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UH-60MBlack Hawk helicopter on exercise in Taiwan. Photo by Ann Wangt (Reuters / Scanpix)
Lithuania intends to sign an agreement with the United States this week on the purchase of four UH-60MBlack Hawk helicopters.
Lithuania will pay LTL 181 million to the US government for the purchase within five years. Eur ($ 213 million), the Defense Ministry announced on Tuesday.
The United States government has also allocated $ 30 million. Financial support of USD (approximately 26 million euros) for the project. The first helicopters in Lithuania may arrive in late 2024.
Plans to buy Black Hawk helicopters in Lithuania will be announced in a year. Initially it was planned to buy one, but in the course of negotiations it was decided to buy four. Lithuania will be able to buy two more helicopters in the future.
Under the agreement, the Lithuanian Armed Forces will purchase additional equipment, spare parts, training, repair and logistics packages, according to the Defense Ministry report.
These helicopters will replace the Russian Mi-8Ts that are still used in the Lithuanian army. Soviet helicopters, which begin to count in the fourth decade, are exhausted and the operation is complicated: maintenance is expensive, the Danes break down, repairs are risky because of the complicated supply of spare parts to Russia, says the ministry.
Raimundas Karoblis, the Minister of Search and Defense, described the acquisition of the US helicopter as one of the most important elements in the modernization and strengthening of the Lithuanian Armed Forces and in the supply of modern and capable weapons to the army.
Abandoning the last Soviet relic and moving to Western technology, we are starting a completely new stage of the Lithuanian Air Force and will keep pace with the United States and other modern NATO allied armies, the minister said in a press release.
According to Valdemaras Rupis, lieutenant general of the Commander in Chief, the new helicopters will create the conditions for the Lithuanian Armed Forces to conduct military training more effectively, use them to provide air support, a small military unit for rapid launch, medical evacuation and other missions.
According to the general, they will also allow more efficient operations in peacetime, such as search and rescue of people, urgent transport of organs for transplantation, fire fighting.
Krata’s Defense Ministry says that US helicopters will also improve health with strategic and regional allies. The technician from the same manufacturer are the Thirty World Armed Forces, such as Denmark, Latvia, Poland and Sweden. This will expand the opportunities for exercises and joint operations in larger military teams with partners.
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