Last Friday’s report said the crew of the state VIP plane carrying President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others were poorly trained and ignored safety regulations. The plane crashed in thick fog in Russia on April 10, 2010, killing all on board.
Defense Minister Bogdan Klich resigned after the report.
“Our government is strongly determined to quickly and, I expect, somewhat painfully implement all the recommendations set out in the report,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a joint news conference with Klich’s successor, Tomasz Siemoniak.
Siemoniak said three top air force generals and 10 other senior military and defense ministry officials had lost their jobs as a result of the investigation into the crash.
“These are the first steps and further decisions, also aimed at rebuilding trust, are due. They will be difficult but I believe the Polish military needs them,” Tusk said.
“The urgent fixing of some parts of the Polish military — and not only those related to the air force — is synonymous with fixing the situation in the country,” he added.
Poland, the largest ex-communist NATO member, has more than 2,500 troops serving in Afghanistan and aims to withdraw them by 2014. Siemoniak said it was too early to say whether the military shakeup would have any impact on the pull-out plan.
 

Last year’s plane crash also killed Poland’s top military commanders, including the chief of the General Staff and the heads of the army, navy and air force.
The fact that so many senior officials were traveling on one plane raised questions over basic procedures, especially as it followed a 2008 accident when a military plane carrying 20 mostly senior air force personnel crashed, killing all on board.
There has also been criticism of the technical state of the government’s air fleet, much of which dates back to communist times.
Tusk said he was dismantling a special unit responsible for the transportation of state officials, saying they would from now on be serviced mainly by civilian planes.
Tusk’s centrist government scrapped national conscription in 2009 as part of its drive to create a fully professional military of 200,000 personnel.
Poland is also counting on closer military cooperation with the United States to modernize its armed forces.
Washington recently sealed an accord with Warsaw to set up a detachment on Polish soil to serve warplanes that will rotate through the country.
Poland also hopes to host SM-3 interceptors on its soil as part of a new US missile defense plan backed by NATO. Russia, Poland’s eastern neighbor and communist-era overlord, is unhappy about the plan.