WARSAW, Oct 27 (Reuters) - A maintenance centre for Lockheed Martin-made Patriot interceptor missiles will be established in Poland, Deputy Defence Minister Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka said on Tuesday.
Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have strained stocks of air-defence interceptor missiles and caused delivery delays, prompting countries to seek maintenance and production capabilities closer to home.
The centre in Poland will be the only one outside the United States, Sobkowiak-Czarnecka said.
"Four countries competed for the European location of this investment: alongside Poland — Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway ... This success was not a given," Sobkowiak-Czarnecka wrote on social media platform X.
She later told reporters that the value of the investment would be around 1 billion zlotys ($253.41 million) and that it would take a dozen or so months to make the centre operational.
Locating the centre in Europe will allow for quicker servicing of missiles than earlier, when they had to be sent to the US.
($1 = 3.9462 zlotys)
(Reporting by Karol Badohal, Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk, Pawel Florkiewicz; Editing by Aidan Lewis)