SARAJEVO, May 28 (FENA) - The Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina at its session on May 11, among other items, made two separate decisions significant in the context of capacity building in the defense sector, namely one on amendments to the Decision on multi-year helicopter procurement project for the Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH AF), and the other on the financing of a multi-year project for the training of officers in the military aviation.
As FENA learns from the Ministry of Defense of BiH (MoD BiH), these are two separate, but from a professional aspect, compatible projects, which will contribute to increasing the aviation capabilities of the Armed Forces of BiH.
In accordance with the first decision, the Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina continue the procurement of American Bell UH-1H-II Huey II helicopters, which should be realized in the next three years.
"Bosnia and Herzegovina has secured 3.6 million KM for those additional helicopters, and the rest will be provided by the Government of the United States.
As they further state, these are general-purpose helicopters, for which the official handover of the initial delivery of four helicopters took place on December 10, 2021, at the BiH Armed Forces Barracks "Rajlovac".
The total value of the contract for that delivery was 38,539,378 US dollars, of which BiH participated with 4,360,000 dollars, or 7.5 million KM, through the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program.
The remaining amount was provided by the United States Government with funds from the US Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program.
At the same time, they remind that several members of the Air Force and Air Defense Brigade of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina have successfully completed adaptation training on UH-1H-II Huey II helicopters, which took place from June 6 to 25, 2021 in the United States of America, in Fort Worth in Texas.
Thus, the pilots of both helicopter squadrons of the Armed Forces of BiH, after further retraining in BiH, became operational on the new Huey II helicopter.
According to what has already been defined, the United States of America is providing another 12 million USD for the procurement of advanced flight simulators for these helicopters of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, FENA learns from the Ministry of Defense of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
(FENA) S. R.