The Slovak Ministry of Defense plans to purchase 4 F-16 fighters in addition to the 14 already ordered.
This information was reported by DefenseNew, URA-Inform reports.
This should compensate for Bratislava's decision to cancel the purchase of 12 Bell AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters and missiles for them.
It is noted that last year, Lockheed Martin announced that the first two of 14 purchased F-16 fighters had been delivered, with the rest expected to be produced by the end of this year. However, even before the completion of the $800 million contract, the Slovak government can buy 4 more aircraft.
< p>“Of the 14 fighters that we will have, three or four should be deployed 24 hours a day for the NATINADS system (NATO integrated air defense – UNIAN). All these arguments together led to the fact that we began new negotiations to modernize our aircraft and add four more to the fourteen,” said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Robert Kaliniak.
Chapter Democratic Party and former Defense Minister Jaroslav Nagy said the government may be using the F-16 replenishment to appease the United States and manufacturer Bell for canceling the preliminary agreement with Viper.
“We need to purchase new helicopters for the Slovak army, and additional purchases of aircraft will not cover this need. It would also likely cost much more than the estimated $340 million Slovakia would have spent on these helicopters. The actual cost of the Vipers and weapons is around $1 billion, so Slovakia was offered a huge discount. But now, if the government refuses this agreement, we may miss the opportunity to get a modern helicopter fleet at this price,” the politician was indignant.
He said the new talk of F-16s was “quite strange” because the country’s air force had never requested additional aircraft during his tenure. Nagy stressed that “politicians should buy the military what they need, not what they want personally.”
At the same time, Kalinák, who is part of the far-right government and has been critical of aid to Ukraine, criticized the Viper offer as “disadvantageous” for Slovakia. He also condemned the previous cabinet’s decision to transfer 13 aging MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine.
“The Slovak Ministry of Defense delivered MiG-29s donated by the previous government, without any legal analysis of such a decision being the focus,” — the Slovak ministry said in a statement.
An “internal investigation” allegedly found that there was no authority to dispose of the MiG-29 fleet. Kalinyak has already stated that he will raise the issue to a higher level, demanding that the prosecutor's office begin an investigation. He accuses the then ministers of weakening the Slovak army. Nagy denies these accusations.
“Slovakia handed over the same equipment that many other countries, such as Poland, but you don’t hear about the new Polish government accusing the previous government of supporting Ukraine,” — the politician emphasized.
Recall that it was previously reported that the United States is developing a new class of high-precision ERAM missiles for Ukraine: what is known about them.
