National Security Journal
Military and Defense Analysis
Military Hardware: Tanks, Bombers, Submarines and MorePoland Is Slowly Preparing for the Unthinkable: War with Russia
Reuben Johnson
ByReuben Johnson
Published1 day ago (Sept.15, 2025)
Troopers with 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division firing the 25mm canon on a Bradley fighting vehicle in order to zero the vehicles weapons systems at a range in Poland. Ranges such as these familiarize troopers with the vehicles systems in order to ensure combat readiness.Troopers with 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division firing the 25mm canon on a Bradley fighting vehicle in order to zero the vehicles weapons systems at a range in Poland. Ranges such as these familiarize troopers with the vehicles systems in order to ensure combat readiness.
Key Points and Summary – Russia’s latest barrage sent more than 20 drones into Polish airspace, the first hostile act against a NATO member, and it triggered an immediate response in Poland.
-Thousands have volunteered for military training as Warsaw rolls out an Israeli-style ready-reserve plan aimed at 500,000 trained citizens.
-Prime Minister Donald Tusk says every adult male should be war-ready; women are signing up too, often using vacation days to train.
-Poland now fields NATO’s third-largest active force and spends 4.7% of GDP on defense. Officials expect 40,000 trainees in 2025, countering demographic decline and signaling resolve after years of Russian aggression nationwide.
In Response to Russian Drone Incursion, Thousands of Poles Sign Up For Military Training
WARSAW, POLAND – Last Tuesday, Russia fired more than 400 drones at Ukraine in one of its nightly attacks. Some 20 or more of these traveled into Polish airspace, making this incident officially the first hostile act committed by Moscow against a NATO member state in the history of the alliance.
The incident has had a dramatic effect on Poland, a Central European NATO member. Overnight, Russia has convinced thousands of citizens of this nation to sign up for voluntary military training.
What We Are Seeing in Poland Right Now
“There is a definite ‘cause and effect’ dynamic taking place here,” said one of the Polish defense specialists National Security Journal spoke to. “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin makes a move against Ukraine, and NATO then becomes larger and more determined. This is why Sweden and Finland joined the alliance after decades of self-imposed neutrality. Now he has convinced more of us to be prepared to go to war. It is like he has the foreign policy equivalent of the ‘Midas Touch’—only in reverse. Everything he does backfires on him.”
BALTOPS 2024
U.S. Marine from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) Special Operations Capable (SOC) Maritime Special Purpose Force (MSPF) wears a camouflaging cobra hood during Baltic Operations 2024 (BALTOPS 24) in Ustka, Poland June 14, 2024. BALTOPS 24 is the premier maritime-focused military exercise in the Baltic Region. The exercise, led by U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa, and executed by Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO, provides a unique training opportunity to strengthen combined response capabilities critical to preserving freedom of navigation and security in the Baltic Sea. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Sisi Lopez Barahona)
Last month, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced that the nation would create a ready reserve system mirroring the Israeli model, where hundreds of thousands of citizens will be required to participate in a comprehensive program of military training and reserve status.
The goal of this universal military preparedness program is to create a Polish military of active-duty personnel supported by a force of 500,000 trained, ready reservists with the requisite training under their belts.
This mandate will make a military large enough to deter the Russian army from attacking Poland and taking chunks of territory, as it already has in Ukraine.
Military Vacations
“By the end of the year, we want to have a model ready so that every adult male in Poland is trained for war, and so that this reserve is adequate for possible threats,” Tusk said to the Polish Parliament, the Sejm. With 200,000 personnel under arms the Polish military is now the third-largest of all the NATO alliance members after the US and Turkey. It is also the largest among the alliance’s EU members.
This fear of “what will Russia do next” has prompted many Poles—both male and female—to sign up for this training program, with some even using their vacation days away from work to complete part of their training. One of the Polish women who spoke to Reuters over the weekend spoke of how she wanted to be able to defend her family, especially her 13-year-old son.
“I’d do anything to keep my child safe. And I would definitely want to fight to protect him,” she said. The voluntary training program she has committed to is designed to attract as many professionals from civilian life as possible and to use their private-sector skills to support the armed forces.
A Hard History Still Stings for Poland
Memories of the decades when Poland was occupied by the Soviet military and its people governed under a communist regime controlled by the Russians are still fresh in the minds of many in this country. Russia’s historical orientation of “everything belongs to us” is a concern to the Polish military in particular and NATO in general.
“If you listened to the ravings of Putin last year when he held forth with his improbable version of Russian history in his interview with the US political commentator Tucker Carlson—well then you can understand why the Poles are just about as nervous and distrustful of Moscow as they can be at this point,” said a former senior NATO commander who spoke with National Security Journal.
Preparing for the Worst
More than 20,000 Poles decided to enter the voluntary military training program during the first seven months of 2025. This is consistent with similar record levels of those volunteering for the training regime last year, explained Colonel Grzegorz Wawrzynkiewicz, the head of Poland’s Central Military Recruitment Centre.
He stated that the Polish military expects about 40,000 volunteers to complete this training program by the end of 2025. This total will be more than double the 16,000 that volunteered in 2022. That surge in participation is a direct consequence of the collective concerns about resurgent Russian aggression since Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Since the beginning of the war in 2022, Poland has also more than doubled its defense outlays from 2.2 percent of its gross economic output to 4.7 percent this year. This is the highest ratio of military spending in the 32-nation NATO alliance, putting Warsaw far above the more established European powers and original members of the NATO alliance, such as Germany, France, and Britain.
Poland’s long-term plans to increase the size of its military show tangible gains in the present day.
In 2014, Poland had only the ninth-largest military in all of NATO, but it is now the third-largest today. And Warsaw plans to further increase those numbers of personnel by nearly a third over the next decade.
The one looming obstacle is that Poland has a shrinking and aging population, which is an issue that efforts to increase voluntary participation in the military are designed to overcome.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the US Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
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