Wicher takes to the water next month. The first Miecznik launch and a new chapter for the Polish Navy

On 12 August, just over a month from now, the first of three frigates in the "Miecznik" programme, the future ORP Wicher, is due to be launched at PGZ Stocznia Wojenna in Gdynia. It is the most important milestone yet in the largest naval shipbuilding programme in Poland's modern history and the moment from which the Polish Navy begins to genuinely rebuild capabilities it has lacked for decades. Two words of caution up front, though: a launch is the start of a warship's journey, not its finish.

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06 july 2026   |   11:06   |   Source: Gazeta Morska   |   Prepared by: Kamil Kusier   |   Print

fot. PGZ Stocznia Wojenna

A launch is a beginning, not an end

The 12 August ceremony will be both symbolic and strictly technical. Wicher's hull, currently being joined together in the yard's assembly hall, is to be set afloat using a floating dock that was moved to the quay earlier this spring; the ceremony itself will take place at PGZ Stocznia Wojenna, while the physical launch (the self-submersion of the dock beneath the platform) will happen on the Gulf of Gdańsk, in water deep enough for the operation.

That distinction matters for reading the event correctly. A launch does not mean entry into service or combat readiness, both of which remain years away for Wicher. Under the current schedule, the first frigate is to be handed over to the Polish Navy at the end of 2029. After the launch comes a long stretch of outfitting afloat, installation and integration of onboard systems, and then harbour and sea trials. The August date should be treated as the announced plan; in programmes of this scale and complexity, dates can shift, and every milestone is a test of the whole undertaking's maturity.

Wicher: the ship that will enter the line

The future ORP Wicher is to join the Combat Ship Squadron of the 3rd Ship Flotilla and be based at the naval port in Gdynia. Even with service still some way off, it is already clear this will be a different class of warship from anything the Polish fleet currently operates. In fact, the Miecznik frigates are set to become the largest and most heavily armed warships in the history of the Polish Navy.

The Wicher-type frigates are being built on the British Arrowhead 140 design by Babcock, itself derived from the Danish Iver Huitfeldt class and the same platform chosen by the United Kingdom (as the Type 31) and Indonesia. Each ship will measure roughly 138.7 metres in length, with a maximum displacement of up to 7,000 tonnes, a top speed of about 26 knots and a cruising speed of 12. The heart of their potential is an extensive air-defence capability built around CAMM and CAMM-ER missiles, allowing a ship not only to defend itself but to provide zone defence for other vessels and assets. For surface strike the frigates will carry RBS15 launchers able to engage targets well beyond 200 kilometres, while the gun armament is to include a 76 mm OTO Melara Super Rapid and two 35 mm OSU-35K cannon, supplemented by remotely operated weapon stations and torpedo launchers. Detection will rest on Thales AESA radars, Sea Master and NS50, capable of tracking air targets at ranges of up to 400 kilometres and surface targets up to 80, alongside a hull-mounted and a towed sonar and a suite of electronic-warfare systems. The platform's "nervous system" will be an Integrated Platform Management System supplied by L3Harris.

One parameter that rarely makes the headlines is just as telling: endurance. The frigates are designed to operate for several dozen days without replenishment, opening the way for genuinely long deployments, not only on the Baltic but beyond it, on national and allied tasking within NATO structures.

Miecznik: three ships, a British design, a Polish yard

Wicher is the first of the programme's three ships; behind it come the future ORP Burza and ORP Huragan. Crucially, all three are now under construction simultaneously. Burza's first steel was cut in May 2025 and her keel was laid in December; her launch is expected around the end of 2027, with delivery to the fleet in 2030. The last ship, Huragan, is no longer a plan on paper. Her first steel was cut on 28 April 2026 (hull number 106/3), which means the programme has now entered the build phase across the entire ordered series. Huragan is to be handed over to the Navy around the turn of 2031 and 2032, closing the first batch of Miecznik frigates.

The work is being carried out by the PGZ-Miecznik consortium (Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa and PGZ Stocznia Wojenna), together with foreign partners including CRIST, Babcock (the design owner), Thales UK and MBDA UK. The contract was signed with the Armament Agency in 2021; following annexes agreed at the end of 2023, its value rose from an initial roughly PLN 8 billion to around PLN 15 billion (about €3.5 billion). The ships are being built at PGZ Stocznia Wojenna in Gdynia, Poland's oldest shipyard, with traditions dating back to 1922. It is undergoing a deep transformation toward becoming a new-build yard for the programme.

What it means for the Polish Navy

The significance of Miecznik is hard to overstate: it is the largest modernisation of the Polish Navy in decades and the largest since 1989. The three new frigates are to replace ageing Oliver Hazard Perry-class units: ORP Gen. K. Pułaski and ORP Gen. T. Kościuszko, which entered US service back in 1980, were transferred to Poland in the early 2000s and, despite being more than four decades old, still form the fleet's combat backbone. That alone illustrates the scale of the gap Poland has to close.

At the core of the change is the restoration of full-scale escort and air-defence capabilities, an area in which the Polish fleet has long been deficient. Three ships are not an arbitrary number: only such a force allows for a sensible rotation, with one frigate in intensive operational use, a second in a training-and-maintenance cycle, and a third in reserve or on allied tasking. In Baltic conditions, amid pressure from Russia and the growing weight of NATO's eastern flank, the ability to maintain a permanent combat presence at sea and to provide air-defence cover is strategic, not a matter of prestige.

More than three frigates

Miecznik is not only about the ships, but also a test for Polish industry. Through it, PGZ Stocznia Wojenna is rebuilding warship-building competencies that Poland had largely shed in previous decades. In parallel, the Gdynia yard is running other programmes: the ORP Ratownik rescue ship, worth more than PLN 1 billion, whose keel was laid in February 2026, and the Kormoran II mine-hunters, the latest of which, ORP Jaskółka, was recently handed over. Hull blocks are being subcontracted to specialist yards: the stern block for Burza to Nauta, a bow block for Ratownik to the Szczecin "Wulkan" yard. Meanwhile, plans for a domestic CAMM-ER production and service centre point to a supply chain taking root around the programme.

With that comes a warning that the yard's own management keeps repeating: the competencies being built today must not be squandered. Without follow-on programmes, ordered before Miecznik winds down, the risk of losing those capabilities is real, and rebuilding them would take years and cost enormous sums. In that sense, the August launch is more than a ceremony: it is proof that Poland can once again build combat ships at home and a question about whether that momentum can be sustained.

Next month, Wicher will touch the water. But the true measure of success will not be the ceremony itself, but what follows, both aboard the frigate and in the next round of orders for the Polish shipbuilding industry.

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