Poland introduced security measures in 2008 forbidding the heads of military units from flying together with their deputies, according to Reuters.

The measures were introduced after a  military plane carrying about 20 high-ranking Polish air force personnel crashed in Poland in 2008, killing all the passengers.

The existence of these security measures is sure to raise more questions about why the top leadership of the Polish army was allowed to fly on the same plane, moreover in a Russian plane and to a country, Russia, that has traditionally been counted as one of Poland's enemies without any military escort or secret service security. 

Bronislaw Komorowski will appont the successors to the dead army leaders, reports Reuters.

Polish army faces uncertainty after commanders die

 By Gabriela Baczynska, ReutersApril 12, 2010 8:02 AM

 WARSAW -- The loss of Poland's top military commanders in a plane crash raises questions over its mission in Afghanistan and the NATO ally's drive to modernise the armed forces.

The chief of the General Staff and the heads of the army, navy and air forces were among the 96 people including President Lech Kaczynski, to perish when their Tupolev TU-154 aircraft crashed as it tried to land in western Russia.

"This is the greatest tragedy in the history of the Polish armed forces," Stanislaw Koziej, a retired general and former defence minister, told Reuters.

"There has never been such a case where the top command of the army and its commander-in-chief (Kacynski) all died at the same time."

The crash coincides with the dispatch of an additional 600 troops to reinforce Poland's 2,000-strong contingent in the NATO mission in Afghanistan and with reforms aimed at modernising the military after a decision to scrap conscription.

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"This tragedy will have consequences for the Afghan mission for sure, though it is hard to say where things will go for now. We have lost the intellectual elite of the Polish army," said Wojciech Luczak, a military expert.

Among the dead was General Franciszek Gagor, chief of the general staff, who had been mooted as a possible candidate for a future senior post in the NATO alliance.

Kaczynski and his entourage perished while travelling to the Katyn forest in Russia to mark the murder of some 22,000 of Poland's military, political and intellectual elite by Soviet forces in 1940, months after Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler invaded Poland.

WHY FLYING TOGETHER?

The crash has raised questions over basic procedures and the state of Poland's government air fleet.

"How is it possible that all these top people, military and civilian, came to be travelling on the same plane?" said Luczak.

"We have to re-think the whole functioning of the air force. This tragedy is just the latest in a series (of accidents) and shows we cannot keep on improvising all the time due to a lack of proper equipment."

A military plane carrying 20 people, mostly senior Polish air force personnel, home from an air security conference crashed in Poland in 2008. All on board perished.

After that accident Poland introduced new security measures forbidding the heads of military units to fly together with their deputies.

The deputies of the generals killed on Saturday have already taken over their superiors' duties and Poland's defence minister is expected to nominate new permanent replacements soon.

Poland's Acting President Bronislaw Komorowski, who served as defence minister in 2000-2001, must approve the nominations.

"The military cannot function without its top brass and replacements have to be chosen soon. Komorowski knows the military quite well and has always been seen as a person who cared about the armed forces," Janusz Onyszkiewicz, a former defence minister, said.