President Milanović: I support the purchase of Rafale fighter jets, but we need an integrated air defence system
“The Chief of the General Staff, in whose jurisdiction it is, and the Defence Minister went to France to take over the first fighter jet, whose significance is quite symbolical because it is a major purchase costing considerable sums of money. I supported this, and I support it further. The decision has been made, but people should be aware that it is a very costly defence system, and that everything bought and manufactured today is terribly expensive”, the President of the Republic Zoran Milanović commented today on the island of Hvar on the delivery of the first multirole Rafale combat aircraft.
The President of the Republic agrees that the purchase of the Rafale fighter jets is “a matter of prestige because no one in this region has them”, but adds: “It would be good if Croatia had an integrated air defence system, not just any one, but one that we could afford for that money. Maybe we should look in these terms now because the force of those fighter jets is also measured by how much strength the adversary has to suppress you, to keep you at a distance. If the adversary has a modern and integrated air defence system, even if he doesn’t even have one fighter jet, you can do nothing or practically nothing to him. Those systems are under the complete control of the supplier, namely the French state. I’m saying all this to make people aware of what exactly we’ve gotten ourselves into.
Furthermore, President Milanović said that the purchase of new fighter jets “must not be at the expense of equipment and ammunition, which we chronically lack in other branches”. “We cannot function with a few dozen anti-tank missiles, we cannot function with such numbers. They have not been replenished in years, therefore this purchase will look great and will be used by some as a pre-election platform. But it costs almost one and a half billion euros with VAT, and the combat force of these systems has its limits. My duty is to warn about what we don’t have and should have”, President Milanović noted, stressing the lack of coastal patrol boats.
“Coastal patrol boats have been sitting for years in a shipyard because the government has not been able to find common language to force the builder to complete them. We are now held hostage to the interests of a private entrepreneur who is looking out for his own interests”, President Milanović emphasised.