Boeing Signs the Apache Offset That Makes WZL-1 Łódź an Authorised AH-64E Service Centre Through 2036
Łódź, 11 August 2026
Key points
- Boeing signed offset implementing agreements with WZL-1 (Wojskowe Zakłady Lotnicze Nr 1, Łódź) and WCBKT (the central military design and technology bureau) on 11 August, with Prime Minister Donald Tusk and defence state secretaries Cezary Tomczyk and Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka present
- The WZL-1 agreement establishes an authorised AH-64E Apache Guardian service centre — operational support, technical servicing and ground support of the fleet; the WCBKT agreement covers compatibility assessment of Polish ground-support equipment
- Rzeczpospolita puts the Boeing agreement at about PLN 440 million, the Lockheed Martin agreement of March 2026 (LONGBOW radar, TADS/PNVS diagnostics) at over PLN 300 million, and the outstanding General Electric engine agreement for Dęblin at about PLN 500 million — some PLN 1.2 billion in total, running to end-2036
- The purchase behind it: 96 AH-64E under an August 2024 Letter of Offer and Acceptance worth about USD 10 billion, deliveries 2028–2032
- Tusk: WZL-1 will be the largest service centre for these helicopters in Europe and will double its workforce
Poland put the sustainment of its 96 AH-64E Apaches into a Polish state plant on 11 August, when Boeing signed the offset implementing agreements that make WZL-1 in Łódź an authorised service centre for the type through 2036.
The signing at the Łódź works closes the second of three legs of the Apache offset. Lockheed Martin's agreement, covering diagnostics and servicing of the LONGBOW fire-control radar and the TADS/PNVS sights, was signed in March; the General Electric Aerospace agreement for the T700-701D and CT7 engine family at WZL-1's Dęblin branch — the third leg — was still described as outstanding on the day, although GE's umbrella offset with the Armament Agency was concluded alongside the aircraft purchase in August 2024. Technicians are to be trained with the Military University of Technology in Warsaw, and the plant expects to need on the order of a hundred more mechanics.
Tomczyk called the Apache buy the largest contract with the United States in Polish history and said the agreements guarantee work "for decades in Łódź and Dęblin"; Sobkowiak-Czarnecka framed the day as the end of the period "when Poland was only a client." The centre is stated as sized for at least the Polish fleet and open to other NATO Apache operators. The helicopters arrive from 2028 in tranches of 15, 20, 32, 21 and 8.
An authorised service centre transfers sustainment authority, not the aircraft. WZL-1 may inspect, repair and overhaul to the manufacturer's procedures, on the manufacturer's parts, for as long as the authorisation stands — and about PLN 1.2 billion of obligation is roughly three per cent of the purchase it attaches to. Five weeks earlier Poland bought industrial depth at a different level: PGZ's other aircraft works, WZL-2 at Bydgoszcz, signed with Anduril to assemble and then produce the Barracuda-500M cruise missile in Poland (Signal No. 97). Warsaw is running both models at once, and the more valuable of the two — Łódź, on paper — is the shallower. Großwald carried the signing in Signal No. 121. What settles the size of it is whether any operator other than Poland routes an airframe through Łódź before the first Polish Apache lands in 2028 — Europe's other AH-64E fleets, in the Netherlands and Britain, run their own support arrangements.
