President Vučić in Sremska Mitrovica: The Largest Order of the Serbian Armed Forces Placed With the Domestic Defence Industry

— Here in Sremska Mitrovica, in the part of the First Brigade of our armed forces, today we could see a high level of competence, preparedness, commitment and dedication to work of our armoured unit members, but also the changes that we are making to our artillery missile units. We believe that the artillery missile units are one of the most powerful segments of our armed forces. At the beginning we showed what the situation is today, but also what the situation was before, and you could also see new modular systems that we are working on, which will be manned with 50 per cent fewer crew members, that is, 50 per cent less risk of losing human lives. At the same time, everything is automated and mostly built in the Serbian factories — from FAP’s platform produced in Priboj, to the rockets produced by “Krušik” from Valjevo and “Prva petoletka” from Trstenik without which we could do little – pointed out the President of the Republic and the Supreme Commander of the Serbian Armed Forces, Aleksandar Vučić, who visited the 15th Tank Battalion of the First Army Brigade today, in the “Boško Palkovljević Pinki” barracks in Sremska Mitrovica, accompanied by the Minister of Defence, Aleksandar Vulin and the Chief of the General Staff of the Serbian Armed Forces, General Milan Mojsilović.

It is especially important, as President Vučić pointed out, that the Serbian Armed Forces will have 12 PASARS by the end of the year.

— These systems will have side missiles and 40 mm guns, so very effective systems and weapons. In this way we make sure that our industry and our armed forces are strengthened in these difficult conditions when America does not enter new wars, as it was always the case before, and when there aren’t many markets for the sale of weapons — said President Vučić and emphasized that this is important for us at the same time, because we cannot match the gifts and donations that certain NATO member countries in the region receive from Germany, the United States and other countries, so “we have to fight on our own, we have to protect our own peace and future”.  

— I am proud of our officers, NCOs, and soldiers. Regardless of the salary increase in the armed forces in the last four, five years, these are still not the conditions that we can all be satisfied with and I believe that these conditions can be much better in the future. In any case, I am grateful to them – said the President of the Republic. He also spoke about new hangars in the barracks in Sremska Mitrovica, which was bombed in 1999 and, as he pointed out, “it was almost a miracle that it survived at all in our system”.

— Now, for the first time, we have hangars for our tanks, and our tank units are certainly the most powerful in the region. Some segments of our armed forces are extremely strong, such as missile artillery and caterpillar tank units. We have also significantly strengthened our Air Force and Air Defence, the strength of which increased 20 times compared to seven-ten years ago and we expect them to become even stronger. That is why we will further develop bomber and fighter segment of our aviation, but also the most modern weapons and air defence systems. There is much ahead of us. In the previous days we made situation analysis of the countries in the region and it is amazing how everyone around us manages to find money despite the fact that their public debt is growing dramatically.  They manage to find the money to purchase equipment and weapons. We, as a military neutral country, want to preserve our neutrality, which means that we protect our own skies, our own country, and that we are “on our own”.  We will invest money, and I believe that we will be able to guarantee security, stability and peace without participating in any race, because the stronger you are, the bigger preventive effect you have on those who think that by using military aggression they can achieve political goals against our country — President Vučić pointed out, adding that we will be strong enough and that significant amounts of additional financial resources will be invested in our defence industry.

He also said that talks were held yesterday with the representatives of “Jugoimport”, with an emphasis on the purchase of a large number of vehicles and “Lazar” and “Milos” systems, but also of our “Nora” howitzers of up to 155 mm calibre, which have deadly effect and can hit a target from up to 40 km without error, and that the largest order of the Serbian Armed Forces has been placed with our defence industry.

— Since there are fewer wars in the world, we will have talks with other companies as well – from “Krušik” about the grenades and missile artillery, to “Sloboda” Čačak and “Prvi partizan”, because our units will train more. We already have hundreds of millions of 7.62 mm bullets, and we expect to have more in reserve. We will need a stronger production not only of 7.9 mm, but also of 12.7 mm bullets, in order for “Uzići” to be in the plans, and I hope that this will be achieved by the end of the year — said the President of the Republic, thanking the soldiers for the warm welcome at the end of his address.

— A warm and cordial welcome is when you see that people are ready and I congratulate Commander Nasković. He prepared the armed forces very well, and I surprised them and requested that they be ready in one day and I can see that Srem, Vojvodina and Belgrade have nothing to worry about, as far as armoured units are concerned — President Vučić concluded.

Answering a journalist's question about equipping in the region, President Vučić pointed out that we have chosen to make our own decisions about our skies and our country, and we have the obligation to protect our own skies. As he pointed out, it is very difficult to develop expensive fighter aircraft, and we have largely renewed our bomber aircraft.

— We have 10 completely modernized “Eagles”, we have Super G4 and G4 that we can use in bombing actions. However, this segment must be much stronger and more powerful. When you use bombers, air policing fighters must be deployed above them. If bombers fly at two to three thousand metres, fighters, the fastest and most powerful aircraft, must be deployed above them, you must ensure safety and those men must only take care of the fire from the ground, and not feel threatened by attacks from the air — President Vučić pointed out, adding that we will have to further strengthen both bomber and fighter segments of the aviation, and purchase some of the multirole, i.e. fighter-bomber aircraft.

In accordance with that, President Vučić added, certain initiatives have been launched and we will request the strengthening of these units, as well as the further strengthening of our anti-aircraft capacities.

President Vučić said that today we have 10 MiG 29s in running order, and in two to three months, we expect to have 14 of them, and he added that the situation in our country in this respect is much better now than it was before.   

President Vučić, Minister Vulin and General Mojsilović attended the demonstration of the capabilities of a tank company, a fire team of M77 “Oganj” multiple 128 mm rocket launchers, the demonstration of the modernized “Oganj” system artillery battery, and the hand-on training of the tank company.