Air Superiority 2018 Exercise in Sweden

According to Hungarian Defense Forces offical site, the almost sixty personnel contingent, who has been staying in Sweden for a week, conducts air-to-air and air-to-earth live fire exercise in the framework of the Air Superiority 2018 Exercise at the Vidsel Air Base. Brigadier General Albert Sáfár, Air Chief of the HDF Joint Force Command was personally convinced about the successes of the missions on the spot.

As we have earlier reported in the honvedelem.hu, the almost sixty strong personnel and the six JAS-39 Gripen type fighter planes relocated to Vidsel on June 7. The air base and drill ground located just one hundred kilometres away from the Arctic Circle is the largest firing range of Sweden and of the European Union as well. For the soldiers of the HDF 59th “Szentgyörgyi Dezső” Air Base this territory is not unfamiliar at all, as this is the fourth time that they visited Vidsel: earlier preparation trainings were held here in 2008, in 2012 and in 2015, – the last time they were prepared for the first Baltic Air Policing mission of the Hungarian Defence Forces, in the course of which the Gripens guarded and protected the common airspace of the Baltic countries for a period of four months.

By the first half of their two week lasting tour abroad, the participants of the exercise managed to perform all the planned air-to-air live firing tasks, in which they overcame the drogues with AIM-9L type Sidewinder missiles and internal cannons of the JAS-39 Gripens.

Also, the pilots had the opportunity to use the air-to-earth arms already during the first week.

The live firing of these will culminate in the second week of the exercise, when the ground targets will be destroyed with AGM-65 type air-to earth missiles and GBU-12 and MK-82 bombs.