Hungarian Gripens to patrol the Baltic skies
On August 17 Hungary’s Minister of Defence Dr Csaba Hende held a deployment ceremony for the Hungarian contingent participating in the upcoming NATO Baltic Air Policing mission.
The Baltic Air Policing programme is a shared NATO mission since 2004 where some of the countries in the Alliance take turns to guard the airspaces of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who do not have any fighter aircraft of their own.
Starting 1 September 2015, Hungarian Gripens will patrol the skies in the Baltics from the Siauliai Airbase in Lithuania. The contingent will consist of four Gripen aircraft and 127 troops. In his speech, minister Hende mentioned that this will be a challenging and very important mission. The minister also noted that it was more than 70 years since Hungarian fighter aircraft was on a live mission abroad.