Costs of operating Polish fighters in the face of attacks on Ukraine

There can be a lot of RCB alerts related to attacks on Ukraine. Last Monday alone, as many as five of them were sent, and each case involved the need to pick up Polish fighters, which, when reaching the border, made sure that no means of air attack entered our territory.

Such protection is not cheap, so the public debate raised questions about the sense of sending planes each time when the danger in the vast majority of cases did not cross our border.

The military portal Defence24 analyzed the costs of operating individual fighters that Poland has. The data was taken from information from the Ministry of National Defense.

Flight hour cost:

South Korean FA-50: 38 thousand PLN

Soviet MiG-29: 101,000 PLN

American F-16: 77 thousand PLN

American F-35: 130-150 thousand PLN

It should be noted, however, that neither the FA-50 nor the F-35 are yet used for the so-called combat duty. The former is currently used to train young pilots, and the necessary weapons have yet to be integrated with it. The latter has just appeared on the Vistula River, is being implemented, and is scheduled to achieve a limited ability to carry out combat tasks in 2027.

The "workhorse" of the Polish army is the honest F-16.

In September, they were supported twice by machines from the Czech Republic, and from October, for two months, Swedish Gripens will be ready to support them.

Bought to fly