Sea Control - Sea Control 605: From Cold War Warriors to Blue Water Ambition

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

Dr. Michał Piekarski is Assistant Professor at the Institute of International and Security Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Wrocław. His research focuses on national security issues, particularly hybrid threats, maritime security, and Poland’s strategic culture. J. Overton is the co-host of the Sea Control podcast and edited the essay collection “Seapower by Other Means,” and is a member of the Military Writers Guild.    Links -   Hybrid Threats from Russia to NATO’s Littoral States on the Baltic Sea Guardians of the North Atlantic: NATO Maritime Strategies and Naval Operations in Turbulent Times The Institute of International and Security Studies at the University of Wrocław  

Welcome aboard Sea Control fans. This is Jay, and today our guest is Dr. Michael Pekarsk. We're going to discuss his chapter, From Cold War Warriors to Blue Water Ambitions, Evolution of Polish Naval Strategy in Context of NATO Enlargement. That's included in the new book from the ISPK Sea Power series titled Guardians of the North Atlantic. Michael, please tell us a little bit about yourself. Well, so I am currently, I'm employed as an adjunct professor or assistant professor at the Wroclaw University. And my research includes Polish national security, Polish strategic culture, and Polish maritime security, as well as hybrid threats. So all the hot topics recently. And apart from this, I do sometimes contribute to news media, to various magazines, and also

a moonlight as a writer of political fiction, but under pen name. Yeah, cool. Yeah. Very cool. How did you, I gotta ask, how did you get interested in this topic? I asked this a lot of our guests, just. Well, as usual in Poland, it all starts with World War II and essentially all the stories about World War II and about the Polish sailors, because our armed forces, actually during the World War II, were fighting under very different conditions in very different places. so you could find our sailors fighting in the battle of atlantic our submarines fighting in

the mediterranean sea and in the other places all right cool very cool um the uh reminders that all views presented are our own and not necessarily those of any organization we now or have been in the past affiliated so let's get into before we even get up to the time period we're talking about here um from your article there could you just please tell us a little bit about poland's naval history uh you know including the world war ii you talked about or perhaps naval heritage i mean it's a it's an international uh podcast here we get folks from all over the place but maybe many of us are not as familiar with the polish maritime history so however you can however you can sum that up here hundreds of years and a few minutes ago yes this is a very short history because

before in so-called First Republic of Poland, so before the Poland essentially disappeared from the map in the 18th century, we had very little interest in maritime security, maritime trade. We were very, very,

very oriented into land expansion. So if you look at the map of Poland or Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, as this was known in the 15th, 16th century, you shall see a very large land empire that actually at some point controlled a large part of baltic coast that was very close to actually reaching out to the black sea and despite of the fact despite

that our economy actually at some point was essentially based on the export of grain from poland to the western europe we essentially ignored the marketing issues at all we essentially outsources the naval trade we decided okay we just delivered the grain it's not our problem who carries the goods through the sea we had only very very very few episodes of actually trying to build a naval forces very few naval engagement before the end of that period of polish state and this is a very interesting in comparison with russia because at the time when you could see that the poland that was once a quite big country actually was losing more and more power so to the point that we became essentially victim of partitions we ignored the

sea on the other side russia one of the major projects of russia and peter the great was building russia's naval power was actually even moving the capital to the saint petersburg building new city and then actually russia became a major power and became one of the states that actually essentially became part became the states that essentially took control of our lands right so when we this was when after one more than 100 years we regained the independence the first thing was actually okay if we were to stay independent we need to have access to the sea we were given a very small swath of coast of baltic sea and then we very quickly realized that because we have on one side we have the russia at this time it was already soviet russia that

actually wanted to conquer us on the other hand we had germans and we didn't like we weren't friends with germans so to speak and we realized that we are between those two enemies and the only literally lifeline is that a small part of the baltic sea so we essentially built from literally from nothing we had in 1920 we had zero major ports zero merchant navy zero naval power. We essentially built everything from scratch to the point that we in 1939

we had, regarding the Navy, four destroyers, one big mine layer that was almost essentially, it could be described as the fifth destroyer but with mine laying capabilities, five submarines,

all their smaller ships including the smaller mine layers and actually are quite big inland fleet because we assume that since one of our enemies is the soviet union we are going to fight not only land engagements but a part of this land territory where we expected confrontation would be so-called polish area so essentially the And nowadays it's a northern Ukraine and southern Bialystok, including the Chernobyl area. And it's an area of various rivers, canals, lakes. And we had quite successful engagements against the Soviets in the 1920s.

