Poland, with all its limited resources, dreams of its own high-tech weapons and innovative technologies. So, recently, the Polish National Center for Research and Development adopted a new program “Sapphire”.
The National Center for Research and Development (Narodowe Centrum Badań i Rozwoju, NCBiR) is a Polish state agency created 12 years ago to support companies working in the field of science and high technology. One of the most important activities of the center is research in the field of defense and national security, conducted in the interests of the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Poland and the Internal Security Agency.
Trying to attract Polish companies to work in the interests of the state and defense, the center organizes contests, one of which is the Sapphire program announced recently. The NCBiR acknowledges that modern Poland lacks innovative technologies and technical solutions that could be used to develop the latest weapons.
The Sapphire program is designed to fill this gap, primarily in several key areas:
- high precision weapons;
- information Technology;
- surveillance systems;
- unmanned vehicles;
- defense and survival systems on the battlefield;
- modern high-energy materials.
The Center also published a Breakthrough Technology List based on a similar list of the NATO Research and Technology Organization. Specialists of the North Atlantic Alliance have identified such areas of research as quantum technologies for the needs of cryptography and information security, artificial intelligence, intelligent autonomous systems, night vision tools, microsatellites, radiation energy, power supply and energy storage systems, miniature electronic circuits, robotics, and non-traditional weapons.
Thus, the Polish agency NCBiR has identified priority interests in technology and technical solutions. Companies and scientific organizations are invited to develop new technologies, in turn, the state will take on the task of providing material incentives and organizational support for researchers, scientists, engineers who undertake the development and implementation of innovations.
Three competitions within the framework of the Sapphire program are designed for two years, but the overall implementation of projects will last at least 10 years. After all, it’s not so easy to even find artists to solve the tasks, given that Poland has never shone with success in the field of innovative developments.
By the way, ordinary Poles understand this very well, who in the comments on the network gave a fair assessment of the new project:
None of this will work, we already have traditions, and we are a nation of traditionalists. What are the achievements of Polish technology and industry after World War II?
It is unlikely that the agency leaders themselves and those in charge in the Polish government do not understand the relationship between ambition and the real situation, including with resources - not only material, but also, say, intellectual, human.
But the development of funds in the framework of government programs are engaged in almost all countries of the world and Poland is no exception. The center will receive generous funding from the government, some companies with which they conclude contracts will also receive their money and will be engaged in “innovation activities” for years.
But will Poland see the results of this technological creativity? So far, Warsaw has no real achievements and successes in the field of high-tech developments, and if Poland can be compared with anyone in the North Atlantic Alliance in a more favorable light, then perhaps with such NATO members as Romania, Bulgaria or Montenegro recently joined the alliance .