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Respekt in English15. 4. 200210 minut

Gripens or NATO

A hundred and sixty billion crowns to purchase, equip and operate Gripen supersonic jets is again in play. As early as this week the Chamber of Deputies is to approve financing for the project. The cabinet is trying with a vengeance to get the purchase concluded before the electoral term is up.

Astronaut

A hundred and sixty billion crowns to purchase, equip and operate Gripen supersonic jets is again in play. As early as this week the Chamber of Deputies is to approve financing for the project. The cabinet is trying with a vengeance to get the purchase concluded before the electoral term is up. It is even considering signing the contract with the aircraft manufacturer without the Chamber's consent, which would expose the state coffer to the threat of a high penalty should the deputies ultimately not approve financing for the purchase and the Czech Republic would have to withdraw from the contract.

An alliance of politicians and experts has been warning Czechs of the project's risk for almost two years now. Respekt has obtained unpublished information from a report by American experts this year, which was recently handed to Defense Minister Jaroslav Tvrdík. The report says, „Reasonable doubts exist as to whether this aircraft will be capable of operating in the NATO setting, due to its performance, utility and insufficiencies in pilot training.“

On the banks of the Rubicon

↓ INZERCE

The cabinet, the Defense Ministry and also soldiers are convinced that we need supersonic jets. The Czech army's status report last year deems the state of the domestic air force alarming. The air force here has only four fighter planes at its disposal that are operational. These are MiG-21's, modernized versions of a nearly fifty-year old prototype, which in three years will come to the end of their service life. „After that our air space will no longer be protected by supersonic jets from our army,“ states a defense ministry document.

„We are member of NATO and it would be an embarrassment not to have supersonic jets. The only countries in the Alliance without them are Luxembourg and Iceland,“ as Premier Miloš Zeman said some time ago, explaining the Gripen purchase with national pride. „Our air force is standing on the banks of the Rubicon. We are deciding on its future and on the future defense of the air space over our republic,“ added Defense Minister Jaroslav Tvrdík in mid-February, as he was persuading deputies on the need to approve financing. The importance of the airplane purchase is supported by additional analysis of the Defense Ministry on the Czech air force's status - its combat readiness has fallen compared to 1993 to nearly one fifth. At the same time, the last three wars in which NATO forces took part have proved the effectiveness of modern jet aircraft. It was thanks to air strikes that the armies of the Alliance were victorious in Kuwait, Bosnia and Yugoslavia. This is persuasive data. Nonetheless, opponents to the deal voice a very serious „but“.

Winners beforehand

NATO representatives do not recommend that the Czech army buy supersonic jets at this moment - they believe the money should go towards other priorities. And the fact that it is precisely Gripens that we wish to buy literally astounds them. It's true that it is one of the most modern fighter planes, but up to now it is still in development, it has a short range and mainly „cannot communicate“ with the Alliance. Most NATO armies have F-16's in their arsenals, which are provided with weapons, communication systems as well as training. A fundamental part of the necessary technical support is financing from the Alliance's funds - Czechs will be forced to invest another eighty billion crowns into getting their lonely Gripens to take off, while with F-16's it would have come to sixteen times cheaper, according to the official tender offer from the American cabinet.

In light of this information the Gripen purchase looks almost like a mad undertaking. Nevertheless, the offer from the British-Swedish consortium British Aerospace/Saab caught Premier Zeman's fancy as soon as he got hold of it in spring 1999. The company did promise that in exchange for the contract it would secure ninety billion crowns worth of investment into Czech industry through offset programs. The cabinet was so enthused that it refused to take information from the American Defense Department seriously that offsets generally run to a maximum twenty percent.

At the beginning of this year the cabinet invited tenders to purchase jet fighters. Indeed the conditions were rewritten and modified for so long that the other four firms registered in the tender realized that victory was being tailored to suit Gripens and so withdrew from the fixed race in protest. Then last autumn the cabinet with much fanfare declared the sole remaining contender to be the winner. And then started looking for the 160 billion to pay for the whole project. Opposed to the Gripen purchase were both current Finance Minister Jiří Rusnok and his predecessor Pavel Mertlík - both claim that the investment will deepen the public debt to the point that our descendants „will have big problems paying it off.“

Just for illustration: Premier Zeman emphasizes that the Gripen purchase was even recommended to us by the likes of such respected Alliance representatives as Tony Blair during his visit to Prague last week. Nonetheless the British press in this regard points out that British Aerospace is one of the sponsors of Blair's Labour Party. Furthermore, the fact that Blair promotes Gripens is doubly hypocritical: The British army after all is not going to buy Gripens. „We support the Eurofighter European aircraft project,“ says British Defense Minister Geoffry Hoon, adding that Britain is buying a hundred and twenty of these planes in the very near future.