And then we decided to keep actually naval force, riverine forces there. Okay. All right. so then then you become of course um you know there's that then then you're going into i guess post-world war ii you're you're becoming part of the warsaw pack there uh and then i guess what what was your i'm curious what was your role in the uh warsaw pack as i understand it there was you even had like a you were part of sort of the greater war plans there for amphibious landings that kind of thing so yeah it did tell us about that please exactly according to the known plans and we are lucky because the plans we were ordered to create at the the operational plans

they survived they are in our archives so we know that in the future a potential third world war so you could think tom clancy's redstone rising sure we were essentially supposed to provide land forces for offensive into the northern germany probably northern netherlands and to seize the denmark and apart from the land operations and air operations we were supposed to deliver forces that to conduct the amphibious and urban landings so we had designated airborne division it was in fact a brigade we had a marine in front of division again it was again brigade size unit and follow on forces that was in the size of mechanized division and naval forces were essentially built for this one purpose only,

to conduct this one big, large amphibious landing operation in Denmark. Is there, I guess you had the littoral inland riverine forces. Was there much amphibious, was there a history of that sort of? Is that something like, from what you were saying, maybe it could have been since you were used to doing, I guess, inland stuff. Was that something that Poland's Navy had a little bit of history with? No, this was essentially completely new capabilities, according to the Soviet plans, especially Soviet orders.

We have been given some autonomy in actually in fourth generation, also in shipbuilding projects. So, for example, we were building the amphibious ships, that were used by Polish Navy, by Soviet Navy, by various other navies. They were quite numerous. And we had actually, at the end of the Cold War, we had 22 landing ships plus dedicated command ships

and one squadron of smaller amphibious assault cutters. All right. And those were Polish-built even? Yes. Most of the vessels were Polish-built. All right. All right. So then you bring us up to the end of the Cold War there.

So then huge transition, I imagine. You go from Warsaw Pact to NATO fairly quick. And it's more than just the force you're providing. You're going from changes of government. You're going from, as I understand it, conscription to volunteer force. So any of those massive changes you can summarize or share with us. That's a lot. Yes, actually the amphibious forces.

And the first sign of our change in defense policy was actually the fact that in two years, between 1989 and 1991, we decided to get rid of almost all amphibious ships and we disbanded the Marine Brigade. it is a clear signal that we are not going to conduct the war against nato so we get rid of those forces that are not needed we decided to leave the five most modern because at this time in the end of cold war there was a time of generational change in armed forces so we had five lublin class landing vessels but because they had a secondary function they could they can be used as a mine link vessels we simply rename this they are not as amphibious assault ships they are transport and mine laying vessels and they shall be used for defensive operations only

so that's the reason why we still keep those vessels plus three smaller transport cutters but most of the offense but most of those amphibious

capabilities was gone in the very few years and regarding the other forces because we had a large number of missile boats osta class the tarantula class anti-submarine warfare vessels we decided to keep them but gradually retiring them because they become older and older we tried to actually convert some osta class boats for a patrol boats for border guard but it turned out that it's not the best idea

because they were very high fuel consumption of those vessels. They simply were meant to be fast attack craft, not patrol vessels. So border guards decided that they simply can't afford to keep them. And we decided to actually build more, I would say, not only defensive, but even more law enforcement capabilities. Because, for example, during the Warsaw Pact times, we didn't have a proper maritime patrol aircraft.

We had naval aviation, but it was essentially designed to support that one big amphibious operation. And we only had a squadron of Mifort and the Hays helicopters that were equipped with anti-submarine warfare equipment. And they could be used as a marine patrol aircraft. but we didn't have any analog to the orion aircraft or atlantic so after the end of cold war we decided okay we are going to have a small fleet of small maritime patrol aircraft we used the because we had a license of soviet an-28 aircraft so we built the marine the naval variant of this we also gained new capabilities regarding the search and rescue because it wasn't something that was given a much priority during the cold war and so because we had

already started a production of a new helicopter new medium helicopter a soco similar in size to the huey helicopter a number of them was actually introduced to polish navy as a search and rescue helicopters and that was all we simply for first years decided to keep out very much defensive posture and the major changes started in the late 90s where when we actually had a chance to receive western equipment including for example two periclassific gates and submarines from Norway there was four of them to operational use the fifth was

used only for training and now it's actually it was planned to be converted to a simulator so they were essentially gap fillers because we assumed we still have this post Warsaw Pact equipment

we are going to at some point get some new ships but in the meantime we are going to use those gap fillers so those American frigates, Norwegian submarines and we shall train the personnel and actually when it comes to the training and actual learning capabilities

