Hungary is set to upgrade as many as three Russian-designed Mi-17 combat helicopters with the aim of fielding them for deployment in Afghanistan.
Defense News reported the project is expected to cost about $120 million, including a two-year deployment and post-deployment process, plus refurbishment.
About 60 to 80 percent of the project is estimated to be financed by Budapest. The final figure, Defense News reported, would depend on funding from other sources.
Hungary has been trying to modernize and downsize its armed forces since it left the Warsaw Pact in 1990. Shifting a heavy, slow-moving force to a lighter, more-versatile NATO-linked army, the Hungarian military has shrunk from 130,000 in 1989 to about 24,000 a near decade later.
It leads a provincial reconstruction team in Afghanistan, where it has deployed an additional team of troops operating in partnership with the Ohio National Guard and Special Forces personnel in Afghanistan.
The country's defense ministry expects the helicopter refurbishing project will enable Hungary to "get a modernized Mi-17 fleet, which can be used both for national tasks and NATO and European Union missions," according a statement.
Hungary has seven Mi-17 helicopters and hopes to deploy its renewed batch in 2012 or 2013.
"The experience of the last few years has confirmed that helicopters are essential assets for the success of civil military crisis management operations," the ministry statement said.
The Soviet-designed Mi-17 is a medium twin-turbine transport helicopter that can also act as a gunship. The former Soviet Union specifically designed the aircraft for its war in Afghanistan.
In September, Poland announced that it was ordering five new Mi-17 helicopters from Russia with the aim of bolstering its contingent in Afghanistan. India, also, is said to have placed order for more than 130 such helicopters to replace its aging Mi-8s.
"The experience of the last few years has confirmed that helicopters are essential assets for the success of civil-military crisis management operations," the Hungarian defense ministry said in a statement.
While nearly $20 million of funding will derive from NATO's Multinational Helicopter Initiative, Hungary is hoping for the United States to foot the cost of the deployment.
The project is being handled by NATO's maintenance and supply agency, which hopes to transport the first of two helicopters for refurbishment in the first quarter of the year. The overhauling and modernization will take place in the Czech Republic.
The upgrades, Defense News reported, will cover the helicopters' self-defense system, navigation and communications equipment. "The primary aim," it added, "is to prepare the helicopters for weather and terrain that they will face in Afghanistan."
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