SOFIA – Bulgaria’s government has approved spending a
total of $166.1 million dollars for the acquisition of new fighter jets and
patrol ships in 2018, the local media reported.
The government will also allocate an additional 100
million levs to purchasing military equipment for land forces, Bulgarian
National Radio (BNR) reported over the weekend.
The acquisition of a new type of fighter jets and
multipurpose patrol ship should be completed by end-2023, BNR said.
In three years between 2018 and 2020, the government
plans to spend a total of 78 million levs to maintain the airworthiness of
aging Russian-made MiG-29 fighters jets of the Bulgarian Air Force, BNR quoted
defense minister Krasimir Karakachanov as saying.
In June 2017, the defense ministry said it plans to spend
3.54 billion levs on rearmament programmes between 2017 and 2029.
The programmes envisage purchasing new combat aircraft
for 1.5 billion levs, multi-purpose modular patrol vessels for 820 million levs
and military equipment for land forces for 1.22 billion levs.
In 2014, at the NATO summit in Wales, Bulgaria committed
to a defense spending target of 2% of GDP, to be reached in the following 10
years.
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