WARSAW, Poland — As Slovakia’s government wobbles over the previous Cabinet’s plan to buy 12 AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters from the United States, Ukrainian officials are intensifying their lobbying in Washington to secure the aircraft for their defense against Russia.
The U.S. State Department in July approved a tentative foreign military sale of 12 Vipers, made by Bell, to Slovakia for an estimated $600 million, a hefty increase compared to the initial offer of $340 million extended to the previous Slovak government. The discount was in part due to the fact that a deal with the initially envisioned recipient of the U.S. equipment, Pakistan, had fallen through.
A senior industry official close to the talks said Bratislava’s efforts have since aimed at decoupling the discount from the Vipers and instead apply it to other prospective purchases like F-16 warplanes and air-defense systems. That has left officials in Washington miffed, the industry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing negotiations.
Meanwhile, Vadym Ivchenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker for the Batkivshchyna party, told Defense News that Ukraine has shown interest in the 12 Vipers since 2022. At that time, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces filed a letter of request to the U.S. to obtain the aircraft through a foreign military sale.
“We need these helicopters for our soldiers who are fighting on the frontline in the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and other regions but also leading an operation in the Kursk region,” Ivchenko told Defense News.
As a member of the parliamentary Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence, Ivchenko said he has written letter to U.S. lawmakers to convince the Biden administration to reroute the Vipers to Kyiv if Slovakia turns them down.
“Slovakia should decide what kind of weapons and equipment they require for their military, and if they don’t need these helicopters, then their delivery to Ukraine should take place as soon as possible,” he said.
Ivchenko said that officials in Kyiv are also making efforts to host the production of Bell helicopters at a designated Ukraine-based facility.
“We wish to deepen our industrial cooperation with the United States to produce such helicopters in Ukraine,” according to the lawmaker. “This foreign investment would be guaranteed by the Ukrainian government.”
In March 2023, then-Slovak Defence Minister Jaroslav Naď announced the U.S. had offered to Slovakia the copters along with AGM-114 Hellfire II air-to-ground missiles, valued at about $1 billion, for roughly a third of their regular price to compensate the country for its donation of Soviet-designed Mikoyan MiG-29 fighter jets and 2K12 Kub air defense systems to Ukraine.
However, since a new Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Robert Fico was sworn in last October, Bratislava has suggested that attack helos are no longer high on its shopping list. Instead, the Slovak ministry would rather use the offered discount to buy Patriot air defense systems or additional F-16 fighters on top of the 14 jets it ordered in 2018, local officials suggested.
Naď, who chairs the opposition Demokrati (Democrats) party, told Defense News the new government in Bratislava, which is more aligned with Russian interests, still has gripes about the transfer of outdated fighters and air defense systems to Ukraine during the early days of the war. Fico officials now claim those donations had no basis in law, making Slovakia the only country of Eastern European allies to Kyiv where legal trouble is brewing over military aid to Ukraine, Naď said.
Industry officials have noted that the latest U.S. offer for the Vipers no longer includes Hellfire missiles, attributing the change in scope to growing discontent in Washington.
Jaroslaw Adamowski is the Poland correspondent for Defense News.
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