„Gripen won the tender. I cannot dispute the cabinet's decision,“ responds Defense Minister Tvrdík to the question of why the cabinet is doggedly in favor of Gripens, which are expensive and unnecessary for the Alliance. And why does, say, one of the biggest proponents of the purchase among members of parliament – Zdeněk Škromach – want Gripens? „I have information that it is an excellent aircraft,“ says the Social Democrat Vice Chairman. And where did he obtain it? After all, the Defense Ministry up to the present has not published a single comparison of Gripen with other planes. „I simply trust Minister Tvrdík,“ says Škromach, ending the interview.

Weak

When we joined the Alliance we promised we would fundamentally reform our army. Three years later - last autumn - Minister Tvrdík received a report card from Brussels on the progress of military reforms. Weak, said the document. „The difference between the Alliance's armies and the Czech military has deepened over three years. The Czech Republic allocates relatively enough money from the budget, but investments are haphazard and do not keep to the long-term plan,“ writes the Alliance.

We promised the allies mainly to improve the military's communications - from soldiers' language abilities to compatible computers --, but the results thus far have been deplorable. „I criticized it in the past and after taking office I've been trying to rectify it,“ says Tvrdík, and it is true that NATO leaders praised his plan for army reform this March. Nevertheless, criticism of the jet fighter plan remains. „The Czech Republic is attempting to bring two types of airplane into its arsenal at the same time, the L-159 and Gripen. No other NATO army, except the U.S., has ever attempted anything of the kind,“ says the Alliance's report. „The Czech army has other priorities than jet fighters,“ adds NATO Secretary General George Robertson. If it is a question of defending air space, as the Czech cabinet points out, then NATO performs this not on national proportions but on allied proportions. For general monitoring of the sky during peacetime four fighters suffice for a country like the Czech Republic, and should a conflict arise then fighters are not launched against the „attackers“ in Europe by an individual country but by Brussels headquarters.

„Alliance representatives are not going to order us to buy something,“ says Alexandr Vondra, the cabinet's authorized representative for organizing the NATO summit in Prague, former ambassador to the U.S. and a man who while serving as deputy foreign minister was one of the chief architects of our accession to the Alliance. „Nonetheless, if we buy Gripens it will be perceived by allied countries as a signal that we do not want to participate in the Alliance's military operations.“

How will the vote on loans for the fighters turn out? In the Chamber of Deputies the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats are „for“ and the ODS (Civil Democrats) are „against“. Those abstaining are the Communists and, surprisingly, three deputies from the Freedom Union who could have blocked the project by voting „against“ – Ivan Pilip, Vladislav Korbel and Pavel Němec.

Report from American experts „The pilots of Czech Gripens will be trained in Sweden - on the premises of the jet's chief manufacturer. The instructors there, to be sure, do not know the Alliance's drills, tactics or method of using allied weapons systems,“ states the report from American experts, handed by the Prague U.S. Ambassador Craig Stapleton to the Defense Ministry a month ago.

The report also points out that the Gripen's range is less than that of similar, modern jet fighters (Gripen: 800 km, F-16: 1600 km, the more powerful Eurofighter: 2200 km). For example in Operation Allied Force in attacks on Yugoslavia, NATO planes took off in Aviana, Italy and flew back without tanker support. Gripen would not be capable of taking part in a similar action. The manufacturers have promised that the Gripens for the Czech army would be equipped with a system for tanking in mid-air. „There are not enough air tankers in the Alliance. The Czech army does not have a single one at its disposal and it's out of the question that it would be lent or provided one for combat,“ says the report submitted by Ambassador Stapleton to the Czech army.

Ten Gripen Batch 2 aircraft (a lower category than the Czech Republic wants to buy) were leased last year by Hungary. „Due to the plane's technical capabilities it will not be used in any Alliance missions,“ the report says.

In the future, NATO armies will be rearmed with two types of aircraft - the Eurofighter and the Joint Strike Fighter. Allied states, including Poland and Hungary, are investing jointly in their development as well as development of technical support and pilot training. Why aren't we? „At that time we will have excellent combat planes,“ says Premier Zeman.


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