those gap fillers are an extremely good job for example we never had ship-borne helicopters we always have the land bases and only one ship that we used had actual helipad the old cashing class destroyer had a helipad but did not have hangar there was no helicopter as a permanent element of the ship when we got the periclassific gates we got also helicopters because they were an integral part of the system with the ships. So it was a completely new capability. For a long time, for example, we did not have any formal capability

when it comes to boarding operations, to embargo operations, humanitarian operations. In the 90s, when we realized that, okay, we are going to join NATO, and NATO was at this time an organization that was engaged in operations, for example, in the Adriatic Sea. and this was assumed that we are going to join in the future or possible future operations. We didn't know, but we assumed that there could be some peacekeeping operations,

stabilization operations, antiracist operations, whatever the name would be used. One of the things we were learning were actually those boarding procedures, creating boarding teams, equipment training, and so on. And we had a number of other changes. For example, the level of English language skills had to be higher. And yes, one thing that is interesting regarding the personnel was that the Polish Navy, as well as Soviet Navy, it was all conscript-based force. You had all junior enlisted personnel, they were conscripts. They were serving actually a two-year mandatory service and only the senior enlisted warrant officers and commissioned officers were the career personnel.

And with the advent of new force, we started slowly to introduce the ships that had crew composed only of the volunteers. Were there manning issues with that? Were there not enough folks, not enough people joining up, or was it to volunteer? No, actually, there were no such issues, especially that you can always find a number of people who simply want to go to the sea, which is quite surprising in Poland. what so since one thing I'll ask you I'm assuming that the Navy feels essentially Coast Guard role there also do you have a dedicated Coast Guard because when you're talking about boarding and search and rescue I'm assuming they kind of

law enforcement that's that's Poland Navy to not a not a separate entity right yes we have a dedicated part of Border Guard because we don't separate coast guard just like us and again we have to come back a little in history because during the cold war actually there were something that was called border troops but they were responsible only for land border and inland waters the navy had that dedicated patrol force that was essentially to be used in the wartime as a support force in the auxiliary anti-submarine warfare force and at the end of cold war when with the democratic changes we decided to actually form

new service it was it's called border guard that was essentially a police service not the military one and it has its own maritime branch but again because the baltic sea was very peaceful sea in the 90s for a long time they were only equipped with small vessels motorboats small cutters and they were considered simply enough for the basic law enforcement functions and fishery protection. So when we talk about the law enforcement functions of the Navy, we didn't even have, actually, until 2008, even a formal set of rules of supporting border guard by the Navy.

Essentially, there were two different forces, and the Navy was considered to be used in a boarding role or similar functions as a part of other operations like peacekeeping operations, stabilization operations. That was the reason why we introduced this kind of training. Okay. All right. So then we're moving on. You've got the sort of the crux of the article there,

the Polish maritime strategy. Could you talk a little about that? well it's a little difficult because we have never formally created a separate double strategy however we had formulated a number of national security or national defense strategies simply in the 90s saying that okay we don't see a probability of war in the near time but there may be some things happening especially in the post-soviet area in the future there's a probability that something wrong may happen so we need to keep a defensive force so we need to keep military basic military capabilities however the focus was in the 90s

focused on coastal defense and at this time we simply decided to keep the forces that we already have uh shipbuilding projects weren't actually a priority so for example we had three missile boats that were actually we started building them at the end of cold war it was a joint program with east germany they were of course planned to be armed with the soviet missiles they had 35 but god was was over and we decided we are not going to buy the missiles especially the russian missiles because we don't need them so for a long time we had three very fast gun boats and everybody was essentially okay because there was no need

to have this capability. And after joining the NATO, our military became very expeditionary focused. So we assumed that a lot of things we are going to do with the military shall be the expeditionary operations,

the peacekeeping operations. After 9-11, we decided very quickly that we are going to support American operations. So we actually decided to deploy forces that took some time because we weren't prepared to deploy forces to the Middle East

but we deployed special forces and a logistical support ship the Pechernitsky to the Persian Gulf that took some time but we managed to deliver this capability and that ship reached the

Persian Gulf and was quite successfully used by coalition forces before and during the Operation Iraqi Freedom. Then we, using those frigates and the submarines, we managed to contribute to the operations of NATO, especially the active endeavour operation in the Mediterranean Sea. And also, we made a lot of investment in mine control measure forces.

