The delivery of new helicopters from the United States (U.S.), intended for the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina (AFBiH), should be completed by the end of the year, as previously announced.
”Currently, we have confirmation that the new U.S. Bell Huey II helicopters (military code UH-1H-II) should be delivered to BiH during the next month (December), as planned, ” it was told to agency Fena by the Ministry of Defense of BiH.
When asked about this arrangement, the Ministry reminded that the Contract for the procurement of four helicopters of military code UH-1H-II, was signed on December 13th, 2019 in Sarajevo, it was worth a total of 38.539.378 U.S. dollars, of which BiH participated with 4.360.000 dollars or 7.5 million BAM.
The remaining amount was provided by the U.S. Government through funds from U.S. programs to assist friendly countries, Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and Foreign Military Funds (FMF).
The multi-purpose helicopter UH-1H-II Huey II has been modernized, improved and is a cheaper option for maintenance of the general-purpose helicopter UH-1H Iroquois (also known as “Huey”), which is in the inventory of the Air Force Brigade and Air Defense of the AFBiH.
”With this procurement, the Brigade will be able to continue and perform the tasks of air transport, medical evacuation, firefighting, search, and rescue in better way, as well as other tasks in fulfilling the main missions of the AF, ” according to the BiH Ministry of Defense.
At the same time, they specified that members of the AFBiH Air Force and Air Defense Brigade successfully completed the adaptation training on UH-1H-II Huey II helicopters, which took place from June 6th to 25th in the U.S., in Fort Worth, Texas.
According to the data of company Bell, more than 300 Huey II helicopters are owned by 14 countries with more than 1.2 million flight hours in military and other missions.
