The Minister of National Defence, Mr. Corneliu Dobritoiu, had a meeting with the commanders of large units of the Romanian Armed Forces at the Land Forces General Staff, on Thursday, 21 June. The chiefs of staff of the three military services and the commanders of the two support commands of the General Staff presented an analysis on the state of the military for the defence minister and the other officials present at the meeting.

The most important conclusion deriving from this analysis was that the insufficient funds allotted in the last years created serious problems for the maintenance of military equipments, affecting the conduct of the training and procurement programs as well.

Another issue brought up by the unit commanders is the personnel shortage, especially at the basis of the occupational pyramid. The Land Forces Staff has a deficit of over 40% of platoon commanders and 25% of company commanders, as a result of the groundless decisions during the last years of cutting over 9,000 positions from the payroll, while maintaining the same number of military units. Both the Air Force and the Navy signaled the problem of the overdue equipments and installations, aggravated by the problem of undersized funding. Such dysfunctions have a bearing on the accomplishment of the combat missions and the air safety. In the next years, the combat aircraft and air-to-air missile resource will expire.

Minister Corneliu Dobritoiu pointed out that the complex problems affecting the military system can only be solved through correct funding and a strict definition of the budgetary priorities. In this respect, one of the ministry priorities is to make the political decision-makers aware of the need to increase the defence budget.

I will propose an annual increase of the budget with 0.3% of the GDP and we will seek for solutions to attract funds by making the most of the exceeding infrastructure. This will not be done by us, the military, but should be managed with maximum transparency by a government agency or a reliable international company, minister Dobritoiu added.

The defence minister requested those present to make an assessment of the priorities of each structure and to concentrate the existing resources on meeting those needs. The defence minister also said that many projects were started until now but few were finished, given the lack of resources and suggested commanders to allot their budget on the priority projects that can be finished.

The activity was also attended by the State Secretary for Defence Policy and Planning, Sebastian Huluban, the State Secretary for Armaments, Floarea Serban and the chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Stefan Danila.

MoND Press Office