So, for example, when we had the older ones, minesweepers, early class type 26 we decided to take three ships upgrade them to became actually uh mine hunters with new capabilities especially the remotely operating operated vehicles so the underwater johns and those ships were very frequently sent to the nato maritime groups those mine countermeasure groups and they were very very very active and there were a number of deployments

and that was the strategy that was essentially lasted for first decade of 21st century so expeditionary force and things started to changing about 2007 2008

when it became clear that Russia is not going to be as much friendly as we as everybody assumed that it becomes more and more aggressive that we need to be a little better prepared but we still consider the navy as a castle defense force so one of the major investments was actually acquisition of a quite modern land-based missile unit so we bought the norwegian nsm cruise missiles we composed a force of six launchers and support vehicles all they all are put on tracks later we acquired a secondary a second squadron and now it's this force is called naval missile unit and it was essentially the force that

was designed as nobody of course openly said that but so to speak we are not going to use them against danish navy or swedish navy right so the only only the only opponent word of well good modern missile is the baltic fleet of russian federation so the entire missiles force was essentially designed to be very survivable able to operate in you know very networked and dispersed way from the coastal areas of Poland to strike at the Russian ships in the Baltic. And because those missiles do have a secondary land strike capability to fire at the Russian bases in the Kaliningrad zone. So that was one capability that was quite new and we acquired.

then we decided to buy a swedish missiles and actually those armed those three missile boats with the rbs-15 missiles and we started to thinking about acquiring some new ships but the problem was that shipbuilding programs were considered costly there were controversies about actually even sense of having ships like corvettes on the frigates on the Baltic Sea. And because always in the military spending, land forces and the air force were a priority. So for a long time, there was a problem

that we had a number of programs that were started formally, but existed only on PowerPoint. we had actually one attempt to build a new multi-mission corvette we bought a license for our german meco and 100 plus we started building this in 2001 but because of lack of funding and because we didn't need help we didn't have experience in the management of this program it turns out that program was very very long and finally it that vessel entered into service as a it's known as a patrol corvette so essentially it has no missile it has no torpedoes it has only guns and um and only yes so that is essentially is uh example how not to build a

how not to build a ship um and actually at the about 2000 and actually the another issue we had because we're very very land oriented most actually that discussions about acquisition of ships were very often again shaped by the perception that most important for us is the land battle so when we started a formal a program of acquisition new submarines because we knew that the only kilo class and the coban class they shall be sooner or later retired there was a lot of discussion about

the capability of land strike so there was a lot of discussion about actually that those new submarines have to be armed with cruise missiles to strike targets deep at the enemy

territory and at some point that discussion was so focused on the cruise missiles only that everybody seemed to forget the other capabilities of submarines nobody was talking about intelligence gathering about anti-shipping capabilities about special operations support everybody were talking about cruise missiles and that was the problem so we had a number of formally started programs that were essentially going nowhere we had those issues with actually discussion about whether do we need uh surface vessels on the baltic to the point that one of

the programs were not known as program to acquisition frigates or corvettes a name was used class defense ship because the name corvette or frigate was known as was at some point incorrect or forbidden the politicians were very sensitive at some point right and so so we had those issues and to make things worse about 10 years ago it turns out that we have two conflicting visions because there was a ministry because again to add some context because we have system that executive power is divided between the government so the prime minister and the ministers and the president that and president is formally as superior of armed forces not supreme commander but superior that the constitution language whatever it means and the president

has its own national security bureau as our advisory element and 10 years ago we had a group of naval experts that under the patronage of National Security Bureau who published a document that was known as a concept

of maritime security. It wasn't a formal strategy, it was just a concept. And the idea that was expressed in that document was we need a navy that can be used to

actually win a battle against the Russian fleet and actually to establish at least local dominance over the Southern Baltic. So it was assumed that we need

frigates with anti-aircraft warfare capabilities, we need submarines, we need mine control measure forces supplemented by naval aviation, supplemented by those coastal missile units and essentially the idea was

let's build the frigates at least three maybe four, maybe five let's have a role of the navy that is an active role that is able to project to project power that is able to win a supremacy

over the enemy at least in some area that could be also important element that we could contribute to NATO forces, even outside the Baltic. And on the other hand,

in 2017, the Ministry of National Defense published a document, and again, it wasn't a strategy, it was called a vision of armed forces, and it simply said, Polish armed forces are not going to be used for power

projection, or to win advantage over enemy, only for successful defensive operation and the role of the navy in that document was reduced to again castle defense it was assumed that we need only the castle missile unit maybe submarines and the again mind control measure capabilities so that they were two completely different visions of the navy and there was a time when it seems that we are essentially going nowhere with all the programs to the point that actually i'd say in 2018 uh a group of retired polish officers and some

enthusiasts and analysts including myself did actually i mean they should have this essentially cartoon vessels were essentially put on a public display as a kind of happening or protest because there was a number of

programs under various very nice names like Swordfish that was the frigate program or defense vessel program or submarine program and so on and so on but there were no actual contract signs there were no progress only eternal conceptual works so more and more many navies can agree also have that similar experience last few years

poland is not alone in that but yes that's at least one good yes yeah not the only but and when we talk about the strategy the problem nowadays is that we still don't have a clear naval strategy, but the strategy to some point was formulated by external forces. Because after 2022, especially after the

