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What are they up to? Hungary’s neighbours arm heavily
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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.
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.