Poland to build 45 recovery trucks for Sweden’s military

The Swedish Armed Forces will receive 45 heavy recovery and technical rescue vehicles built entirely in Poland, a deal that marks one of the few instances in which Sweden has turned to a manufacturer outside its own borders for this kind of specialized military hardware.

Szczęśniak Pojazdy Specjalne, a family-owned vehicle manufacturer based in Bielsko-Biała that has built fire trucks, ambulances and military support vehicles since 1992, designed and built the recovery vehicle from the ground up using Polish engineering and components. The company has spent more than three decades supplying specialized vehicles to fire departments, border guards, police forces and militaries in roughly 30 countries, and it holds a NATO Commercial and Government Entity code along with quality certifications that allow it to fulfill contracts for alliance armed forces, credentials that gave Sweden’s defense procurement agency enough confidence to look past its usual preference for domestic suppliers.

The vehicles sit on a Scania R520 XT chassis, a heavy-duty, four-axle, all-wheel-drive truck platform built by the Swedish manufacturer Scania specifically for demanding off-road military and industrial applications. Equipped with a 520-horsepower (388-kilowatt) engine, the chassis gives the recovery vehicle enough power to tow military passenger cars, trucks and buses, and to pull three- and four-axle trailers weighing up to 38 tons (42 short tons) at speeds of at least 40 km/h (25 mph) on paved roads. On public roads, the vehicle combination can tow loads up to 70 tons (77 short tons), a capacity that puts it firmly in the category of equipment built to recover the heaviest wheeled and tracked vehicles a modern army fields, including armored personnel carriers disabled in the field.

Dariusz Nalepa, Military Projects Director at Szczęśniak, framed the contract as a showcase for Polish industrial collaboration reaching a demanding foreign customer.

“This project is an example of cooperation between Polish enterprises in delivering an advanced product to a demanding foreign customer,” said Nalepa.

Photo courtesy Szczęśniak Pojazdy Specjalne

That collaboration centers on the vehicle’s hydraulic system, supplied by PONAR Wadowice, a Polish manufacturer specializing in oil hydraulics. PONAR’s components drive the towing and lifting equipment mounted on the vehicle’s superstructure, including a towing and lifting device capable of pulling a disabled vehicle in a semi-lifted position, a recovery method that lets the truck grip a stranded vehicle by its wheels, axle or built-in recovery points and tow it while keeping the load under control rather than dragging it flat along the ground. In a short-boom configuration, the system can tow vehicles weighing up to roughly 16 tons (18 short tons), and in special circumstances up to 20 tons (22 short tons), while a fully extended boom handles loads of approximately 9 tons (10 short tons). A separate winch system supplied by Swedish manufacturer Sepson adds frame-mounted pulling capability designed for self-recovery and off-road towing, with the winches transferring force directly to the chassis rather than through the superstructure, a design choice meant to keep the truck stable under the kind of heavy dynamic loads recovery operations routinely produce.

Krzysztof Kotorowicz, Key Account Manager at PONAR Wadowice, emphasized how much of the vehicle was engineered specifically for this program rather than assembled from existing catalog parts.

“In these vehicles, you will find very few off-the-shelf products; the vast majority were designed and manufactured specifically for them based on research, ideas, and solutions developed by the R&D departments of both cooperating Polish companies,” said Kotorowicz.

Nalepa credited the speed of that engineering work as one of the program’s genuine achievements, given how tightly Sweden’s Armed Forces specified their requirements.

“Despite the high equipment requirements set by the customer, we managed to design, build, and conduct operational testing of the heavy recovery vehicle within approximately 12 months, which is a significant achievement,” said Nalepa.

Independent verification followed that design and testing phase. The Military Institute of Armored and Automotive Technology in Sulejówek, a Polish research institute that evaluates vehicle stability, handling and recovery performance for military applications, tested the vehicle’s design and operational effectiveness before it moved toward delivery. Nalepa pointed to the practical battlefield value of that recovery capability, noting that high-pull winches and towing arms let crews retrieve and transport heavy equipment quickly, even under difficult terrain and hostile conditions, which reduces the risk of losing valuable military assets and helps units maintain operational continuity and the ability to regenerate combat power after losing a vehicle in the field.

“It is worth emphasizing that, thanks to being equipped with high-pull winches and towing arms, these military recovery vehicles enable rapid retrieval and transport of heavy equipment, even in difficult terrain and under fire, minimizing the risk of losing valuable assets,” said Nalepa.

The contract builds on a relationship between Szczęśniak and Sweden’s defense procurement agency, FMV, that began in February 2025 with a four-year framework agreement covering an initial batch of 10 vehicles, followed by a March 2026 order for 35 additional units that brought the total program to 45 vehicles, with deliveries scheduled to run through the end of 2029. Marek Warzecha, President of the Management Board at PONAR Wadowice, described the partnership as evidence of what Polish engineering teams working together can achieve on a demanding export program.

“The cooperation of our enterprises shows what kind of result can be achieved by combining expertise in power hydraulics with the experience of Szczęśniak Pojazdy Specjalne in designing and building technologically advanced special-purpose vehicles for rescue services, the military, or the fire brigade. From the knowledge and cooperation of two teams of engineers and technicians, modern and advanced Polish solutions have emerged, which are significant from the perspective of security and defense,” said Warzecha.