Five-Year Review: Non-signatory Poland acknowledges the humanitarian harm caused by cluster munitions and has expressed its support for the convention, but has not taken any steps towards accession. Poland states it sees military utility in cluster munitions, but it has never used them. Poland is a producer of cluster munitions, but has not exported them. Poland has participated as an observer in almost every Meeting of States Parties of the convention.

Poland is a cluster munition producer. In 2009, Poland disclosed information on the types of its stockpiled cluster munitions, but not the quantities.

Policy

The Republic of Poland has not acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has responded to Cluster Munition Monitor’s request for updated information every year since the initiative’s first report in 2009. In its most recent response provided in April 2015, Poland stated it “would like to underline that although Poland has not yet acceded to the Oslo Convention it takes precautions to limit the inhumane effects of such munitions.”[1]

The 2015 response reaffirms that Poland is not using or transferring cluster munitions and has been gradually reducing the number of cluster munitions in its stockpile through regular reviews.[2] It did not address the current status of its production of cluster munitions, which Poland last commented on in 2010. While Poland is adhering to most of the convention’s provisions it has not been willing to introduce a national moratorium on the use, production, or transfer of cluster munitions.[3]

Poland’s 2015 response repeats its position that it cannot join the convention “at the moment” due “to the fact that cluster munitions play an important role in our defense arsenal” and because accession would require it “to forgo the capability of using cluster munitions by the Polish Armed Forces,” which in turn “would seriously weaken” the “country’s purely defensive capacity.”[4]

Since 2008, Poland has repeatedly stated that it is not in a position to join the convention due to security concerns.[5] It stated so in its 2014 response to the Monitor, while acknowledging the need to protect civilians from the humanitarian problems caused by cluster munitions and citing its commitment to the Mine Ban Treaty, which it ratified on 27 December 2012.[6] In 2013, a Polish official said that the government is aware of the convention’s humanitarian rationale, but the Ministry of Defense is concerned at the cost of replacing cluster munitions with another weapons system and considers cluster munitions as a necessary weapon to be used only in “self-defense.”[7]

Poland is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) and has long expressed a preference for cluster munitions to be addressed within the CCW. It supported an effort to conclude a CCW protocol regulating cluster munitions that failed in November 2011, effectively ending CCW deliberations on the weapons and leaving the Convention on Cluster Munitions as the sole multilateral instrument to specifically address cluster munitions. Poland’s 2015 response to the Monitor reiterates its view of the CCW “as the most appropriate venue for discussions about the negative effects” of weapons.[8] Despite this, Poland has not made any proposals at the CCW for further work on cluster munitions.

Poland participated in the Oslo Process that led to the creation of the convention, but made clear from the start that it did not support a comprehensive prohibition on cluster munitions and preferred the CCW framework.[9] Poland participated as an observer in both the negotiations of the convention in Dublin in May 2008 and the Convention on Cluster Munitions Signing Conference in Oslo in December 2008.[10]

Poland has engaged in the work of the Convention on Cluster Munitions since 2008, despite not joining. It has participated as an observer in every Meeting of States Parties, except the Fifth Meeting of States Parties in San José, Costa Rica in September 2014. Poland has attended the convention’s intersessional meetings in Geneva in April 2014 and April 2015, but did not make any statements.

Poland has voted in favor of UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions condemning the use of cluster munitions in Syria, including Resolution 69/189 on 18 December 2014, which expressed “outrage” at the continued use.[11]

Use

Poland has consistently stated that the Polish Armed Forces have never used cluster munitions in combat situations.[12] In April 2015, Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs again confirmed that “as in previous years Polish Armed Forces did not use cluster munitions in either combat situations or training.”[13]

Poland has described its air-delivered cluster munitions, which entered into service in the 1980s during the Warsaw Pact-era, as “obsolete” and stressed that “current military Air Force doctrine does not anticipate any use of air-delivered cluster munitions in military operations.”[14]

Poland acknowledged that its army and air force used cluster munitions for training purposes in 2009, 2010, and 2011 at training grounds, but it has stated nothing about the use of cluster munitions in training since 2012.[15]

Production

Poland is a producer of cluster munitions, but the last time the Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed to the Monitor that the weapons are “still produced” was in 2010.[16] It stated in 2009 that cluster munitions manufactured by Poland are “exclusively for the needs of the Polish Armed Forces.”[17]

At least four Polish companies have produced cluster munitions for the armed forces:

• Zakłady Metalowe “DEZAMET” S.A. has produced the ZK-300 Kisajno cluster bomb and also lists producing another type of cluster bomb called the LBKas-250, which contains 120 LBok-1 bomblets.[18]
• Zakłady Metalowe “DEZAMET” S.A. also produces a 98mm mortar cluster munition, as well as a 122mm projectile designed for the 2S1 “GOŹDZIK” howitzer.[19] The Kraśnik defense plant has produced cluster munitions for 98mm mortars, 122mm artillery, and 152mm artillery.[20]
• Tłocznia Metali Pressta Spółka Akcynjna has manufactured 122mm rockets.[21]
• Fabryka Produkcji Specjalnej Spółka z o.o. produces the 122mm M-21FK “FENIKS-Z” and the 122mm “HESYT” rockets. It also produces GKO submunitions, a dual-purpose improved conventional munition (DPICM) that combines antipersonnel fragmentation with an antiarmor shaped charge.[22]

Many of these companies are subsidiaries of the Polish Defence Holding company, formerly known as the Bumar Group, a majority government-owned defense industry consortium of more than 30 defense sector companies specializing in munitions, rockets, and other weaponry technology.[23]

Transfer

In 2015, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs again informed the Monitor that Poland’s stockpiles are “kept under strict control and are not subject to any international transfers.”[24] Previously, in 2010, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed the Monitor that Poland and/or Polish companies have not exported any cluster munitions in previous years.[25] In 2010, however, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed the Monitor that Polish companies could, theoretically, be legally granted permission to export cluster munitions, if an application was requested.[26]

Stockpiling

Poland possesses a stockpile of ground-launched and air-dropped cluster munitions, mostly of Polish origin and some from the former Soviet Union.[27]

The Polish land forces are equipped with the following types of cluster munitions:

• 122mm M-21FK “FENIKS-Z” rockets, containing 42 GKO submunitions, used by BM-21/21M or RM-70/85 multi-barrel rocket launchers;
• 122mm “HESYT-1” artillery projectiles, containing 20 GKO submunitions, used by 2S1 “GOŹDZIK” self-propelled howitzers; and
• 98mm “RAD-2” mortar projectiles, containing 12 GKO submunitions, used by M-98 mortars.

The Polish Air Force possesses the following types of cluster munitions:

• ZK-300 cluster bombs containing 315 LBOk fragmentation bomblets—both the carrier and bomblets were designed and produced in Poland;
• BKF cartridges with antivehicle, incendiary and fragmentation bomblets, imported from the former Soviet Union, for use in KMG-U dispensers on Su-22 aircraft;

In 2010, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the armed forces no longer possessed RBK-250, RBK-250-275, and RBK-500 type cluster bombs, which it said were withdrawn from service during the 1990s and destroyed.[28]

In April 2015, Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that its cluster munitions are subject to “regular stockpile reviews which lead to a reduction in…stockpiles since munitions that are not eligible for further use are destroyed.”[29] It made a similar statement in 2014, emphasizing that regular reviews result “in a gradual decrease in the number of stockpiled units” of cluster munitions.[30]