WASHINGTON — European nations are facing a “Catch-22” when it comes to the question of buying American weapons, a top Polish general said Wednesday.
The issue, according to Lt. Gen. Piotr Błazeusz, Poland’s military representative to NATO, is that the US is putting pressure on European capitals to invest heavily in defense, but when those European militaries try to buy from Washington, the delivery timelines prove too long and too uncertain.
“When they come to the US and say, ‘We would like to buy the system’ …they are told, ‘Okay, but [it will be delivered in ] 2029-2030 and you know, it still could be delayed,’” the three-star general said at a Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress lunch.
The result, Błazeusz explained, is that “Then [Europeans] look around” to see what else is on the market, whether produced in Europe or elsewhere. And when they go shopping, they are no longer looking for the gold-plated solutions that American firms specialize in, but instead looking at “good enough” solutions that are more affordable and arrive more quickly.
“It’s a tricky business,” he added. “In our case, we strongly believe in the US equipment, it’s easy to integrate” with, but the long delivery timelines and limited ability to locally maintain, repair, and overhaul (MRO) equipment has led Poland to alternative providers.
Perhaps the biggest example has been the rising tie-up between Warsaw and Seoul, as South Korean firms have become the backbone of Poland’s modernization efforts in recent years.
Between the start of 2022 and 2025, Poland announced arms agreements worth $16 billion with South Korean firms. That included plans for hundreds of tanks, artillery pieces and light-attack aircraft. In August of 2025, Warsaw inked a $6.5 billion agreement with Hyundai Rotem Company, covering the delivery of 180 K2 tanks to be delivered between 2026 and 2030, a second order following an initial 2022 order for 180 tanks. That 2025 deal also included a number of support vehicles based on the K2 chassis, 31 armored recovery vehicles, 25 engineering vehicles, and 25 assault bridge systems.
“We went Korean…and the reason was that only the Korean defense industry was able to deliver on such a short notice what we needed,” Błazeusz said.
“Obviously we were asking around everywhere, including the US, but unfortunately the delivery dates were rather distant, so we really had to get something here and now,” he later said, also noting that South Korea is actively standing up those critical MRO hubs inside Europe so that key pieces of equipment can be repaired locally.
Błazeusz’s comments come at a time when the Trump administration is overhauling its Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and Foreign Military Financing (FMF) processes, quietly notifying countries that their weapons orders are delayed due to operations against Iran, and political turmoil between Washington and NATO allies.
Just in recent weeks, for example, a number of allies and partners have been told their expected US weapons deliveries are being slowed down as the US prioritizes its own coffers.
Although several analysts told Breaking Defense there has yet to be any sense of a major shift away from buying American weapons, they acknowledge that the decision to kick allies down the queue fits into a broader pattern of concerns around American arm sales that could lead countries to look for possible alternatives.
“What we’re going to see is the inevitable tension between the administration’s stated desire to have our allies buy American and buy more … and likewise the need to put ourselves first to replenish stockpiles,” Tom Karako, a missile defense expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told Breaking Defense.
