Czech Military a Long March From Being a Full Contributor to NATO

In NATO parlance, new members of the alliance must not only be “consumers of security,” they also must be “providers of security.”

As this former communist nation approaches the end of its second year as a member of the Atlantic Alliance, it is still, overwhelmingly, a consumer.

The problem, not surprisingly, is money.

It’s not just a matter of buying more and better equipment, streamlining the armed forces and trimming waste. It’s also about people--about increasing professionalism, learning English and providing security clearances for thousands of military personnel.

The United States and its NATO allies knew what they were getting into when they welcomed Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into the alliance in 1999.

It was purely a political decision. The Western nations wanted to open their arms to former Warsaw Pact enemies to show that a new era had begun. Military prowess was not the guiding criterion.

“Everybody knew the Czech army--the Czech military establishment--leaves a lot to be desired,” said Karel Kovanda, the Czech ambassador to NATO. “But the political decision was made. Case closed.”

Now the time for symbolism is over.

The armed forces are slimming down, having dropped from 140,000 people to 65,000, Deputy Defense Minister Jaromir Novotny said. A study prepared by the general staff foresees a Czech armed force of about 45,000 by 2010.

First question: How best to spend the $1.1-billion defense budget? Second question: What to buy, what to upgrade, what to junk?

The air force, as one NATO official put it, “has a load of rubbish,” mostly old MIGs creeping up on the end of their useful lives and some Sukhoi fighter-bombers.

For the army, it’s worth upgrading 120 or so of its 540 Soviet-made T-72 tanks, but it can’t afford to do all of them. As for the 400 T-54s and T-55s, they’re worthless.

The Czech military figures it has to change about 70% of its equipment, half through new acquisitions and half by modernization.

Throw into this dilemma the L-159, a subsonic fighter jet that some people say is useless and that others call an effective weapon for protecting Czech territory and keeping up pilot skills. Whatever the final judgment on the L-159, its purchase now is eating up 70% of the military budget for new equipment.

The problem started when Boeing came to town, bought a 35% stake in Aero Vodochody, a Czech aircraft production company, and sold the military on the L-159. Unfortunately for the Czechs, they signed the deal in U.S. dollars when the buck was worth 27 Czech crowns. Today, the dollar is worth more than 40 crowns.

“The cost difference is in billions of crowns, not millions, but billions,” said Novotny.

The first two L-159s were delivered at the end of December.

On the positive side, the aircraft has the same avionics as modern supersonic jets. That will allow pilots to keep up their skills, the Czechs say. It also will permit them to fly more than the 60 hours a year that they are able to log now.

Some accuse Boeing of having done a number on an unsuspecting Czech government, perhaps hinting that acquiring L-159s might help them get into NATO, but Kovanda insists “this is our own mess that we’ve done to ourselves.”

At the beginning of January, the government announced a tender for 24 or 36 multi-role supersonic aircraft, a purchase expected to be so expensive it will have to be financed outside the defense budget.

From NATO’s point of view, there is no need for supersonic aircraft based in the Czech Republic to protect Czech territory. There are more than enough fast jets based in neighboring Germany to take care of security needs. Supersonic aircraft, however, pack a lot of prestige as well as military punch.

Not all is negative.

The Czech Republic, a nation of only 10 million people, has made a very positive contribution to NATO-led peacekeeping efforts in the Balkans. The Czechs have a helicopter unit in Bosnia fully integrated into the NATO system. Their nuclear, biological and chemical unit is recognized as among the best in the business. A special forces intelligence unit has served with distinction in Kosovo. The rapid reaction infantry battalion is well respected in Bosnia.

Talk about the difficulty the Czechs, Poles and Hungarians are having in coming up to NATO standards, and all immediately point to Germany. It took a decade from the time West Germany joined NATO in 1955 to achieve complete “interoperability” with NATO.

It may be a mouthful of jargon, but “interoperability” is one of the most important ideas in the alliance. It means the militaries of all 19 nations have to be able to work together smoothly, using compatible communication systems, the same language, the same codes on maps, even the same nozzles on fuel pumps for airplanes.

The Czechs want to achieve this, all of it. They don’t want special treatment.

“We don’t want to create two classes of membership,” said Lt. Col. Jan Vana of the plans division of the Czech General Staff. “The NATO standard is 180 hours of flight time for pilots. We don’t want them to say, ‘Oh, OK, 110 is OK for you.’ ”

The Czechs have made good progress in integrating their air defense system into NATO, and modernization of command and control systems is well along. They are even developing such mundane items as Gore-Tex battle fatigues, new shoes and underwear to assure the survival of troops under any conditions.

The most important progress, however, has been the change in Czech military thinking, Vana said. “It’s invisible, but it’s decisive for NATO integration.”

Logic would seem to dictate that the three newest members of NATO, with essentially the same problems, could benefit from specialization. The Czechs could make one kind of contribution, the Poles and Hungarians others.

That idea creates problems within the alliance, said a senior NATO official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“There is a general suspicion about the idea of role specialization which might be summed up in saying: You specialize in defending me, and I specialize in saving money,” the official said.

Maj. Gen. Jaroslav Hudec, the Czech Republic’s military representative to NATO, said new members must eventually discuss specialization, however.

“We are not prepared to create all the forces in such a small country and to prepare for all missions,” he said.

“There has been a discussion about joint units, but from my point of view it’s much better to prepare national brigades, fully interoperable and compatible with other units, and to insert these brigades” in a multinational corps.

But, Novotny added: “The problem is, the governments of these three countries are going at different speeds, in different directions.”

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NATO: https://hq.nato.int

Czech Republic army: https://www.army.cz/english/