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Complete peace with Sweden: Hungary buys 4 new Gripen fighter jets
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Hungary is expanding its air force’s fleet of Gripen fighter jets with four new aircraft, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said after meeting Swedish counterpart Ulf Kristersson in Budapest on Friday.
The extension of Hungary’s Gripen contract will significantly boost the military’s capabilities and capacity to take part in foreign missions, Orbán said.
The changed security environment and the war between Russia and Ukraine make it especially important for the Hungarian air force to be able to use its own equipment in performing operations with its allies outside the country’s airspace, he added.
Orbán said he and Kristerson had agreed to extend a related logistics contract and expand it to training.
Also, an agreement has been reached on Saab and the Defense Innovation Research Institute opening an artificial intelligence-focused centre of excellence, Orbán said, adding that the two countries will also begin cooperating in R+D.
Hungarian-Swedish press conference:
The prime minister noted that there had been a debate during the tenure of his first administration between 1998 and 2002 on whether Hungary needed to develop its own air defence capabilities and with what kind of technology. The government then had chosen to cooperate with the Swedes, leading to its use of Gripen fighters, he said. Orbán said they had now arrived at a key point, as the contracts were set to expire.
“Since we were poor when we bought the first Gripens, we couldn’t buy as many as we actually needed,” Orbán said.
In response to a question, he said that by signing the agreements, Hungary had decided to maintain and incerase its air defence capabilities, adding this meant that Hungary would remain part of joint NATO operations in which member states secure the defence of each other’s air spaces. Orbán said this also strengthened Hungary’s commitment to NATO.
He thanked Kristersson for his visit, and, referring to Sweden’s NATO membership, said Hungary’s parliament will convene on Monday and “make the necessary decisions” that will bring one phase to a close and begin another.
Asked why Hungary’s opinion had changed on Sweden’s NATO accession, Orbán said NATO membership meant that the allied countries were prepared to fight for each other, adding that maintaining such strong ties with a country required trust and mutual respect.
That was why, he said, both countries had made careful preparations to rebuild the past trust between them. “This took some time,” he said, adding that the recent developments were not a matter of Hungary changing its opinion, but about a process with a beginning and an end.