site.btaDefence Minister: Bulgaria to Receive First Stryker Armoured Vehicles in 2025

Defence Minister Atanas Zapryanov announced Monday that Bulgaria is set to receive the first 33 Stryker armoured vehicles for the Land Forces in 2025. Zapryanov spoke at the ceremony marking the 113th anniversary and Patron’s Day of the Rakovski National Defence College.

The Bulgarian Army modernization is proceeding at an accelerated pace. On April 13, the first Bulgarian F-16 Block 70 fighter aircraft arrived, the Strykers, the second of the new patrol ships for Navy is in operation, adding combat equipment to the Armed Forces, especially in the combat capabilities part.

On December 1, 2023, the Parliament ratified the agreement for the acquisition of Stryker armoured vehicles. Bulgaria will acquire 198 combat, reconnaissance and command staff vehicles, special vehicles for nuclear, chemical and biological reconnaissance, for medical evacuation and engineering support, and transport and evacuation vehicles. 183 are combat vehicles from the Stryker family. The remaining 15 are auxiliary trucks. Deliveries are planned to begin in the third quarter of 2025 and to end in the first quarter of 2028. The main quantity of combat and auxiliary vehicles will be delivered in 2026 and 2027, with a delivery rate of ten vehicles per month.

The officers trained by the national military education system prove to be fully equal to their partners in international positions at NATO headquarters and during the Bulgarian Army in international operations and missions of the UN, NATO and the EU. We must maintain this level and build on it in the direction of military education being closely linked to modern realities, practices and needs, the Minister commented.

Wars in the 21st century provide a serious impetus for the use of modern technologies, which necessitates rethinking our training, updating the curriculum, improving working and training conditions, adequate remuneration, but also increasing the requirements for personnel, Zapryanov also said. 

The new NATO capabilities package is much broader, more comprehensive and more demanding in implementation compared to the previous one, given that conventional warfare has returned to Europe and we must be ready to fight to protect the territorial integrity of our country and the alliance, the Minister of Defence pointed out.

BTA notes that April 14, 2025 marks 204 years since the birth of Georgi Rakovski, the patron of the Military Academy, a revolutionary and organizer of the national liberation movement. The Rakovski National Defence College was named after him by regency decree on March 5, 1946.