Defence Minister Mario Banozic said on Wednesday regarding the purchase of US Bradley fighting vehicles that he could not say whether or not Croatia would buy these vehicles until it had clear answers to all the questions.

“It is not in the interest of the US to sell to Croatia something it does not need any more, but to have a strong ally,” Banozic told the press before a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

He expressed confidence that talks on Bradley, or perhaps some other armoured vehicles, would continue.

Asked why no decision had been made in this regard in the last five years and why this decision was being made only a month before the expiry of the deadline, Banozic said that talks had opened in 2017 on an upgraded version of the M2A3 armoured vehicle which is now used by the US Army.

At one point, the Americans said they could not deliver that version but an older one, M2A2 ODS. Those vehicles are in a warehouse and a question was raised about their upgrade to the M2A3 level, which was initially offered, and it was proposed that the upgrade be done by the Djuro Djakovic company in the Croatian town of Slavonski Brod and that it become a centre for the maintenance of those vehicles, Banozic said.

“These are the topics that we are discussing,” said Banozic.

He noted that the US Congress had been conducting a fiscal procedure and that meetings on this matter could not be intensified before September 2021.

Banozic said that he would have liked this process to have proceeded differently and that Croatia should have made it clear what it wanted – an infantry fighting vehicle, and how it wanted to be done, and that it should have followed the procedure for the procurement of multipurpose fighter jets.

Asked to comment on the statement by President Zoran Milanovic that someone was stalling the process for their own personal interests, Banozic said that this process was being conducted as it should be, with attention to detail, to see implications for the state budget.

“It would be best if those claiming that we are stalling the process said what their interest is to rush us,” the defence minister said.

Asked about the cost of modernisation of the Bradley vehicle, Banozic said that Croatia would pay $153 million, while the administrative cost of $45 million would be covered by the US government through a donation of equipment of the equivalent value.

Croatia would pay the $153 million over several years in accordance with the proposed plan for the delivery of the M2A2 ODS vehicle, and that would in fact be a purchase, Banozic said, adding that the delivery would also include some of the weapons and spare parts.

The question is how much should be invested in the equipment to upgrade this vehicle to the level of those used by the US Army. The amount mentioned at the many meetings was $6.5 million per vehicle, he said.

The minister was asked whether it made sense to invest $6.5 million in the upgrade of each vehicle, which even after the upgrade would not be as good as the new ones used by the US Army, while the new German armoured vehicle Lynx cost 10 million. He said that Croatia was replacing its Eastern-made armoured vehicles to achieve NATO’s target by 2026 and form an infantry brigade, adding that other countries were doing the same.

Noting that the Lynx was much more costly, Banozic said that it would be frivolous to discuss amounts without a specification of weapons and equipment, because each country is specific with regard to the number of and equipment for vehicles it is buying and delivery deadlines. Another question is what will happen in the years to come regarding price indexation for spare parts and maintenance services, he added.

Banozic said that the issue of Bradley fighting vehicles was on the agenda of the parliamentary Defence Committee last summer, and that meetings with executives of the Djuro Djakovic company focused on which vehicle parts would need to be upgraded.