MOL – I forgot it was there, the other stuff interested me more. I also said, quote “For all intents and purposes, mothballed”. Since English is not my mother tounge, I considered this phrase to be most adequate for something you drive once in a while and don’t really use. Also, in the picture it is obvious that the launcher is empty (look at the truck’s suspension). They probably used the expended launcher boxes from RTOP “Petar Kresimir IV” or “Šibenik”.

As for the UAV-s, I tried to search Hrvatski Vojnik, but came up empty. So the fact remains that the UAV-s were not budgeted for, as far as I know. There could have been preliminary talks, but I’m not aware of a firm order or purchase.

For those interested, the Croatian modeling forum http://www.modelarstvo.net has a thread on Mig-21’s

http://www.maketarstvo.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1249

and Mi-8’s

http://www.maketarstvo.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3017

I’ll chime in…

As regards the video Slobo linked to, the end of the film shows a newspaper mentioning Cakovec, a town in north-west Croatia in the region of Medjimurje. Can’t really tell the make of the plane, but a J-21 is possible…

As for Ustasa’s pictures

The APS-95 assault rifle was never in wide-spread use by the Croatian armed forces- it’s generally considered to be a failure.

The new fighter jet question has not been decided yet. The decision should come this year (because the MIGs are all high-hour airframes and should be replaced by 2010), but the President at the CroAF Day said that this would be depended on the budget. While most of the operational staff seems to favour the Gripen, the decision is by no means a shoe-in. Recent trips by the Prime Minister to the US show that the F-16 is still a strong contender.

The AFV decision should have been reached this year, but has been postponed. Why exactly is not clear.
The decision is still up between Pandur by Steyr and Patria AMV.

Presently, there are no concrete (publicly-known) plans for Croatia to purchase UAV-s for surveillance. During the war for independence, there was a large cottage-industry for producing small recce UAV-s, and it seems that some are still in service.

The coastal launchers MOL (RBS-15 on Tatra trucks) are, for all intents and purposes, mothballed. They made no appearance at any of the recent military parades.

The new helicopters are in repayment of Russia’s debt to Croatia (actually, the part of USSR’s debt to Yugoslavia that was alloted to Croatia). There are only 10 because the AF opted for a comprehensive package (it is only unclear if AT missiles will be included).

The Mil-24 attack helicopters are down (non-flyable), and are being sold for 500.000 US dollars for the lot of 13 helicopters.

Cheers!

EDIT: about the new assault rifle- it’s going through tests, and not much news (any) is filtering to the public. The Croatian Army needs a new assault rifle, and it will probably bee either the New Croatian One or the G-36.

ps. sorry for the off-topic parts of the post!