Big money for the USA - Poland buys 500 HIMARS launchers

Polands acquisition of 500 HIMARS rocket launchers from the US is meant to serve as a deterrent in order to avoid going to war, Andrzej Duda, the Polish president, said in an interview. "There is a magic word used by Nato, and that word is deterrence...

These purchases were made so that we can avoid going to war," Duda said in an interview.

"Its a kind of paradox," he noted. "You spend billions on weapons in order not to go to war."

The president also responded to the criticism of some retired military officers who commented that a peacetime army should be "compact" and that a 300,000-strong army, which is 8% of the total population, was "madness".