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ROZHOVOR / INTERVIEW
of the General Staff of the Czech Army. We
discussed the future direction of the Slovak
and Czech Armed Forces, the organization
of NATO’s joint military initiatives and the
strengthening of mutual defence cooperation.
At the end of February and beginning of
March we organized a meeting with the Czech
Chief of Defence in our common border area
in Čadca. The bilateral negotiations, aimed
at saving defence budget resources on both
sides, resulted in a draft proposal for implementing
joint procurements of selected types
of military equipment, as in our Armed Forces,
just as in the case of our western neighbours,
radar systems are slowly approaching the end
of their life cycle. Another outcome is a common
solution to jointly intervene in non-military
crisis situations, such as natural disasters
and catastrophes.
Although the period which I’ve just reviewed
here was relatively short, it was very difficult
in terms of task implementation.
We are currently facing the financial crisis,
with an adverse impact on the life of the
SVK Armed Forces. In what way is it most
palpable?
The effects of the economic crisis on public
resources in most NATO member states are
reflected in the shift of strategic priorities.
The need to search for internal reserves is
affecting the defence and security sectors,
especially through disproportionate defence
budget cuts. Against this backdrop, the
Slovak Republic has taken steps to conduct
the Strategic Defence Review (SDR). It has
been demonstrated that the fundamental and
crucial problem which is bearing heavily on
the extent and quality of implementation of
the MOD’s key activities is the long-term discrepancy
between assigned tasks on the one
hand and allocated resources for their implementation
on the other. This negative trend
is not only prevailing but also deepening. Its
greatest after-effects are felt in new capabilities
generation, where the deficit between the
planned goals of capabilities development and
the actual reality is literarily alarming. When
considering technical equipment and modernization
of the core land and air equipment,
the SVK Armed Forces find themselves in a
fundamentally worse condition than any other
comparable armed forces in NATO. Any reduction
of defence budget has far more dramatic
consequences, compared to other technically
advanced militaries. I provided a more comprehensive
overview of this in the May issue of
the ATM journal.
Although partial modernization projects
have been delivered in the environment of
our Armed Forces since 1993, the amount
of the actual MOD budget has prevented
some modernization projects from being implemented
in full. What is the state of the
SVK Armed Forces’ modernization today and
what are our future prospects?
Since the establishment of the SVK Armed
Forces, the modernization process has been
delimited by frequent modifications in the
policy and planning goals and the resulting
priorities for their implementation. One of the
major conceptual changes was the decision
to build modern armed forces expeditionary
in nature and with adequate capabilities.
However, these expensive projects far exceed
the possibilities of the Slovak Ministry of
Defence and the future outlook is also not
very optimistic. To illustrate the point, in 2011
the percentage of expenditure on the development
of outfit, equipment and materiel accounted
for only 8.5 per cent, which has been
the lowest allocation of funding since the
establishment of the Slovak Republic and the
SVK Armed Forces. Under such conditions, the
Armed Forces have been pressured to focus
their modernization efforts almost exclusively
on priority capabilities, namely to cater for the
urgent requirements of the units deployed on
international crisis management operations
and, partially, in support of NATO Force Goals.
Given the fact that almost 90 per cent of the
Land Force’s equipment is now outdated, the
SVK Armed Force’s strategic priority is centred
on procurement of main types of landbased
systems, especially advanced wheeled
armoured vehicles. We assume that such
projects could be implemented as state modernization
projects under special supervision
or above and beyond the framework of the
MOD budget, whilst applying common procurement
processes. As to the SVK Air Force,
there is an urgent need to replace its radar
systems that play an essential role in support
of NATINADS, to extend the service life and
carry out repairs of aircraft and missiles. These
projects should be based on a multi-annual
funding scheme.
22 IDEB EXCLUSIVE 2012