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ROZHOVOR / INTERVIEW
involving the 12th Mechanized Battalion
and the certification of the 12th Mechanized
Battalion Group. The exercise will attract over
1,000 personnel and 240 pieces of vehicles
and equipment later in October. In addition,
the Slovak Air Force has been successfully
conducting flight training. As of 13 May the
SVK Air Force had completed 14.5 per cent of
its annual flight plan and made preparations
for the MACE XIII International Exercise, which
is scheduled to take place in April, with a total
of 540 participants and over 100 aircraft.
Also, the Training and Support Forces began,
to a full extent, to deliver courses and training,
and have successfully finished the initial
military training course, with 85 trainees passing
out.
In February, the SVK Armed Forces provided assistance
to the villages of Plavnica, Turzovka,
Čadca, Staré Hory in an effort to alleviate the
consequences of the ice and snow calamity. In
March we were called in to intervene at Krásna
Hôrka Castle, which was damaged by fire.
As to personnel issues, intense work is underway
on the preparations for and a wide
military debate on the amendment of Act No.
346/2005 Coll. governing the state service of
professional soldiers. Commanders have processed
personnel assessment reports and discussed
them with their subordinates. We have
prepared and set up committees for competitive
selection of professional soldiers for promotion.
All the personnel issues are crucial
and I receive regular updates on them. We
have managed to get approved and establish
an independent control division, directly subordinated
to the Chief of the General Staff, and
set up a Control Section in the Joint Materiel
Management Centre. These are meant to bring
the management of respective command levels
to a higher level, to decrease damage and
losses, to improve the quality of logistics, and
to make resources management more efficient.
The SVK Armed Forces have lacked such
control authorities, that’s why their establishment
is seen as a very significant leap ahead.
It is my permanent endeavour to regularly
visit garrisons and check how they perform
the adopted measures, look for solutions and
resolve problems, as well as to meet service
personnel and rally their support for the delineated
priorities.
It is important to note that we’ve been actively
cooperating not only with people from
the military environment. To forge closer
cooperation among the SVK Armed Forces,
local authorities and non-governmental organizations,
I’ve met with their local authority
and NGO representatives. For example,
at the end of February I convened a meeting
with the mayor of Bratislava, Milan Ftáčnik, to
discuss possible areas of cooperation between
Bratislava and our Armed Forces.
As part of my international duties, at the
beginning of the year, I attended a meeting
of the NATO Military Committee in Brussels,
where the main topics under discussion were
NATO’s intelligent defence project, operations,
transformation, new command structure
and staffing of top NATO positions. My
first bilateral foreign trip took me to Prague
in February, where I held talks with the Chief
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