Sweden has finalized an agreement with Poland’s Mesko to acquire the Piorun portable anti-aircraft missile system. The contract, valued at around 3 billion kronor ($320 million), schedules deliveries for 2027.
This deal concludes months of discussions that began with a letter of intent in March 2025 and a preliminary order in June. The Piorun is expected to bolster Sweden’s very short-range air defense and support its broader armed forces modernization efforts.
In a separate announcement in June, Sweden confirmed the purchase of Germany’s IRIS-T SLM medium-range air defense system for 9 billion kronor ($930 million). Over the next decade, the country plans to raise defense expenditures by approximately 300 billion kronor ($32 billion), increasing the defense budget to 3.5 percent of GDP by 2030 from the current 2.4 percent.
Designed and continuously upgraded in Poland, the Piorun features a proximity fuze capable of destroying nearby targets and can engage aircraft, helicopters, drones, and winged rockets. The system includes both a day sight and a thermal vision sight for nighttime operations.
Weighing 19.5 kilograms (43 pounds), it can reach targets up to 6,500 meters (21,325 feet) away and at altitudes of 4,000 meters (13,123 feet). Sweden joins previous users including the US, Belgium, Norway, and Estonia. In Poland, the system has been operational since 2019, and in 2022, it was supplied extensively to Ukraine.
