The Husarz Has Landed: Poland's F-35 Arrives, Becomes NATO's Eastern Flank First Fifth-Generation Operator

I. The Deal — $4.6 Billion, 32 Jets, and Poland's Biggest Defence Bet

In January 2020, Poland signed a Foreign Military Sale agreement with the United States government for 32 Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II aircraft — the conventional takeoff and landing variant of the world's most advanced production combat jet. The contract value was $4.6 billion, making it the second-largest defence acquisition in Polish history after the purchase of Patriot air defence systems. It was signed against the backdrop of Russia's ongoing occupation of Crimea and its grinding proxy war in eastern Ukraine — a conflict that would turn into a full-scale invasion just two years later.

The $4.6 billion covers not merely the aircraft themselves. Included in the package are 33 Pratt & Whitney F135 engines — one spare per aircraft — along with a comprehensive logistic support package, mission planning systems, secure communications infrastructure, ground support equipment, and a full training programme for 24 Polish pilots. The Polish aircraft received a national designation — Husarz, the Polish word for Hussar — selected through a public competition and chosen to honour the Winged Hussars, the heavy cavalry of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth whose charge at the Battle of Vienna in 1683 stopped the Ottoman advance into Europe. The symbolism was not accidental.

II. The Aircraft — What the F-35A Actually Is, and Why It Matters

The F-35A Lightning II is a fifth-generation, single-engine, stealth multirole combat aircraft designed for air superiority, ground attack, electronic warfare, and intelligence gathering simultaneously. It is the most sophisticated production aircraft in history — and the most expensive weapons programme ever built, with total programme costs for all variants now exceeding $400 billion across the entire global fleet.

Poland's variant — the F-35A — is the conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) version. It is the smallest, lightest, and most aerodynamically optimised of the three variants, with a top speed of Mach 1.6, a combat radius exceeding 690 nautical miles, and an internal weapons bay that preserves the stealth profile regardless of what ordnance it carries. Externally, it can carry additional weapons that increase payload but reduce stealth — the pilot selects the configuration based on the mission.

III. The Companies — Who Builds the F-35

The F-35 is the product of the largest industrial consortium in aviation history, designed and produced across nine countries with hundreds of partner companies. Understanding who builds it explains why it costs what it costs — and why the supply chain is essentially irreplaceable.

Beyond the major prime contractors, the F-35 supply chain spans more than 1,500 suppliers across the United States and eight partner nations: the United Kingdom, Italy, Netherlands, Turkey (excluded after the S-400 purchase), Australia, Canada, Denmark, and Norway. Key subsystems are manufactured by companies including Elbit Systems (Israel, display systems), Leonardo (Italy, fuselage sections), GKN Aerospace (UK, composite structures), and Kongsberg Defence (Norway, weapons integration). The F-35 is, in the fullest sense, a NATO alliance programme — and Poland's purchase deepens that integration.

IV. The Transatlantic Journey — How You Fly a Fighter Jet Across the Atlantic Ocean

The F-35A has an internal fuel capacity of approximately 18,500 pounds — enough for a combat radius of roughly 690 nautical miles. The Atlantic Ocean is approximately 3,400 nautical miles wide. The mathematics are not favourable for an unassisted crossing. This is why every transatlantic delivery of an F-35 — for Poland, for Italy, for the Netherlands, for every international customer — requires aerial refuelling support from a tanker aircraft flying alongside.

Poland conducted its first aerial refuelling exercise with a US KC-135 Stratotanker in March 2025, described by defence-industry.eu as "the result of six months of planning between the US and Poland." The exercise — involving an Illinois Air National Guard KC-135 — was a deliberate rehearsal for exactly this scenario: Polish F-35s taking fuel from a US tanker in flight, preparing for the eventual transatlantic delivery. The fact that the commander noted that "Illinois is home to many Polish-Americans, some of whom may have supported the mission" captures something genuine about the human dimension of this alliance relationship.

The actual delivery flight of the first jets to Poland on May 20 2026 followed a carefully planned routing with USAF tanker support across the ocean. The specific tanker units and exact routing are not publicly disclosed for operational security reasons — but the mechanics are well established from previous NATO partner deliveries, including the first transatlantic F-35 crossing ever made by an Italian Air Force jet in February 2016, which required seven aerial refuellings across two legs.

V. Training in Arkansas — How Poland Built Its F-35 Pilot Corps

Long before any F-35 touched Polish soil, Poland was building the human infrastructure to operate it. The programme began years before the first aircraft arrived — and it was built with deliberate, methodical patience.

