Signal No. 176 · Poland to service Europe's PAC-3 interceptors

On the margins of the NATO Conference of National Armaments Directors meeting on Tuesday, the US Department of War said the US government, in coordination with Lockheed Martin and European allies, had selected Poland as host nation for the European PAC-3 Missile Maintenance Facility. The release says supply chain integration will be "led by Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden" and ties the decision to the defence-industrial commitments of the Ankara summit in July, where the United States, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden agreed to explore such a facility.

Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka, a secretary of state in Poland's defence ministry, said four countries had bid to host it — Poland, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway — and that Poland's bid was rated highest from the start. Speaking at NATO headquarters in Brussels, she put the investment at about PLN 1 billion. Sixty days of talks with Lockheed Martin on the key decisions now lie ahead, she said, and the centre will need at least a dozen or so months before it can operate; the site in Poland has not been named.

The facility is to service the PAC-3 MSE and the older PAC-3 CRI, which need periodic recertification; Lockheed Martin lists repair, refurbishment, life-cycle support and recertification, drawing on Poland's defence industry. Polish reporting says recertification in the United States, including the return delivery, can take more than a year, and expects a European centre to cut that to a few weeks; the release promises to "dramatically shorten turnaround times" without a figure. The same reporting names PAC-3 MSE production as Warsaw's next aim; Polish plants now make the missile's launch canisters and one of its sections, with the attitude-control motors.

Wes Streeting, the British defence secretary, and Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, Poland's deputy prime minister and defence minister, signed the plan in Warsaw on Tuesday. The Ministry of Defence calls it the first phase of cooperation under the UK–Poland Security and Defence Partnership Treaty, which the two prime ministers, Donald Tusk and Keir Starmer, signed in London on 27 May. It lists collaboration "on the manufacture and development of the next generation of air defence missiles", which it says builds on Poland's Narew procurement from MBDA UK; co-development of drone and counter-drone technology; shared lessons from the Type 31 and Miecznik frigate programmes; and expansion of large-calibre ammunition capacity by BAE Systems and PGZ. The two countries are planning "a major Coalition of the Willing exercise in Poland next month" to make sure the Multinational Force Ukraine is ready to support the military training and post-war rebuilding Ukraine will need.

Kosiniak-Kamysz listed Miecznik, the Narew, Pilica and Pilica+ air-defence programmes and an independent 155 mm production line, and said Britain would have "a significant share" in the submarine programme for which Poland chose a Swedish partner.

Alexander Stubb, Finland's president, and Jonas Gahr Støre, Norway's prime minister, spoke to Vladimir Putin by telephone from Helsinki on Tuesday morning for about an hour and a half. Stubb's office said they spoke as leaders of their own countries, not for Europe, to pass messages to Putin ahead of the Abu Dhabi talks. Stubb said the call was prepared with Ukraine and the United States after last week's meeting in Oslo with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Steve Witkoff, and listed short-term ceasefire questions: energy, power plants and transmission, wider infrastructure, food security and prisoner exchanges. The Kremlin's readout welcomes "the agreement to resume trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine, and the United States in Abu Dhabi in early to mid November" and has Putin say a lasting peace is possible only if Russia's interests "are considered in full and without any conditions attached".

Mette Frederiksen, Denmark's prime minister, told DR the call had not been coordinated with other European countries and that she was very sceptical: "I don't really know what they think they will achieve with this." Ulf Kristersson, Sweden's prime minister, said he had not been told beforehand, Dagens Nyheter reports. Støre told the Finnish parliament that all of Finland's and Norway's allies had been informed: "We speak for no one but ourselves." Tusk said Støre had assured him he would present the position agreed in earlier consultations, including in the Coalition of the Willing, and that a meeting could come after 4 November; by his account, the date is not settled, nor is whether the talks take place at all.