The whole world is going underwater: Poland's Orka and the global submarine arms race

On Monday, Poland is due to sign in Gdynia a contract for three A26 submarines under Programme Orka. It is tempting to read this as a purely Polish story, the close of thirty years of neglect and broken promises. But the Polish signature will be just one of many placed around the world in recent months. From the Baltic to the Indo-Pacific, the deepest submarine renaissance in decades is under way. Boats that much of the post-Cold War world had written off as relics are once again a scarce commodity, and states that until recently had no plans at all are now queuing for new hulls.

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28 june 2026   |   09:52   |   Source: Gazeta Morska   |   Prepared by: Kamil Kusier   |   Print

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Why submarines, and why now?

Several drivers have converged at once. The first is a series of incidents involving damage to critical undersea infrastructure, power and telecom cables and gas pipelines, which has reminded governments how vulnerable the seabed is and how hard it is to police without one's own undersea forces. The second is the rapid growth of Chinese naval power and the unpredictability of Russia across waters from the Baltic to the Arctic. The third is the simple logic of deterrence: the submarine remains the hardest platform to detect and neutralise, and its mere presence, even when only suspected, complicates an adversary's every calculation.

The result is that the submarine is no longer the preserve of great navies alone. It has become an instrument of security policy for middle powers, Poland among them.

The US–China race at the top

At the apex of this hierarchy sits a rivalry whose scale dwarfs every conventional programme. The United States still fields the largest nuclear-powered fleet, around seventy boats, and is building more: the multi-role Virginia and the strategic Columbia. The problem is that China is closing the gap faster than expected. Between 2021 and 2025, the Chinese navy for the first time overtook the United States in both the number of nuclear-powered boats launched and the tonnage added.

Worse for Washington, American yards cannot keep pace. They currently turn out only a little over one Virginia a year, against the more than two needed to satisfy both the US fleet's own requirements and allied commitments. That bottleneck has become a geopolitical factor and, as it turns out, has directly shaped the fate of the world's largest allied programme. Britain and France, meanwhile, run their own parallel strategic efforts, replacing ballistic-missile boats and next-generation nuclear attack submarines.

AUKUS: the costliest and most turbulent bet

The trilateral partnership of Australia, the US and the UK, formed in 2021, is today the flagship and most contentious submarine programme on the planet. Its core is bringing Australia into the exclusive club of states operating nuclear-powered, though conventionally armed, boats.

The plan is currently being revised. In late May 2026 it was announced in Singapore that all three Virginia-class boats Australia is to receive will now come from the US Navy's in-service fleet; previously one was to be newly built. The decision eases the strain on overstretched American yards but shortens the remaining service life of the transferred boats, pushing part of the risk into the future. In parallel, Australia is investing seriously in its own industry: in February 2026 it committed 3.9 billion dollars to begin construction of a nuclear-submarine yard at Osborne, set to be the only one of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. In the long run, Britain plans to build up to twelve boats of the new SSN-AUKUS class and Australia five, on top of the three acquired Virginias. A rotational presence of US and British boats at a Western Australian base is to begin in 2027.

The scale of spending and friction is enormous. London alone has already committed sums running into the billions of pounds, and a British defence committee warned in 2026 that Royal Navy visits to Australia were straining an already overstretched fleet. This is a programme meant to define the undersea balance of power in the Indo-Pacific for half a century, and one that already shows how hard it is to translate political declarations into steel and reactors.

The German–Norwegian tandem and the export war

In the conventional world, the European champion is Germany's TKMS and its Type 212CD programme. It is the fruit of a partnership between Germany and Norway, which chose to build and operate identical boats, yielding savings on training, logistics and through-life support. In late January 2026 Norway signed a contract for two more units, raising its fleet from four to six; together with the German order, the programme reached its planned total of twelve boats. The initial contract for six was worth around 5.5 billion euro, and the first boat is to enter service in 2029.

The Type 212CD is nearly twice the size of the previous generation, with a diamond-shaped hull designed to reduce detectability, hydrogen fuel-cell air-independent propulsion and new batteries. It was one of the contenders in Poland's Orka tender, and one of those Poland ultimately did not choose.