Nord Stream incident, still mysterious, still nobody knows who did it. Somehow to sabotage the damage of a pipeline in the Baltic, right? Yes. And after those other incidents, because we had

a number of accidental anchor-jogging incidents. So, there were other very suspicious activities of various ships. Not only the Russian naval vessels,

not only the Russian military planes that were buzzing, Polish vessels, there are a few oil platforms on the Baltic Sea, so they were buzzed by the Russian ships. American ships several times were bust by the

Soviet I mean Russian planes there were a number of other suspicious situations with the use of Russian research vessels or we had the situation when actually

both carriers were simply sitting just outside of limits of our tertiary waters and essentially they behave just like they were intelligence-gathering platforms, but of course, because they were outside of the territorial sea, according to the international law,

we couldn't do much, anything about this. But it was the time when simply politicians realized that there's a war in Europe. There are some number of threats from Russia. We are highly dependent when we talk about security, especially the energy security. we don't import gas from russia we don't import oil we have a major gas pipeline from denmark that is used to deliver a gas from norwegian gas fields we have as a part of our

actual energy independence from russia we built a major gas terminal and we are going going to have another one this time it's not going to be a port is going to be a floating storage and regasification unit we have a number of other strategically important infrastructure like communications cables power cables and then it was the time when politicians realized that oh my god someone needs to take someone needs to protect this right you can't protect underwater infrastructure with with the tanks right and that was the moment when politicians realized that something has to be done so frigate program was given a green light and now we have two ships that under construction and the third one is in plans we have a program of intelligence

gathering ships again underway we have again a very successful program of mine hunters because since 2015 we have a serial production of modern mine hunters the hormonal program that heavily utilized those experience from the nato corporations and from our contribution to nato nato sending groups and essentially it was built upon those experience and we essentially have designed those ships to be a drone carriers and they carry a various various uncrowded vessels of our sales and types now we have a decision made that we are going to acquire it to to swedish-made submarines and before they shall be delivered the swedish navy shall allow us to use one of their submarines as a gap filler so a lot of things is going on but the issue is

that it's simply done under pressure under pressure when you realize that simply naval capabilities are important are needed it's simply required to a big shock luckily nobody destroyed important infrastructure like this gas pipe or gas terminal there are no explosions in our territorial waters but we are very afraid that russians might track the various tricks so it was a one big wake-up call and the problem is actually okay we now realize that we need naval forces so what are what are we going to do to to have adequate forces for the next 10 20 30 years that's one big question and still this is well unanswered by now right well that was fascinating i feel like in 45 minutes we got a big history of the polish naval and maritime

and world and then and then also the lessons for probably all the world's navies and in strategy and shipbuilding right there which a lot of the other countries could probably take we could all take some lessons lessons from that and where you guys are are going right now so that was that was fascinating thanks so much i don't this is a international maritime security but it's anyway it's great to have uh folks from poland on um so with all that could you tell us where we can find you online and other stuff you're working on right out well currently I'm working on another

academic article about the Polish strategic culture and its maritime dimension I'm also engaged in some other projects and well I'm

pretty heavy active in social media especially on x slash twitter I was well mostly focused on Polish language side and Polish discussions because essentially there is a lot of issues going on since 2022 so to the point that I'm actually actually there's a lot of people who actually upgraded the career from being actually a part-time writers or part-time analysts

because they had other day jobs and now they move to full-time jobs and i actually regarding the hybrid issues the martin missions the critical infrastructure protection in the last few years actually i said no to more offers for wanting something that i could accept so apart from the navy issues because whenever there's a question about the naval um issues about the naval police in the maritime strategy there's this one area where i always say yes yeah all right excellent well it's it's very dynamic times just for to timestamp this we're recording it on march 25th 2026 so uh anyway look forward to following you and following the the polish navy in the future and thank you

thanks for being on and thanks again for joining us to all the Sea Control listeners we will talk to you next time over to Kimber's Men now Help me, Bob, I'm pulling in the alley Pulling on the shimbo now A porter of a porter, kiddo Where are they pulling in the alley?

A porter of wine, both white and red, oh Pulling on the shimbo now So help me, Bob, I'm pulling in the alley Where are they pulling in the alley? Help me, Bob, I'm pulling in the alley Put it on the chipmunk