Ukraine Wants to Buy the Legendary Piorun MANPAD From Poland
Ukraine Goes Shopping in Poland, Credit Card in Hand
In a move that’s part military logistics and part cross-border shopping spree, Ukraine has formally asked Poland for a €120 million loan to buy Polish-made weapons.
Andriy Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, confirmed the request after meeting with his Polish counterpart, Radosław Sikorski, in what Poland’s foreign ministry described as a “private atmosphere,” which sounds suspiciously like drinks were involved.
The shopping list includes the Piorun man-portable air-defense system; Poland’s portable “thunderbolt” missile launcher, and the battle-tested Krab self-propelled howitzer.
Both have already proven their worth against Russia’s air and ground forces. Ukraine’s military brass know a good weapon when they see one, and the Piorun has earned a reputation for turning expensive Russian aircraft into flaming scrap metal.
The deal, if approved, wouldn’t just be a cash-for-weapons transaction. Sybiha hinted at potential co-production arrangements, meaning Ukrainian and Polish factories could jointly churn out the weapons. That’s good news for Ukraine’s defense industrial base, which is currently learning to operate under a permanent air raid siren soundtrack.
For Poland, the request is more than business. Warsaw has become one of Kyiv’s staunchest allies in NATO, spending heavily on its own military modernization while also supplying Ukraine with weapons, training, and political support.
Pioruns have already been sent east before, along with Krabs, and in 2022, the delivery of 60 Krabs marked Poland’s largest-ever arms export deal.
Meet the Piorun: Poland’s Pocket-Sized Plane Killer
The Piorun, which charmingly means “thunderbolt” in Polish, is what happens when you take a Soviet-era Igla MANPADS, give it a full 21st-century electronics makeover, and then put it in the hands of someone who’s been told they can now swat helicopters out of the sky.
Developed by Polish manufacturer Mesko, the Piorun is an evolution of the older GROM system. Improvements in microelectronics, seeker sensitivity, and warhead design make it more resistant to countermeasures like flares or jamming.
The missile can engage targets from as close as 400 meters to as far as 6 kilometers, at altitudes from 10 meters up to 4 kilometers. It’s also equipped with a proximity fuse, making it especially lethal against small, fast-moving UAVs, which is just about the most common air threat over Ukraine right now.
The whole system weighs 16.5 kilograms ready to fire, which is light enough for a single soldier to carry without feeling like they’re hauling a medieval ballista.
In the video above, US Army Paratroopers assigned to the 173rd Airborne Brigade with soldiers from Charlie Battery, 1st Battalion, 57th Air Defense Artillery Regiment (C/1-57 ADAR), Croatian Army and Polish Army fire with man-portable air-defense system (MANPADS Piorun), FIM-92 Stinger and Trasportable lightweight anti-air missile (Mistral) during Exercise Shield 24 in Pula, Croatia on April 12, 2024. Public domain
A distinctive feature is the mini-keyboard on the trigger module that lets the operator select target types and environmental modes. Add in a day/night optical sight, and you’ve got a shoulder-fired system that works rain or shine, day or night.
Inside the launch tube is a 10.5-kilogram missile with a high-explosive fragmentation warhead weighing just under two kilos. Fired at 660 meters per second, the Piorun is fast enough to give pilots only a few seconds between “missile launch detected” and “eject, eject, eject.”
Its design shows a kind of Polish pragmatism: if a weapon is going to be carried on a soldier’s back all day, it had better be simple enough to operate under fire, tough enough to survive being bounced around in an unarmored pickup, and effective enough to make the person on the other end of it seriously regret their career choices. The Piorun checks all those boxes.
Part of its lethality comes from the fact that it is unforgiving to mistakes. A pilot who dips just a little too low or lingers in range a second too long is essentially betting their life against a weapon whose guidance system can’t be fooled as easily as older infrared seekers.
And because it can be fired from almost anywhere: a treeline, a rooftop, or the back of a speeding truck, it creates a constant sense of paranoia in enemy aircrews.
When Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022, Poland rushed Pioruns into Ukrainian hands. Almost immediately, Ukrainian troops began putting them to good use against low-flying Su-25 Frogfoot attack jets, Ka-52 “Alligator” gunships, and transport helicopters trying to insert troops behind Ukrainian lines.
In Ukraine, Pioruns are often deployed in small, mobile teams, sometimes mounted on light vehicles for rapid repositioning, other times carried on foot to ambush likely air corridors. The system’s portability and quick reaction time make it ideal for Ukraine’s distributed air-defense strategy, which blends mobile short-range systems like Piorun with larger, fixed batteries like NASAMS or Patriot.
