March 1, 2008: Poland has long been a major supplier of military equipment, but most of that was done during the Cold War, when Polish production decisions were made by Russia. Those Polish defense industries are still around. One of them, Bumar, just made a $1.2 billion sale to India. This included a thousand tank engines for Indias fleet of T-72s, and upgrades for some of these tanks. Also being supplied are 200 WZT-3 tank recovery vehicles (which use a T-72 chassis), 80 mine clearing vehicles, 100 Loara self-propelled twin 35mm anti-aircraft guns (with built in radar), and a hundred 155mm self-propelled artillery systems (similar to the British AS-90).

The Indians like to have Polish firms help with maintaining the many Russian weapons systems India has bought over the last few decades. The Poles have lots of experience maintaining, and building, those systems, and also take delight in making those Russian systems work better (while making the Russians look bad.)