Poland’s Ministry of National Defence announced on October 27, 2026, that the tenth Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II for the Polish Air Force to reach the country has landed at the 32nd Tactical Air Base in Łask, central Poland. The aircraft, known in national service as the Husarz (Hussar) and carrying tail number 3518, is the second Polish F-35A to complete final assembly at the Final Assembly and Check-Out (FACO) facility in Cameri, Italy. The ministry said it will soon join the base’s fleet and begin operational tasks.
The arrival continues a delivery sequence that began on May 22, 2026, when the first three Fort Worth-built jets, tail numbers 3509 to 3511, landed at Łask. Five more, 3512 to 3516, followed on August 28, and the ninth aircraft, 3517, the first Cameri-assembled Husarz, arrived on October 1. Warsaw signed for 32 F-35As on January 31, 2020, in a deal valued at approximately $4.6 billion that includes training and logistics support. In its announcement, the ministry framed the program around air defense, stating that protecting Polish and allied airspace remains one of the most important tasks of the Armed Forces.
Poland F-35 Deliveries Shift to the Italian Cameri Line
Poland’s order is split evenly between two production sources. The first 16 airframes were built at Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth, Texas, plant; final assembly of the remaining 16 is assigned to Cameri, which is owned by the Italian Ministry of Defence and operated by Leonardo with Lockheed Martin. Cameri is one of three F-35 final assembly sites worldwide, alongside Fort Worth and the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries line in Nagoya, Japan, and also serves as a maintenance and upgrade hub for European operators.
Not every completed Polish aircraft is in Poland. The first eight Fort Worth jets remain at Ebbing Air National Guard Base, Arkansas, where they support the training of Polish pilots and maintainers. As a result, the number of Polish F-35As that have flown exceeds the number delivered to Łask: tail number 3519, the third Cameri-assembled aircraft and the 19th built for Poland, made its first flight in Italy on October 13, 2026. Each aircraft completes manufacturer acceptance flights and additional flights under Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) supervision before formal handover.
The ministry expects 14 F-35As to be stationed in Poland by the end of 2026, six of them from Cameri. That implies four more Italian-assembled deliveries in roughly nine weeks, faster than the monthly cadence of the first two Cameri jets.
Łask Basing, Weapons Package, and the Block 4 Upgrade Path
Łask, home of the 2nd Tactical Air Wing’s F-16C/D Block 52+ Jastrząb fleet, will host the first Husarz squadron of 16 aircraft, with both types operating side by side. Preparation work at the base included mission simulators, dedicated pilot facilities, secured maintenance hangars with Special Access Program (SAP) zones, and upgraded command and communications systems sized for the data volumes generated by the F-35’s sensors. The second 16-aircraft squadron is planned for the 21st Tactical Air Base in Świdwin, in northwestern Poland, where infrastructure adaptation is underway.
The F-35A is a single-seat, single-engine fifth-generation multirole fighter. Publicly available specifications list a Pratt & Whitney F135 engine producing about 43,000 pounds of thrust in afterburner, a combat radius above 590 nautical miles on internal fuel, an AN/APG-81 active electronically scanned array radar, the AN/AAQ-37 Distributed Aperture System, and an internal 25mm GAU-22/A cannon. Poland’s weapons package includes AIM-9X Block II and AIM-120D-3 air-to-air missiles, the AGM-158B-2 JASSM-ER standoff cruise missile, and the AGM-88G AARGM-ER anti-radiation missile, giving the Husarz suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) and deep-strike roles alongside air defense.
The 2020 contract specifies the Block 4 configuration. Which Technology Refresh 3 (TR-3) hardware and software standard the delivered Polish jets currently carry has not been publicly detailed.
Analysis: The shift to Cameri makes a European assembly line a direct input to NATO eastern flank readiness. With the Fort Worth batch complete, the pace at which Łask reaches a full 16-aircraft squadron now depends on Cameri throughput, reported at around 15 aircraft per year across all customers, and on the training pipeline at Ebbing. Ten airframes in Poland are enough to build sortie generation and maintenance routines, but declaring operational capability will hinge as much on certified aircrew, maintainers, and secure mission data infrastructure as on tail count.
The next milestone is the year-end target of 14 aircraft in Poland. The ministry has not published a date for initial operational capability (IOC) at Łask, originally planned for 2026, nor a timeline for the first arrivals at Świdwin. Polish officials expect deliveries under the 32-aircraft order to be completed by 2029.