PGZ

PGZ — Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa, the Polish Armaments Group — is the state holding company through which Poland organises its defence industry. It was created in 2013 to consolidate scattered state-owned plants into a single group, is headquartered in Radom, and now spans more than fifty subsidiaries covering armoured vehicles, ammunition, naval construction, radar and electronics. Adam Leszkiewicz has led the management board since 2025. It is among the larger arms manufacturers in Europe by headcount.

For most of its existence PGZ’s role in Western air defence was that of a customer’s industrial partner: Poland bought foreign systems, and offset agreements routed some assembly and maintenance work to Polish plants. That relationship has changed with the Wisła air-defence programme, and the change is visible in the Patriot supply chain.

The subsidiary doing the load-bearing work is WZE S.A. — Wojskowe Zakłady Elektroniczne, the military electronics works at Zielonka near Warsaw, which has repaired and modernised radar and electronic-warfare equipment since 1952 and joined the group in 2014. WZE manufactures the Attitude Control Section for the PAC-3 MSE interceptor, the thruster pack that steers the missile during its terminal hit-to-kill manoeuvre. The Polish line was verified against US government standards in 2025, and the first Polish-built sections are due for delivery to the United States in 2027 — an export into the American supply chain rather than a domestic-assembly arrangement.

The scope has since broadened. In August 2026 Lockheed Martin ordered Enhanced Launcher Electronic Station and J-Box units from WZE, and at the MSPO exhibition in September 2026 the company signed agreements with both Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. The Raytheon work covers energy-storage assembly modules for the LTAMDS radar, on which WZE is the first non-US supplier, under Wisła Phase II offset terms. PGZ itself completed a hardware-in-the-loop demonstration of Polish-developed capability earlier in 2026.

The strategic reading is straightforward. Western interceptor production is the binding constraint on European air defence, PAC-3 MSE output stands at roughly 700 rounds a year against an ambition of 2,000 by 2030, and Poland has both the demand and the industrial base to justify hosting part of the line. PGZ’s other well-known venture is the Borsuk infantry fighting vehicle, whose heavy variant it showed at MSPO 2026 with serial production readiness targeted for 2029.