The first two Polish F-35As — aircraft 3501 and 3502, formally presented to Poland's Ministry of National Defence at Lockheed Martin's Fort Worth facility in August 2024 — were flown to Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith, Arkansas in December 2024. Ebbing was selected by the US Air Force in 2023 as the second dedicated international F-35 training centre, after Hill Air Force Base in Utah hit its environmental approval limit of 24 aircraft. Poland became the first nation to send its pilots to Ebbing — paving the way for Finland, Germany, Switzerland, and Singapore, who will follow in the coming years.

Under the intergovernmental Letter of Offer and Acceptance (LOA), the United States has committed to training 24 Polish pilots on the F-35A at Ebbing. At least six Polish F-35As will remain permanently stationed at Ebbing to support the ongoing training programme — meaning even as the bulk of the fleet comes to Poland, a training detachment remains in Arkansas. Engineers, technicians, maintenance crews, and logistics personnel have also been training in the US since 2022, some of whom have already returned to Łask to prepare the base for the aircraft's arrival.

VI. Łask — Poland's F-35 Home Base

The 32nd Tactical Air Base (32. Baza Lotnictwa Taktycznego) in Łask, Łódź Voivodeship, is where the Husarz has come to live. Łask is not a new military installation — it has been a Polish Air Force base since the communist era and has housed F-16C/D Block 52+ jets since Poland began receiving them in 2006. It sits in central Poland, roughly equidistant between Warsaw and Łódź, and its geographic position is strategically deliberate: within rapid response range of both the Belarusian border to the northeast and the Kaliningrad Oblast to the northwest.

Beginning in 2022 — four years before the first F-35 arrived — Łask underwent a comprehensive infrastructure overhaul to meet US F-35 certification standards. New dedicated hangars were constructed, purpose-built for the F-35's classified maintenance requirements. New technical facilities, security installations, and pilot support infrastructure were added. Significant portions of the new infrastructure remain classified. In March 2026, the base received formal US certification that its infrastructure met the standards required to operate and maintain the F-35 — a prerequisite for the delivery to proceed. The certification also allowed Poland to begin receiving additional F-35 system components: simulators, mission planning software, and secure communications systems.

Colonel Krzysztof Duda, commander of the 32nd Tactical Air Base, described the introduction of the F-35 as "a generational change for the Polish military, comparable to the transition to the F-16." The comparison is apt: when Poland received its first F-16s in 2006, it was making a similar leap — from Soviet-era MiG-21s and MiG-29s to a Western fourth-generation fighter. Now it is making the same leap again, from the F-16 to a fifth-generation aircraft that outclasses the F-16 in nearly every dimension.

VII. The Full Delivery Schedule — 32 Jets by 2029

The delivery of Poland's full fleet of 32 F-35A Husarz aircraft is spread across six years, with the bulk of the aircraft arriving in 2027. The schedule is as follows:

VIII. What This Means — For Poland, for NATO, and for Russia

The arrival of the F-35 at Łask is not merely a procurement milestone. It is a geopolitical signal of the first order. Russia has deployed advanced air defence systems in Kaliningrad — including the S-400 and the A-50 airborne early warning aircraft — and maintains significant air assets in Belarus following its 2022 alliance with Minsk. The previous generation of Polish air assets — F-16s and the Su-22s being retired — were capable fourth-generation fighters but lacked the stealth and sensor capabilities to operate confidently against Russian integrated air defence systems in a high-intensity conflict scenario.

The F-35 changes that calculus entirely. Its radar cross-section is designed to be invisible to the surface-to-air missile systems Russia currently deploys. Its AN/APG-81 radar can detect, track, and target adversary aircraft at ranges that exceed the detection range of those aircraft's own radar systems — the F-35 can see the adversary before the adversary can see the F-35. And its sensor fusion architecture integrates it into NATO's broader fifth-generation network: a Polish Husarz at Łask shares real-time targeting data with USAF F-35s in Germany, RAF F-35Bs in the UK, and Dutch F-35As in the Netherlands — all simultaneously, all in real time.

For investors, the defence investment context matters. Poland is spending 4.3% of GDP on defence in 2026 — the highest of any NATO ally, including the United States. The F-35 is the centrepiece of that spending, but not the only element: Poland is also taking delivery of Apache helicopters, upgrading its Patriot air defence systems, building a 300,000-strong army, and constructing the CPK mega-airport and rail hub. This is an economy in a genuine, sustained, government-backed investment cycle — and the F-35's arrival is both a symbol of that commitment and its most visible expression.