Poland has been standing firm with Ukraine during this difficult time.
Over the past month, Poland has taken in 2.3 million refugees.
Deputy Prime Minister Piotr Gliński has said that
Poland is prepared to continue accepting Ukrainian refugees for as long as needed.
But this is not all, apart from humanitarian help the country is playing a major tactical role.
In a matter of a few weeks, the nation has become the linchpin of the Western
effort to defend Ukraine, a task as important as it is but also dangerous.
Poland has allowed thousands of weapons to pour into Ukraine through it.
Poland itself has dispatched ammunition to Ukraine which includes a particularly lethal weapon that
is designed to destroy low-flying aircraft, helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles.
In this video Defense Updates analyzes how Polish donated
Piorun system is turning out to be an effective weapon for Ukraine against Russian forces?
Let's get started.
The Piorun (meaning "thunderbolt" in Polish)
is a man-portable air-defense system that is a deep modernization of the PPZR Grom,
therefore the second designation of the missile is GROM-M. The full name of the set is PPZR Piorun.
The Piorun is produced by the Mesko company,
a part of the PGZ Group. The guidance unit has been developed by CRW Telesystem-Mesko.
The progress in micro-electronics, chemistry, and manufacturing technologies allowed a significant
upgrade of the existing GROM MANPAD System.
The development phase was initially supposed to conclude before the end of 2014, but the
deadline was later pushed to September 2015. The Piorun was presented for the first time
to the public during the Defense Exhibition MSPO in September 2015 under the name of GROM-M.
As part of the modernization, the effectiveness of the homing warhead
was significantly improved by increasing the sensitivity of detection, which increased
the distance at which the missile is able to detect and hit the target.
Also, increased resistance to interference was enabled,
a proximity fuze was added to prevent near misses and nighttime capability was improved.
Interestingly, the U.S. has bought some of these.
The Piorun MANPADS is designed to be operated by one soldier. It consists of a single-stage
projectile, a single-use tubular launcher, a starting mechanism, and an on-ground power supply.
The Piorun system including the launch unit and the missile
has a total weight of 16.5 kg or 36 lbs, the same as for the GROM.
It uses Infrared or IR homing. Infrared homing is a passive weapon
guidance system that uses the infrared (IR) light emission from a target to track and follow it.
Missiles that use infrared seeking are often referred to as "heat-seekers"
since infrared is radiated strongly by hot bodies.
One of the main features of the new Piorun, is a mini keyboard on the right side of the trigger
module which can be used to select types of targets, environments, and work modes.
There is also a day/night optical sight mounted on the tube launcher.
The Piorun MANPADS uses a new short-range missile including a new warhead
that can hit a flying target at a distance from 400 m to 6 km or 3..7 miles
and from an altitude of 10 m minimum to 4 km or 2.5 miles maximum.
The missile weighs 10.5 kilograms or 23 lb. The warhead has a weight of 2 kg or 4.4 lbs.
The proximity fuse is used to allow more effective destruction of small size aerial targets,
such as UAVs. The missile of the Piorun has a hitting probability of 10% when jammed.
The Ukrainian army has confirmed that several Russian planes and
helicopters were shot down with Piorun sets.
A Russian Su-25 attack aircraft was hit with the use of the MANPAD system.
The downing reportedly took place on 6th March, 6.15 PM. After the Su-25 was detected,
the Ukrainians launched two missiles, destroying the target.
It was possibly the first confirmed kill with Piorun.
The Sukhoi Su-25 (Western reporting name Frogfoot) remains the mainstay of Russian
ground-attack regiments. The type is broadly analogous to the American A-10 Warthog
While MANPADS like Stinger and Starstrek
has been making it to the headlines, Piorun is much less known.
But being less known doesn't make it less effective.
MANPADS in general has been especially useful for Ukraine because of certain Russian tactics.
Russian forces appear to have held back the precision-guided armaments
that are designed to carry and can be deployed from high altitudes.
The reason for doing so seems to be due to the fact that the Russian Air Force is
lacking the required quantity of precision-guided munition or PGMs and are dependent on dumb bombs.
Hitting a target with dumb bombs which have no guidance requires coming in low
and this exposes the aircraft to threats such as the Piorun.
It remains to be seen how many more kills Piorun can score.