On May 18, Defense Minister Jorge Taiana celebrated with the Argentine Aircraft Factory "Brigadier San Martín" the delivery of a new IA-63 Pampa III Block II to the Air Force, which ended strangely.
When the president of FAdEA, Mirta Iriondo presented a new drone as part of the national industrial development, no one took it for granted. But in reality it was armed with Chinese components and design, says specialist Andrei Serbint Pont, in the magazine Pucara.
Days earlier, Defense had also announced that "the first stage of delivery of uniforms and footwear to the Armed Forces" had been completed thanks to contributions from the National Defense Fund (FONDEF).
However, at least three organizations and publications specialized in Defense are denouncing the underexecution of the national budget for the re-equipment of the Armed Forces, and its consequent damage to the basic functioning of the military. Especially in terms of their ability to maintain training and prevent leaks to the private sector of men and women trained by the State. They also denounce that the use of the FONDEF is distorted.
The organizations that denounce are the Argentine Defense Fund (FAD), chaired by Santiago Lucero Torres, and the so-called Center for Defense and Security Studies (CEDySEG) chaired by former deputy Carlos Fernández. Both expressed their "concern" almost simultaneously about situations that are intertwined with each other.
"Our Armed Forces are at operational risk and despite this, cuts are applied and items are assigned to projects that generate doubts about their true impact on Defense. Since the creation of FONDEF, the Armed Forces have not yet been able to carry out any serious re-equipment program that would improve the situation of defenselessness in which we find ourselves," said Lucero Torres.
Fernández, of radical origin and who chaired the Defense Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, detailed the drop in training days.
Consulted by Clarín, Defense analyst Santiago Rivas, director of Pucará Defensa and member of FAD, reported the following scenario: "the allocation of the FONDEF currently collides with two problems that make the law not be complied with," he said. The first is that the law in its Article 4 says that the fund must have 0.8% of the current income of the State, which, according to the Ministry of Economy, by 2023 would be 22,217,285.4 million pesos, which gives that the FONDEF should be equivalent to 177,738 million. However, if one looks at the entire budget law, it does not have more than 60,000 million pesos.
Rivas explained that this contribution is "independent of the resources that are allocated to the Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces in the national budget." But in reality that doesn't happen. The groups claim that the government uses budget items to use FONDEF money for other expenses. For example, the purchase of uniforms, when it should be available for major expenses.
"The idea was that, if they gave them 100 of the defense budget, now they give them the 100 plus the FONDEF, which should be only to reequip. But now they continue to give them 100 and tell them that, of those, 25 are the FONDEF," Rivas said.
In the forces there is more respect for former Minister Agustín Rossi, today in the cabinet chief and author of the FONDEF project, which in 2020 became law, than for Taiana, who in turn also had the worst part of the crisis and the military demand for the equalization of salaries with the security forces.
In another writing critical of the situation, former deputy Fernández makes a list of what happens in the 2023 national budget for Defense. And it reflects precariousness.
The silver is enough for only 60 days of technical and tactical naval training of the Navy, when ten years ago it had at its disposal 358 days of navigation. With this decision we went from a force that trained every day of the year to a key element that will only work 30 days a year.
The situation is no better in the Argentine Army. This year it has only 3 days of operational training in the field (outside its barracks) and 15 days of operational training in garrison (inside its barracks).
In 2012, the Army trained 27 days in the field and 40 days in garrison, Fernandez said. Training outside the regiments, fell almost 90% in 10 years. On the contrary, the image of the ground force today is that of the troops destined to build popular neighborhoods in Rosario with the dual purpose of having them working and intimidating crime in a city hit hard by drug trafficking and insecurity.
Another example of Argentina's downfall is the current lack of seaworthy submarines. The State signed an agreement with Peru so that Argentine submariners – pride of the Nation ever – train in the Pacific with the Peruvian navy, so that they do not lose hours of navigation. The agreement was signed after the sinking, in 2017, of the ARA San Juan with its 44 crew members.
Clarín asked the spokeswoman if Minister Taiana wanted to inform or comment on the issue, but did not receive a response.
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