One of the Piorun’s unsung strengths in Ukraine is its effectiveness against drones. With Russian UAVs swarming over the front line at all hours, being able to knock them out before they relay targeting data to artillery units has saved countless lives. The proximity fuse and seeker upgrades give it an edge against small drones that would be harder to hit with older MANPADS designs.
Ukrainian operators have also become adept at working around Russian countermeasures, using terrain, decoys, and careful timing to get clean shots. The result: a growing list of downed Russian aircraft, some of which cost more than the entire Piorun production run that shot them down.
How to Make a Russian Pilot’s Day Worse in Under 10 Seconds
Step one, be anywhere in Ukraine with a Piorun on your shoulder.
Step two, look up and spot something Russian and expensive making noise in the sky.
Step three, squeeze the trigger and let physics, Polish engineering, and bad Kremlin decision-making do the rest.
From the Russian cockpit, the sequence is much less fun:
Hear the lock warning tone.
Panic.
Dump flares like it’s the Америка Fourth of July.
Realize the missile isn’t fooled.
Contemplate life choices during the last three seconds before impact.
The Piorun’s greatest gift isn’t just destruction, it’s uncertainty.
Every helicopter lift, every low pass, every drone run is now a gamble with house odds stacked heavily in Ukraine’s favor. And unlike a lot of other anti-air systems, the Piorun doesn’t require a radar station, a command post, or an entire logistics chain to function; just a willing trigger finger and a target that’s dumb enough to fly low and slow.
How Ukraine Uses the Piorun Differently from NATO
In NATO service, the Piorun is a gap-filler. It’s meant to protect a convoy, a forward operating base, or a vulnerable radar station from the occasional low-flying threat that slips past bigger air defense systems. The operators are trained, the targets are predictable, and the missile is one tool in a very large, very expensive toolbox.
In Ukraine, it’s more like a pocket knife in a prison yard; always on hand, always ready, and never limited to its “intended” purpose. Ukrainian troops have been known to hump Pioruns deep into contested areas, not just to guard against random Russian airstrikes, but to deliberately set up traps for helicopters, attack jets, and drones. Instead of being tied to a fixed position or doctrine, the launchers are as mobile as the soldiers carrying them.
It’s not uncommon to see Piorun teams working in pairs or small hunter-killer groups. One spotter, one shooter, maybe a third guy hauling extra tubes, all using civilian SUVs, quad bikes, or even e-bikes to move quickly between firing positions.
They often operate far closer to the front than NATO would ever recommend, because in Ukraine, survival is a mix of initiative and speed.
Ukraine has also embraced the Piorun as a counter-drone tool in a way NATO hasn’t. While most Western doctrine still sees MANPADS as primarily anti-aircraft and anti-helicopter weapons, Ukrainian crews are happy to burn a missile on a high-value UAV if it threatens a key position.
The new dive-bombing Shahed tactic is a good example of a Piorun use case. When Shaheds fly at altitudes a .50 cal can’t reach, the MANPAD is a perfect fix.
The combination of the missile’s proximity fuse and seeker sensitivity makes it surprisingly effective against unmanned targets, even ones that cost far less than the missile itself. That might seem like a poor trade to a Western accountant, but on the battlefield, denying the enemy drone eyes is worth it.
In short, where NATO treats the Piorun like a specialist, Ukraine treats it like a street-fighter… one that can appear anywhere, strike without warning, and vanish before the Russians can even spin up a retaliation.
Even the US Wanted In
In a twist that should make Mesko’s marketing department very happy, even the United States, home of the Stinger missile, quietly bought an undisclosed number of Pioruns in 2022.
Washington has never explained why, but the most likely reason is to evaluate the system’s performance and technology, possibly for integration with allied forces or as a hedge against production bottlenecks in US MANPADS manufacturing.
Indeed, the US hasn’t manufactured a Stinger missile in over 10 years. That production is only now just ramping back up.
The Piorun’s growing export list now includes Norway, Estonia, Belgium, and several other NATO members. For Ukraine, securing more of these weapons, whether through direct purchase, loans, or co-production, means keeping Russian aircraft nervous, pilots on edge, and drones in pieces.
And if the deal with Poland goes through, it’ll be another reminder that in Ukraine, sometimes the deadliest tools are the ones a single soldier can carry on their shoulder.
Слава Україні!
at least vance cannot return it to american sstocks
Slava Ukraini!