Thirty years in the making: Poland seals its submarine deal under Programme Orka

On Monday, 29 June, Poland is due to sign in Gdynia the contract its navy has waited on for what officials describe as three decades. Under Programme Orka, Warsaw will order three new A26 Blekinge-class submarines from Sweden and lease a second-hand boat to keep crews trained until the new units arrive. For the first time in forty years, Polish submariners will receive vessels built new rather than acquired second-hand. A Swedish government delegation led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson is expected to travel to the Tri-City for the occasion.

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28 june 2026   |   07:22   |   Source: Gazeta Morska   |   Prepared by: Kamil Kusier   |   Print

fot. Saab

The signing marks a turning point for a force whose Submarine Squadron currently operates a single, nearly forty-year-old boat — ORP "Orzeł", a Soviet-built Project 877E (NATO designation Kilo). Sweden was selected as preferred partner in November 2025; the defence ministers of both countries signed an intergovernmental memorandum in December; Monday brings the contract itself.

What is being signed in Gdynia

The signing is expected to operate on two levels: an intergovernmental agreement and a set of contracts between the companies responsible for delivery. Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz has said the package will cover the supply of three A26 boats, the acquisition of an interim "gap-filler", crew training and capability build-up, and the sale of Polish products in return — including a rescue ship for the Swedish Navy.

No official contract value has been disclosed. Reporting to date points to a figure of more than PLN 10 billion (several billion euro), which would make Orka one of the largest single defence programmes in modern Polish history. Financing is to be mixed — partly from the state budget, partly from the Armed Forces Support Fund, whose steering committee approved the funding in mid-June. Precise figures, individual delivery dates and the full weapons scope are likely to emerge only after Monday's ceremony.

The A26 Blekinge boats

Poland has chosen three units of the A26 type in the Blekinge configuration, built at the Saab Kockums yard in Karlskrona. These are modern diesel-electric submarines fitted with air-independent propulsion (AIP), which allows extended submerged endurance. They measure roughly 66 metres in length and just under 7 metres in beam, with a surface displacement of around 1,900 tonnes and an endurance put at about 45 days. By comparison, the in-service ORP "Orzeł" is longer and heavier — but also far older and increasingly unreliable.

Saab emphasises the A26's multi-domain capability, including support for special forces and unmanned systems, the ability to operate on the seabed, and to launch and recover unmanned underwater vehicles, alongside full digitalisation aligned with NATO standards. A signature feature of the design is the Multi-Mission Portal — a large lock-out hatch enabling multi-role operations, seabed work and the protection of critical undersea infrastructure such as cables and pipelines.

The first A26 for Poland is to be ready by 2030. Delivery risk is worth flagging: Sweden ordered the first boats of the type for its own navy back in 2015, and their deliveries — repeatedly pushed back — are now scheduled only for 2031–2033.

The A17 stopgap

To avoid leaving the squadron without any submarine during the wait, the contract is to include a used Swedish A17-type boat — reported to be HMS "Södermanland". It is expected to reach Poland as early as 2027 and to serve as a gap-filler, sustaining crew training and qualifications until the A26 boats enter service. The arrangement matters: once lost, submarine competence is difficult and costly to rebuild, which is precisely the situation Poland is trying to avoid.

Ratownik: the rescue ship underpinning Orka

Orka cannot be read in isolation from Programme Ratownik. As industry representatives put it, effective rescue and saturation diving are a precondition for operating submarines at all — without them, a modern submarine force cannot work safely.

The contract for the new rescue vessel was signed in December 2024 at the Naval Academy in Gdynia, with a value exceeding PLN 1 billion. The ship is being built by a consortium of PGZ Stocznia Wojenna (the PGZ naval shipyard), the Polish Armaments Group (PGZ) and the Maritime Technology Centre (OBR CTM), with design and construction overseen by the Polish Register of Shipping. The keel was laid in early February 2026; hull launch is planned for 2027 and delivery to the navy for 2029 — a year ahead of the first submarine.

Ratownik is intended to be one of the most modern vessels of its class in the Baltic. At roughly 96 metres long, 19 metres in beam and 6,500 tonnes displacement, it will be considerably larger than its predecessors, replacing the long-serving ORP "Piast" and ORP "Lech", in service for over half a century. Operational range is put at 6,000 nautical miles, with rescue operations to depths of 300 metres. Equipment is to include a hyperbaric complex with decompression chambers, a diving bell, remotely operated vehicles and a helicopter deck. The ship will also be compatible with the NATO Submarine Rescue System, allowing participation in international operations. Once commissioned, it is to be based at the Naval Port in Gdynia, within the 3rd Ship Flotilla.

Industrial cooperation and Swedish offsets

The hardest part of the negotiations, according to reporting, was not the supply of the boats but the industrial side. Plans point toward a joint venture between the Polish Armaments Group and Saab that would, beyond submarine sustainment, focus on developing an unmanned underwater vehicle, heavyweight torpedoes and the servicing of surface platforms. Two shipyards from the PGZ portfolio — Stocznia Wojenna and Nauta — together with OBR CTM are to act as Sweden's technology partners. Warsaw's key objective is technology transfer, giving domestic industry the capacity to service, repair and overhaul the boats and their weapons across the full life cycle, on Polish soil.