A second Orka, this one Dutch

A curiosity that rarely surfaces internationally: the name "Orka" also belongs to a Dutch submarine programme. In March 2024 it was won by France's Naval Group, with a design derived from the nuclear-powered Barracuda. Four Dutch Orka-class boats are to replace the ageing Walrus class and enter service around 2035, armed among other things with the submarine-launched JSM-SL missile and modern torpedoes. Two programmes of the same name, run at once by two European states and two different builders, is a fitting image of how crowded the market has become.

To this add other European designs: Italy's U212 NFS boats and Spain's Navantia-built S-80 class. The continent is building underwater on a scale unseen in decades.

The contest Poland did not fight: TKMS versus Hanwha

The most instructive case from a Polish vantage point is the contest now playing out in Canada. Ottawa plans to acquire up to twelve conventional boats to replace its ageing Victoria class, and the final round came down to two offers: the German-Norwegian Type 212CD and the South Korean KSS-III Batch-II from Hanwha. By the summer of 2025 these were the only two qualified bids. A final decision is expected around 2028, and the first boat must reach Canada no later than 2035.

This is the same line-up Poland faced, except that Warsaw settled its own race differently, choosing Sweden's Saab and the A26. Korea and Germany now fight for every contract worldwide, offering not just boats but whole packages of technology transfer, local production and industrial cooperation, exactly as in Poland's agreement with Sweden. The export war between TKMS and Hanwha is one of the defining threads of today's defence market, and Poland's Orka is part of it.

Asia arms underwater

The fastest build-up of undersea capability, though, is in Asia. South Korea is the conventional leader here, and an example of how far one can go without nuclear propulsion. Its KSS-III programme covers nine boats built in three batches by Hanwha Ocean and HD Hyundai. The first boat of the second batch, launched in October 2025, displaces 3,600 tonnes and, crucially, carries ten vertical launch cells capable of firing ballistic missiles. Korea has thus turned a conventional submarine into an instrument of strategic deterrence. And it does not stop there: Seoul has announced it will launch its first nuclear-powered boat by the mid-2030s, in response to the North Korean threat.

Japan has taken a different path, one of stealth and persistence. Its Taigei class uses lithium-ion batteries that extend submerged endurance without surfacing; the sixth boat of the class was launched in the autumn of 2025. India is pursuing two parallel tracks: the conventional Project 75I, a joint venture between TKMS and the Mazagon Dock yard, a hybrid design worth around 8 billion dollars with first delivery expected in the early 2030s, and its own strategic Arihant-class boats, the sea-based leg of India's nuclear triad. Even Taiwan has joined this group, launching its first indigenous boat, the Hai Kun, in September 2023, while North Korea experiments with missile-carrying hulls, injecting an element of dangerous unpredictability into regional calculations.

What these programmes share

Despite their differences, several common directions stand out. Lithium-ion batteries and air-independent propulsion are becoming standard, radically extending submerged endurance. More and more conventional boats are receiving vertical launch cells and cruise or ballistic missiles, blurring the line between a "small" coastal boat and a strike platform. Hulls are being shaped to reflect as little active-sonar signal as possible. The most forward-looking trend, however, lies elsewhere. Boats are increasingly meant to work with unmanned underwater vehicles, launched and recovered even through torpedo tubes. The development of autonomous undersea systems is the flagship element of AUKUS's second pillar and will probably define the coming decade.

Where Poland fits

Against this backdrop, Poland's Orka looks like a belated decision, but one that fits a wider, global rhythm. Poland is not building nuclear boats or platforms carrying nuclear weapons. It has chosen three modern conventional A26 submarines, with a used A17-type boat as a stopgap until the first new unit arrives around 2030. It is a scale suited to Baltic realities and to the limits of the budget.

More important, though, is that Poland has entered the game at a moment when the rules of the market have shifted in favour of buyers with industrial ambitions. Today no one sells boats alone. What is sold is technology transfer, local production, through-life support and jobs in domestic yards. Poland's contract with Sweden, with planned domestic-industry participation and Swedish purchases in Gdynia, is exactly such a package. It is the same logic driving the TKMS–Hanwha contest over Canada and behind the Dutch and Norwegian decisions.

The risks remain real, from production delays, through the question of armament, to whether shipyard skills can be sustained after thirty years of drought. But one thing is certain: the world is going underwater, and Poland, after a long absence, is once again part of the movement.

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