What are they up to? Hungary’s neighbours arm heavily
According to the latest report of the Global Firepower, all neighbouring countries made remarkable progress in armament. The institute regularly measures the military potential of different countries. Looking beyond the Central European region, it is interesting that Pakistan made it to the top 10 most powerful states in terms of military. Islamabad preceded not only Iran or Turkey but also Italy.
According to Magyar Hang, only Hungary and Slovakia retained their 2019 places in the Central European region (55th and 58th). Taking the size and population of the states into consideration, it is not surprising that the army of Ukraine is the biggest in the region. Romania comes after Hungary’s northeastern neighbour. However, the latter fell back some positions on the list in the last few years. All the same,
Bucharest still has twice as many fighter jets and 15 times as many tanks as Budapest does.
In the case of Croatia, the trend is the same, even though they could not buy the MiG–21s they planned before. However, Zagreb managed to acquire Black Hawk helicopters and Bradley fighting vehicles.
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Interestingly, Serbia showed significant progress in the last few years. Belgrade has been developing its army for years because, as a neutral state, they need to defend themselves. First, they bought Russian MiG-29s,
then they acquired Pancir-SZ1s, a modern air protection system.
The Pancir system did very well in the civil war in Eastern-Ukraine, Lybia, Yemen, and Syria before offering protection against fighter jets, helicopters, and even autonomous robotic planes. Serbia plans to buy even the Sz-400 system from Moscow, disregarding American complaints and envisaged sanctions on the issue.
Hungary did not make any progress on the latest list of the Global Firepower, even though
the Hungarian army plans to buy the radar system of the Israeli Iron Dome air protection system
that is doing well against short-range surface-to-air missiles.
We reported before that, according to the German armed forces, Hungary is the first to join an international, but mainly military, air transport service. Index spotted on the website of Bundeswehr last September that Hungary is the first country to become a partner of the new Luftwaffe Multinational Air Transport Unit (MNAU). In 2017, the German Luftwaffe ordered 40 Airbus A400M propeller-driven military transport aircraft. After that, the German Federal Ministry of Defence proposed to establish a new, international air transport unit (MNAU).
“With the establishment of the executive group, the first proper positions have been formed at MNAU’s base in Wunstorf, which is an important milestone in the realisation of the multinational military air transport project. As the first officers of the Hungarian Air Force have been integrated into the project, the cooperation between the Hungarian and German forces has begun,” said Ingo Gerhartz, Lieutenant General of Luftwaffe, on the occasion of MNAU’s establishment. It is rumoured that another ten Airbus A400M aircraft will join the unit’s ranks.
Source: Magyar Hang
Why does Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovakia and Serbia (all smaller and poorer countries) have more tanks than Hungary (some have hundreds more)? Why does Serbia have more fixed wing combat aircraft than Hungary?
For 30 years Hungary has neglected its armed forces. The recent purchases of some modern weapons will not be available for years to come and are too few to make a difference in the ability to protect the country.