Engine faults leave some of Poland’s K2 tanks in repair

About 30 of Poland’s South Korean-built K2 tanks are sitting in military workshops with various faults, most of them at the army base in Braniewo in the country’s northeast, Radio ZET reported, and some of the damage involves the engines of a fleet that has grown to more than 200 tanks delivered so far.

The figure came from the broadcaster’s investigative podcast “W związku ze śledztwem” and journalist Mariusz Gierszewski. When Radio ZET asked the Polish Ministry of National Defense whether roughly one in ten delivered tanks was under repair and how many engine seizures had been recorded, the ministry neither confirmed nor disputed the numbers and instead defended the tank’s overall reliability.

“The failure rate of the K2 tanks does not deviate from the standards adopted for this type of vehicle,” the ministry said.

Braniewo, near the border with Russia’s Kaliningrad region, is home to the 9th Armored Cavalry Brigade, one of three Polish Land Forces combat units equipped with the K2GF, the version Poland bought off the shelf from South Korea. Concerns about the engines surfaced publicly earlier this year, when Polish military analyst Jarosław Wolski wrote on X that the tanks were suffering from overheating and engine failures.

“The Korean engines are falling apart like a Christmas tree on Epiphany. (…) What is especially worrying is the overheating of the engines and cases of complete seizure of the power units,” wrote Wolski.

The K2, built by Hyundai Rotem, is powered by a 1,500-horsepower HD Hyundai Infracore engine paired with a Renk HSWL 295 TM transmission. The tank weighs about 55 tonnes (61 short tons), carries a three-person crew and is armed with a 120 mm smoothbore gun fed by an autoloader.

Radio ZET also reported that only Korean technicians can work on the tanks, a claim the ministry’s answer narrowed. Tanks still under warranty, or covered by service campaigns, are repaired by the supplier, while Polish Armed Forces maintenance units take over routine repairs and scheduled servicing once the warranty ends, work that temporarily takes vehicles out of use.

“Temporary withdrawals from operation are a standard phenomenon affecting every type of platform,” the ministry said.

Poland’s Armament Agency, the military’s procurement body, gave a similar response to Polish outlet Defence24, saying the faults are being fixed together with the manufacturer under warranty and do not significantly limit the units that operate the tank.

“The K2GF tanks have the same level of faults, adequate to any other equipment being introduced into service with the Armed Forces,” said Col. Grzegorz Polak, spokesman for the Armament Agency. “The technical faults that occur are being fixed in cooperation with the contractor, as part of warranty repairs. Their frequency does not significantly affect the ability of the units equipped with K2GF tanks to carry out their tasks.”

Poland ordered the K2 under two executive contracts covering 360 tanks in total, plus more than 80 support vehicles. The first, signed in 2022 for 180 K2GF tanks and completed in 2025, equipped the 20th Mechanized Brigade in Bartoszyce, which received the first tanks in 2022, along with the 15th Mechanized Brigade in Giżycko and one of the Braniewo brigade’s tank battalions, which received about 58 tanks.

The second contract also requires production and maintenance capacity, including final assembly of the K2PL, to be set up at Zakłady Mechaniczne Bumar-Łabędy in Gliwice, and the ministry said it plans to hand selected repair work to other Polish defense companies. That transfer is still in progress, with the companies involved negotiating sublicense agreements with the Armament Agency and cooperation agreements with Hyundai Rotem while they begin adapting their plants and training staff.

Poland’s other main tank, the U.S.-built Abrams, has run into its own engine maintenance gap. The country ordered 366 Abrams tanks, whose AGT1500 gas turbine engines require depot-level work at certified aerospace facilities, a capability Poland did not have when the tanks arrived. Military Aviation Works No. 1 (WZL-1) in Dęblin signed an agreement with engine maker Honeywell in May to set up an authorized service center, which is scheduled to come online by 2028, and U.S. technical personnel in Poland support the fleet in the meantime.