Abrams Tanks Attending The Polish Armed Forces Day Parade in Warsaw

According to Bartłomiej Misiewicz, spokesman for the Polish Ministry of Defence, the central portion of the events related to the Feast of the Polish Armed Forces, along with the parade, is planned to begin on 15th August at 12PM. The parade is going to involve the representative elements of the Polish Army, as well as soldiers from other countries, including the United States of America and Canada, along with almost 170 various vehicles and more than 50 fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft.

We also know for certain that the parade will also see participation of the Polish Leopard 2A5 and 2A4 as well as of the PT-91 Twardy main battle tanks – as it was confirmed by Lt. Col. Szczepan Głuszczak of the General Command of the Armed Forces. Lt. Col. Głuszczak also announced that we are going to witness participation of the US M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks in the event. For the latter vehicles, the event is going to be a début, since no US main battle tanks have been presented during the Warsaw parade up until now. The sole US vehicles that have been participating in the event were the Stryker wheeled APCs. The parade on Monday will also involve the US Bradley IFVs.

Among the units involved in the parade, mechanized elements (utilizing the Rosomak APCs) are going to present their equipment, while the artillery units will be presenting, among other vehicles, the Dana self-propelled howitzers, Krab self-propelled howitzers that have been introduced into service just recently, along with the WR-40 Langusta rocket launchers. Moreover, the parade will also involve the vehicles of the Naval Missile Unit, the main armament of which comes in a form of the NSM missile system.

The parade is also going to include the HMMWV (Tumak) vehicles, command vehicles, radar platforms, SAM platforms – including the 9K33 Osa systems (SA-8 Gecko), engineering and medical vehicles and other vehicles and platforms used by the military. Moreover historical elements, re-enactment groups and an element involving members of the pro-defence organizations are going to be involved in the parade as well. Central portion of the celebrations is going to take part in the Aleje Ujazdowskie area.

More than 50 different aircraft are going to form the aerial part of the parade. Here we mean mainly the tactical aviation – including the MiG-29, Su-22 and F-16 jets, as well as the cargo aircraft (CASA C-295, M28 Bryza or C-130 Hercules), along with the training airframes. The air parade is also going to include the Polish Mi-24, Mi-17, SW-4 and W-3W helicopters.