11.07.2019.
Minister Vulin: Making up for the years without investment
Minister of Defense, Aleksandar Vulin attended a final construction examination of anasset in development, a new off-road vehicle NTV Zastava (prototypes PT1 and PT2), checking the anti-aircraft self-propelled artillery-rocket system PASARS in extreme terrain conditions, as well as verification testing of UAZ Patriot vehicles in the Deliblatsko selo region.
Minister Vulin, after viewing the field conditions and examining the assets, pointed out that the decades in which there was no investment in the Serbian Armed Forces, in which there was no investment in knowledge, equipment and vehicles, are forever behind us.- Since 2012, since President Vučić became Minister of Defense, the Serbian Armed Forces are taken care of and invested in. But it is not easy to make up for that huge time gap. Everyone around us was arming, developing, equipping, and we stood on the side and let our Armed Forces die. For that reason, all the people from the Technical Testing Center and the Military Technical Institute, from the entire Armed Forces and the Defense Industry of Serbia are making huge efforts to speed up our modernization - Minister Vulin said.
As the Minister of Defense emphasized, we are starting from our policy according to which only what we produce ourselves actually belongs to us.
- It is therefore very important for you to witness that PASARS is here and Zastava’s new vehicle as well, everything that we produce ourselves and what we are able to exploit, maintain and modernize in the future. I expect that by the end of the year, we will see some of these assets among the armament of the Serbian Armed Forces and that we will be able to equip our units. The equipped and powerful Serbian Armed Forces, which we arm and equip ourselves, are guarantee that we will truly be free and that, as before, we will make our own decisions - concluded Minister Vulin.
The Director of the Technical Testing Center, Colonel Slobodan Ilić, emphasized that it was an in-house testing by the Military Technical Institute (MTI) performed in order to examine the vehicles from our own development and verification tests of two new motor vehicles run by the Technical Testing Center (TOC).
- During in-house testing of assets from the development of MTI, TOC engineers and technicians are present all the time, participating in these in-house tests following a unified plan and program of testing. This will provide a better picture of the technical quality and quality of the production of these assets, and ultimately reduce the scope of the tests that we carry out in the final examinations according to our procedures – emphasized Colonel Ilić, adding that this was all in order to reduce the consumption of resources, time and money.
According to the director of the Military Technical Institute, Colonel Bojan Pavković, today an examination of the modernized anti-aircraft system was carried out within the framework of structural tests.
- We have been working on the development of this system over the previous period, and now we have come to the point where the system is slowly entering the testing phase. After the new testing here at Deliblatska peščara, which are the most extreme driving tests, we will move onto functional tests and after that the asset will be handed over to TOC for final testing - said Colonel Pavković.
In addition, two prototypes of the new off-road vehicle, which were developed in cooperation with the company “Zastava TERVO”, a van and a truck, were examined in this terrain.
- These are new vehicles intended for equipping the Serbian Armed Forces. At the moment, joint in-house and final tests, due to be completed by the autumn, are in progress, after which we expect a positive report and adoption of these assets among the armament of the Serbian Armed Forces - emphasized Colonel Pavković.
The goal of the drive test is to test the driving characteristics, durability, reliability and functionality of the assets and their subsystems, the ergonomic characteristics of the vehicles, as well as the dynamic behavior of the vehicles in order to assess their quality and the built-in components and to confirm the degree to which the tactical-technical requirements have been met, and the assets will then be run through test drive on mountain macadam and asphalt base terrains.
Today’s testing was also attended by Assistant Minister of Material Resources, Nenad Miloradović, PhD, Chief of the Directorate for Defense Technologies, Major General Mladen Vuruna and Chief of the Planning and Development Directorate of the Serbian Armed Forces, Brigadier General Milan Popović.
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