Why small guns have been critical to layered CUAS architectures
Multiple countries have been deploying small arms as the last line of drone defence due to their multiple operational and tactical advantages.
Slovakia to meet NATO defence budget target by 2022
Slovakia will increase its military budget to the NATO target of 2% of gross domestic product by 2022, 2 years earlier than planned, President Zuzana Caputova told NATO officials in Brussels on 25th June.
‘In relation to the 2% of GDP, we are pleased to achieve this target even earlier, in 2022 - that is 2 years earlier’ than previously stated, Caputova said, quoted by Slovak media in Brussels following talks with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
Slovakia, a NATO and eurozone member state of 5.4 million people, currently spends 1.73% of its GDP on defence, according to the 2019 state budget.
Slovakia had earlier committed to reach NATO's recommended 2% of GDP military spending target in 2024.
NATO member states agreed to the spending target in 2014.
Bratislava will spend nearly €900 million ($1.02 billion) on defence in 2019, the finance ministry said.
Defence Ministry state secretary Robert Ondrejcsak told AFP on 25th June that most of this budget will be spent on a comprehensive modernisation of the country's army.
‘We will soon get rid of technical dependence on Russia,’ he said.
Ondrejcsak was referring to Slovakia's current dependence on Russian military hardware, a legacy of its past in the Communist bloc before 1989.
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