The Minister of National Defense Mariusz Błaszczak, in order to prove that “the Polish Army is growing stronger”, published a chart showing the size of the army in 2015 and 2022. It compiles incomparable data, misleading.
When the Onet portal reported last week about “an avalanche of leaving the army”, unofficial information showed that this year about 9,000 people would leave the army. soldiers. Journalists revealed that the Ministry of National Defense moved the annual increases from January to March to stem the wave of resignations. In response to this – and subsequent articles in the media about leaving the army – the Minister of National Defense, Mariusz Błaszczak, published a graphic on Twitter on January 29 entitled “The Polish Army is growing stronger”. The chart shows the bars with the number of soldiers in 2022 and 2015, the number of military appointments in relation to dismissals in 2022, and the same data in January 2023.
“So much for the alleged exodus of soldiers. The Polish Army is growing in strength! We have more and more soldiers who have the most modern equipment. We recreate units and create new ones. Only this year we have prepared 25,000 places for voluntary military service,” wrote the minister.
The topic was also discussed in the common press conference Minister Błaszczak with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, when politicians visited the 18th Mechanized Division in Siedlce on January 30. There, the head of the government said: “Today, the state of the Polish army is over a quarter greater than in 2015.” Later, the chart of the Ministry of Defense was also published on the profiles of the Prime Minister’s office.
The problem is that it is enough to look at the bars – their length and descriptions – to conclude that the data on the size of the army in 2015 and 2022 are incorrectly compared. The bar with the number 8988 is almost as long as the one with the number 95,000, which indicates a distortion of the scale. And considering that in the numbers for January 2023 volunteers from voluntary basic military service were added to professional soldiers, it is difficult to consider the MON graphics credible – it is misleading.
In 2015 only professionals, in 2022 everyone
The chart says that in 2015, when the United Right government took power, there were 95,000 Jews in Poland. soldiers, and at the end of 2022 already 164 thousand. – over 70 percent. more. However, as we wrote in November 2022 in Konkret24, there is a problem with determining the size of the Polish army. Official data is provided by the Ministry of National Defense in the annual information on the ministry’s budget, published on the website of the Ministry of National Defense since 2010. However, the figures for 2015 and 2022 listed in the chart are incomparable because they cover different groups.
In 2022, for the total number of soldiers given – according to information on the budget – 163.1 thousand. – consisted of 115.5 thousand. professional soldiers; 35 thousand soldiers of the Territorial Defense Forces; 8 thousand candidates for professional soldiers; 3.6 thousand soldiers of the preparatory service (voluntary basic military service) and 1 thousand. soldiers of the National Reserve Forces. Professional uniformed officers were therefore connected to WOT and candidates for soldiers.
However, data for 2015 show only professional soldiers. According to archival information about the budget, there were 100,000 of them at that time. (there are 95,000 in the chart). Together with the soldiers of the National Reserve Forces (20,000) and candidates for professional soldiers (2,650), in 2015 it gave a total of 122.7 thousand. soldiers. In 2015, there were no Territorial Defense Forces yet.
Number of soldiers by type of serviceMON/Konkret24
Moreover, in November 2022, the Ministry of National Defense changed the method of counting professional soldiers themselves: since then, it includes all students of military universities after completing their first year. The ministry explains that this is due to the provisions passed last year of the act about defending the homeland. For this reason, even the sheer number of professional soldiers from 2015 (100,000) is not fully comparable to the current one (115,500).
Once only professional soldiers, once volunteers from voluntary service
Methodological doubts are also raised by the other two charts. One compared the number of professional soldiers’ vocations and the number of dismissals from service in 2022. According to information from the Ministry of Defense, there were to be over 4.7 thousand vocations. more than layoffs.
On the next two bars, the situation in January 2023 was compared (although January was still in progress at the time of publication of the chart) – but the number of vocations of professional soldiers was supplemented by the vocations of soldiers of voluntary compulsory military service (DZSW). This institution was established under the Homeland Defense Act of 2022 and replaced the preparatory service. As part of it, volunteers who have not been in the army before undergo a month-long basic training, which ends with taking the oath and issuing a military book. They can then continue their training, this time as part of an 11-month specialist training, or be transferred to the reserve.
Combining the vocations of professional soldiers with DZSW soldiers and juxtaposing them with the number of dismissals from professional service is misleading. The more so that – as reported by Onet – “the most experienced people are leaving the army. This includes special forces soldiers, sailors, pilots, logisticians, tankers and artillerymen.” Even though the vocations of professional soldiers and soldiers from DZSW were combined in January this year, there were fewer of them than dismissals from professional service. The Ministry of National Defense informed about 4.4 thousand. leave, and according to media reports, there may be even twice as many.
Main photo source: DarSzach/Shutterstock