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19 May 2014
Slovakia is looking to lease Saab Gripen fighter aircraft to replace its MiG-29 fighter fleet, according to Slovak National Armament Office Director Róbert Tibenský.
Tibenský was speaking at the annual GLOBSEC security forum held in Bratislava from 14-16 May,
and confirmed that by 2020 Slovakia will have replaced most of its Soviet-era legacy equipment with modern platforms.
Tibenský, who was appointed on 1 May, said that as Bratislava will be withdrawing its Mikoyan MiG-29 fighter aircraft from service in around 2016-17,
Slovakia will most likely lease Saab Gripen multirole combat aircraft to prevent a gap occurring in its supersonic fighter capability.
Neighbours the Czech Republic and Hungary are also leasing the Gripen and so Slovakia hopes that it will be able to combine a variety of support operations internationally.
The possibility of conducting joint training, weapon systems acquisition, and maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) would decrease the overall costs of the programme.
Speaking to IHS Jane's , Daniel Boestad, vice president of Saab, said that "by choosing Gripen,
Slovakia would become a part of a wide pooling and sharing family,
where MRO and training costs are shared between three or more countries,
which would also have a positive impact on multinational interoperability".
Currently, Slovakia fields 10 MiG-29s, although IHS Jane's believes only two are fully operational.
Tibenský also stated that Slovakia will also fully replace its Mil Mi-17 'Hip' utility helicopters with modern platforms by the end of 2020. However, he did not provide any details of the specifications of the future platforms. The tender is expected to be issued by the end of this year.
However, one major obstacle that could hinder the fulfilment of this modernisation programme is the country's limited defence budget.
In 2014 Slovakia spent only 0.99% of its GDP on defence, equating to some USD988 million.
According to IHS Jane's Defence Budgets , Slovak defence spending is expected to only slightly increase to USD1.211 billion, or 1.02% of GDP, by end 2018.
Additionally, 85% of the Slovak defence budget is spent on personnel, operation and maintenance costs, leaving only 10% for procurement.
This small allocation and the low probability of a significant increase in the Ministry of Defence's budget in the near term opens the possibility of the procurement plans announced by Tibenský being curtailed.