested in ramping up its presence in Poland through partnerships with local industry players.

Under the October agreement, PGZ and Anduril will jointly develop and produce in Poland a variant of the Barracuda-M medium-range turbojet-powered cruise missile. This is to provide the country’s military with access to a new type of unmanned strike capabilities, but also develop the Polish defense industry’s AI prowess, the state-owned group said in a statement.

Anduril says its Barracuda range comprises “air-breathing autonomous air vehicles” that are “purpose-built for hyper-scale production and mass employment.”

“Working with PGZ to localize production of the Barracuda demonstrates how allied industry and sovereign suppliers can deliver rapidly scalable, affordable capability to deter aggression,” Brian Moran, the vice president of Anduril Europe, was quoted in the statement.

Jaroslaw Adamowski is the Poland correspondent for Defense News.

波兰华沙——波兰正努力扩大与硅谷美国国防科技公司（如Palantir和Anduril）的合作，着眼于新的无人和人工智能能力以及巡航导弹的本地生产。

除了此举之外，华沙还在加强与洛克希德等美国传统国防巨头的关系，波兰正在从洛克希德公司购买战斗机、坦克、直升机和导弹。

俄罗斯入侵乌克兰促使波兰政府增加国防开支，并加快为军队采购新型武器装备。预计波兰2025年的军费预算将达到该国历史上前所未有的水平，占GDP的4.7%，即1866亿兹罗提（约合511亿美元）。在此背景下，两家美国科技公司加入了不断壮大的国防供应商行列，向华沙供应产品。

波兰正寻求更多资金用于军事采购。欧盟近期已根据其“欧洲安全行动”（SAFE）计划，向波兰的国防采购项目拨款约437亿欧元（约合507亿美元）的低息贷款。据波兰高级政府官员透露，未来几年，无人技术将成为波兰国防部军事采购领域的优先事项之一。

波兰国防部副部长切扎里·托姆奇克在11月20日波兰议会下院——国家国防委员会的会议上表示，国防部计划在未来三年内至少投入150亿兹罗提（约合35亿美元）用于无人系统和反无人机解决方案。与此同时，国防部正加大对人工智能领域的投资，并于今年启动了波兰军方人工智能实施中心。

10月27日，波兰国防部与Palantir公司签署了一份意向书，计划在波兰军队中部署该公司的人工智能、信息技术和网络安全解决方案。同日，波兰国有国防集团PGZ与Anduril公司签署了一项协议，双方将在自主系统和导弹系统领域展开合作。

波兰国防部发言人告诉《防务新闻》，与 Palantir 签署的意向书是此前研讨会和演习的延伸，这些研讨会和演习使国防官员能够评估基于人工智能的自动化工具，以供该国军队使用。

发言人表示：“现代战场和正在服役的尖端作战装备，再加上各种传感器，会产生海量数据。面对如此丰富的数据，如果没有自动化手段，仅凭人类感知无法进行有效分析。”

人们希望，帕兰提尔的产品能够帮助指挥官们理解这一切。

波兰国防部发言人表示，波兰军方专家将把Palantir公司的工具应用于他们的行动中，“以确保对生产环境和集成信息资源的安全拥有全面控制权”。他们补充说，运行这些系统不需要任何“外部实体”，这意味着波兰有望保留对所有处理数据的控制权。

在波兰举行的意向书正式签署仪式上，Palantir 首席执行官兼联合创始人 Alex Karp 表示，他的公司有兴趣在波兰投资，部分原因是开发军民两用技术。

Palantir 在社交媒体上发帖称，这份意向书为该公司“人工智能驱动的国防技术迅速开始支持波兰武装部队铺平了道路，使他们能够在日益复杂的威胁环境中进行创新，并加强波兰作为国防主权领导者的地位”。

在美国，Palantir 与国防部的业务自 2019 年以来大幅增长。那一年，Palantir 在与 Raytheon（现更名为 RTX）的激烈竞争中胜出，赢得了美国陆军的一份合同，为其旗舰情报分析平台“分布式通用地面系统-陆军版”（DCGS-A）提供新的战术版本。

除了国防部加强与 Palantir 的合作外，波兰还将 PGZ（其绝大部分产品供应给波兰军方）定位为 Anduril Industries 的当地合作伙伴。

PGZ与Anduril于2025年10月签署的谅解备忘录，是在其首席执行官兼联合创始人布莱恩·施姆普夫(Brian Schimpf)于6月访问华沙之后签署的。在6月9日于波兰首都华沙举行的新闻发布会上，施姆普夫表示，Anduril有意通过与当地行业参与者建立合作关系，扩大其在波兰的业务。

根据10月份达成的协议，PGZ和Anduril将在波兰联合研发和生产一种改进型的“梭鱼-M”中程涡轮喷气式巡航导弹。这家国有企业在一份声明中表示，此举旨在为波兰军方提供新型无人打击能力，同时也将提升波兰国防工业的人工智能实力。

Anduril 表示，其 Barracuda 系列产品包括“吸气式自主飞行器”，这些飞行器“专为超大规模生产和大规模就业而设计”。

“与 PGZ 合作实现梭鱼导弹的本地化生产，表明盟国工业和主权供应商如何能够快速提供可扩展、价格合理的威慑侵略的能力，”安杜里尔欧洲公司副总裁布莱恩·莫兰在声明中表示。

Jaroslaw Adamowski 是《防务新闻》驻波兰记者。