Natasha Niebieskikwiat
02/11/2021 4:16 PM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 02/11/2021 17:07
The Government will undertake the
modernization of 74 Army war tanks
, in a cooperation project with Israel.
Thus, he resumes a contract started in 2015 by Agustín Rossi, who was also Cristina Kirchner's Minister of Defense.
The agreement with the Israelis was sealed this Wednesday in Tel Aviv between the director of the International Cooperation Agency of the Israeli Defense Ministry,
Yair Kulas
and Ambassador
Sergio Urribarri,
although he had received the go-ahead from Rossi.
It establishes that for an amount of
US $ 115.6 million and within a period of five years,
the company Elbit System will repair 74 units of the so-called Medium Argentine Tank (TAM).
There was initially an agreement between the defense ministries, but it was later put on hold by the Mauricio Macri administration due to
lack of budget.
The updating of the tanks has been demanded for years by the ground force, which considers them among its most urgent equipment needs, especially for training and to reach areas of difficult access.
The project will
be financed with the National Defense Funds (Fondef), approved by the Senate at the end of the year: 30,000 million pesos in total.
Each unit will be equipped with
night combat capabilities, a digital fire control system
, and an electric tower movement system.
It will be stabilized on two axes, and will be fitted with a
laser threat detector,
an auxiliary power unit plus a fire suppression system.
74 of the 230 TAMs will be modernized, which were produced between the late 1970s and 1990s by the state-owned Tanque Argentino Mediano Sociedad del Estado (dissolved in 1994), with a
prototype designed by the German company Thyssen-Henschel.
This tank is one of the emblems of the Argentine Army, which can carry a
crew of four, and weighs just over 30 tons.
In its armament it has a
cannon, machine gun and
mortars.
It has a range of 550 kilometers
Agreement with Israel.
Foreign Minister Felipe Solá and the Ambassador in Tel Aviv, Sergio Urribarri
The implementation of the project was
applauded this Thursday by the Argentine-Israeli Chamber of Commerce,
which highlighted the importance of rescuing "tanks that were in oblivion", in a plan that is the prelude to new agreements in defense and security, of others that they are talking to other companies.
In this case, the expansion of the
Cyber defense
system
that the
Rafael Advanced Systems company
installed in Argentina
is being negotiated
for the immense security apparatus that was deployed in Argentina
at the G20 leaders' summit
held here at the end of 2018.
"This management is one more that we carry out, together with our government, to repair the damage that the previous administration caused in many fields," Urribarri said mischievously.
He was referring to the fact that
the Macri government paid only US $ 17 million of the 27 million that had to be given in advance
, and by stopping the payments, the project in the red zone, despite being a strong ally of the Israelis.
Alberto Fernández continues that alliance, as he himself has said.
It is in fact also one of the cards he played in his desired dialogue with Washington.
Jerusalem was the first destination he visited in January 2020 and Benjamin Netanyahu, the first leader who received him as the Argentine president, and in the framework of a tribute to the victims of the Holocaust.
Since then, there is a fluid dialogue through the different ministries to take advantage of the spaces and commercial exchange offered by the Israelis such as science and technological development in defense and security.
Foreign Minister
Felipe Solá and Urribarri are preparing a
face-to-face
trade mission
to Israel for June with at least five governors, as long as the vaccination manages to tame the coronavirus pandemic that fed a world of virtual meetings.
In fact
, it
is evaluated
that the foreign minister himself travels to Tel Aviv.
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