Poland’s Air Force has 47 F-16s and about 40 pilots for them, according to reporting in Rzeczpospolita as relayed by money.pl on October 29, 2026 and by Defense Express on November 2. The two relays give different figures for how many pilots are needed because they use different pilot-to-aircraft ratios. Defense Express says Rzeczpospolita’s authors described the data as coming from unofficial sources and that the General Staff did not respond before publication; neither relay reports any response from the General Staff or the Ministry of National Defence.

Figures side by side

  • F-16 (47 aircraft): money.pl says 59 pilots are required, at a ratio of 1.25 pilots per aircraft based on a US model of 30 pilots per 24-aircraft squadron, and 40 are on hand; it also cites a higher wartime ratio of 1.5. Defense Express says the required ratio is “roughly 1.5 pilots per 1 airframe,” meaning more than 70, and that Poland had 70 F-16 pilots in 2018, about 90% of the requirement then.
  • F-35 (32 aircraft): money.pl says 40 pilots are needed and notes that the tenth jet arrived in October, with 13 or 14 possibly based in Poland by the end of 2026 and the rest used for training in the US.
  • FA-50: money.pl says 48 aircraft require 60 pilots. Defense Express says 36 more FA-50s are due, alongside the 32 F-35s, adding “over 100 more pilots” to the need.
  • AH-64E Apache (96 helicopters): money.pl gives no pilot count and says that preparing enough pilots and technicians has proved harder than acquiring the equipment. Defense Express says a minimum of 200 “or even 300 helicopter pilots” are needed.
  • Totals: money.pl gives 159 pilots for the three main types in peacetime (59, 40 and 60), 199 if two more F-35 or other squadrons are added, and 190 to 240 at the 1.5 ratio, excluding Apaches, plus about 2,500 technicians for the 127 combat aircraft. Defense Express’s headline says 300 or more additional pilots; in its text that is 200 to 300 for the Apaches plus more than 100 for the FA-50s and F-35s.

Reasons given

  • money.pl says salaries may be one cause. It lists gross monthly pay of about 9.2 to 9.3 thousand złoty for lieutenants, 9.41 to 9.63 thousand for captains and 9.85 to 10.38 thousand for majors, which it calls “significantly less” than pilots earn at commercial airlines, and says a major flying F-16s as an instructor may earn 17,050 to 17,580 złoty gross, excluding seniority pay. It also states, without attribution, that the shortages result from “years of neglect” in military aviation.
  • Defense Express, attributing to Rzeczpospolita, says many young pilots left mainly because of “unsatisfactory service conditions,” that training depends on US centers with “limited throughput capacity,” that cadets often leave early, and that training takes at least two years and costs “over $5 million per pilot.”

Defense Express adds that Rzeczpospolita may not have counted reserve pilots who fly MiG-29s and FA-50s, and says Ukraine faced the same training bottleneck on F-16s.

Sources and notes

Sources: money.pl, Katarzyna Kalus, October 29, 2026, compiled from Rzeczpospolita; Defense Express, Ivan Kyrychevskiy, November 2, 2026. Notes: Lens did not read the Rzeczpospolita article itself, and no official Polish figures were available in the reports it read. The pilot-to-aircraft ratios are not official Polish figures. Thumbnail photo: “Polish Air Force F-16 at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany,” U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Warren D. Spearman Jr., public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, taken October 21, 2022; cropped. Illustrative photo; it shows a Polish F-16 on a training deployment, not the shortage described.

Image: U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Warren D. Spearman Jr. (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.