The NATO Communications and Information (NCI) Agency has begun work on a project to upgrade several of Bulgaria's air defence radars, aircraft and naval vessels to the new NATO Combat Identification System, the NCI communication team said on March 17.
The Bulgarian Navy received an additional Airbus Helicopter AS365N3 + Dauphin II (tail number 905) naval helicopter on December 6, 2019, at the Chaika airfield in Varna. This unit was procured as a replacement of the AS565MB Panther that crashed in 2017.
According to a local newspaper, the Bulgarian government green-lighted the acquisition of two Tripartite-class mine countermeasure vessels (MCM) from the Royal Netherlands Navy for around EUR2.4 million.
The head of the Bulgarian Ministry of Defence (MoD) alerts that the Navy’s modernization efforts might get side-lined due to costly acquisition of new, multirole fighter jets from USA.
The Bulgarian Ministry of Defence informed that three companies decided to make a bid in the ongoing tender for new modular patrol vessels. The preferred bidder should be announced this summer.