The package is also to feature Swedish purchases in Poland. The flagship item is Sweden's planned acquisition of a rescue ship built at PGZ Stocznia Wojenna — the same yard building the prototype Ratownik for the Polish fleet. It is a significant signal: the procurement is being tied to concrete export orders for the domestic shipbuilding sector.

From Wilk to Orka: a century of Polish submarines

Poland's submarine history spans almost a hundred years and reads as a story of ambitions repeatedly colliding with financial reality. Across the navy's entire history, 25 submarines of nine types have served under the flag.

The first contract for submarines was signed in France on 1 December 1926. It produced three Wilk-class minelaying boats — ORP "Wilk", ORP "Ryś" and ORP "Żbik" — which entered service in 1931–1932 and formed the Submarine Squadron based in Gdynia. They were large boats with good range but, as the war would show, too large and too noisy for the shallow Baltic. In the late 1930s, two far more modern, ocean-going Orzeł-class torpedo boats — ORP "Orzeł" and ORP "Sęp" — joined the fleet, built in the Netherlands. "Orzeł" was financed in large part by public subscription and was regarded as Poland's best-prepared submarine for combat.

In September 1939 Poland had five submarines, but their potential went unused in the campaign. Three boats were interned in Sweden, while ORP "Orzeł" and ORP "Wilk" broke through to Britain. "Orzeł's" daring escape from Tallinn — without charts or navigational aids — went down in history as one of the most remarkable feats in the annals of submarine warfare. The boat was lost in 1940 in circumstances still unexplained. During the war the Polish flag also flew on boats leased from the Allies: ORP "Sokół" and ORP "Dzik" from the Royal Navy, and ORP "Jastrząb" from the US Navy, the latter mistakenly sunk by Allied units.

After the war, the submarine arm was rebuilt almost entirely on Soviet equipment. Six small Series XV boats followed the withdrawal of the pre-war units, and in the 1960s four Project 613 boats (NATO Whiskey) arrived. The generational change of the 1980s brought three new Soviet-built units: ORP "Orzeł" of the Kilo type, acquired in 1986, and two Foxtrot-type boats. The breakthrough was meant to come after Poland joined NATO: in 2002–2004 it received four Kobben-class boats donated by Norway. They were meant to "buy time" to acquire new vessels — but that time was squandered. The Kobbens were withdrawn between 2018 and 2021, leaving the squadron with a single boat: ORP "Orzeł".

A programme to acquire new submarines was written into modernisation plans as early as 1997, and the Orka codename was assigned in 2012. It was meant to launch in 2015; successive delays, shifting concepts and a failed attempt to buy from France pushed a real contract back to the present day. Hence the weight of Monday's signature: it closes a thirty-year chapter of waiting and opens what historians at Gdynia's Naval Museum call "an entirely new" one.

Open questions

For all its significance, the programme also raises legitimate questions being put to the defence ministry. The first concerns timelines: the Swedish yard has years of delay on the A26 for its own navy, and Sweden has not built a new submarine in series for decades — leaving the question of the guaranteed contractual dates for each Polish boat.

The second concerns armament. There are questions over whether the boats will from the outset carry launchers adapted for cruise or anti-ship missiles, or only for torpedoes and mines, and whether the weapons themselves are part of the deal. A recurring theme in public debate is the absence of cruise missiles from the package — with the argument that no suitable solution is currently available on the market. It is a topic that could become a point of political contention.

The third concerns the gap-filler: the price and term of the A17 lease, whether it includes weapons and — crucially — whether, in a crisis or conflict in the Baltic, Poland could use the boat operationally or would have to return it to Sweden. Finally, there is the status of the announced Swedish purchases in Poland: binding contracts, or for now declarations and letters of intent. Some answers should come on Monday.

Wider context: the Baltic, NATO and a shipbuilding revival

Orka fits into a broader shift underway in the Polish Navy and the country's shipbuilding sector. The Baltic's growing strategic weight, incidents involving damage to undersea cables and pipelines, and the need to protect critical infrastructure — the oil terminal, the LNG terminal, offshore wind farms — have once again made the navy a pillar of national defence.

This is visible in the order book at PGZ Stocznia Wojenna in Gdynia, which today is building Miecznik-programme frigates and the Ratownik rescue ship in parallel, and which will join Orka as an industrial partner. The yard is doubling its workforce and has work secured for years. The biggest constraint remains skilled labour — three decades without naval orders left a deep gap that cannot be closed overnight.

Monday's signature in Gdynia, then, is more than the purchase of three boats. It is a declaration to rebuild an entire capability — from crews, through rescue, to the industry meant to sustain the vessels. After thirty years of waiting, Poland's submarine arm is finally being given a future.

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