Slovakia explains why it abandoned Russian planes and used American ones
Slovakia's Ministry of Defense has just announced plans to phase out Russian aircraft and stated the reason for purchasing American goods to replace them.
Reuters quoted a statement from the representative of the Slovakian Ministry of Defense, Mr. Martin Kambalik, saying that the Slovakian Air Force will buy 9 Black Hawk helicopters from the US to replace the outdated Russian Mi-17 helicopters that are therefore not safe.
"The decision to reduce dependence on Russia was adopted by the Slovak Ministry of Defense immediately after the start of the conflict in Ukraine, and now we see that this decision was correct," Martin Kambalik said.
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| Black Hawk helicopter. |
According to him, the conflict in Ukraine has forced many countries in the region to increase military spending and seek help from Western arms suppliers. Slovakia currently spends about 1% of its GDP on defense, but by 2020, this figure is expected to increase to 1.6%.
“We had to repair some equipment of the Mi-17 helicopter, but due to EU sanctions against Russia, the import of spare parts for the Mi-17 was banned,” Martin Kambalik further explained.
According to the plan, in the period 2016-2018, Slovakia will replace 10 Mi-17 helicopters (export version of Mi-8). These helicopters were purchased by Czechoslovakia in 1988 and transferred to Slovakia as a result of the division of Czechoslovak military assets (when the country split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic).
The total value of the contract to purchase 9 Black Hawk aircraft from the US is 261 million euros. Lenta.ru quoted a source in the Russian defense industry admitting that in this situation, the defense industry will lose some profits because Slovakia had previously considered upgrading Mi-17 helicopters at Russian enterprises to increase their service life to at least 10 more years.
However, due to the sanctions imposed by the West on Russia, upgrading the helicopters for Slovakia is currently impossible, and the helicopters will be in storage for less than a year, the source said.
In December 2014, Slovakia decided to buy two Western C-27J Spartan military transport aircraft to replace the Russian An-26 aircraft, also inherited from Czechoslovakia.
In addition to the Mi-17 helicopters, Slovakia is also considering the possibility of retiring six MiG-29 fighter jets, purchased in 1995, and plans to buy 8-12 Swedish JAS-39 Gripen fighter jets to replace them.
