Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s government will buy $1 billion worth of missiles from the U.S. — the largest arms deal ever between the two countries.
U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Cornstein signed a memorandum alongside Hungarian Defence Minister Tibor Benko this week to purchase medium-range AMRAAM missiles. The armaments are manufactured by the U.S. arms giant Raytheon, which states the advanced weapons can be deployed in air-to-air or surface-to-air roles.
According to the U.S. ambassador, the missiles will replace existing systems that have seen service since Hungary was still under the yoke of the former communist regime, Kronen Zeitung reports.
In recent years, Prime Minister Orbán has enjoyed a good relationship with President Donald J. Trump, who has praised Orbán for the Hungarian leader’s stance against mass migration.
President Trump had stated: “Viktor Orbán has done a tremendous job in so many different ways. He’s highly respected, respected all over Europe.”
“Probably like me a little bit controversial, but that’s OK. That’s OK. You’ve done a good job. And you’ve kept your country safe,” Trump said after the two leaders met in Washington DC.
Orbán also praised the U.S. President, saying: “Today, there is a different, more ambitious leadership.”
Prime Minister Orbán added that President Trump “knew everything about Hungary that he had to, and his goal was to establish good co-operation between Hungary and the United States”.
Relations between the two countries have not always been smooth, however, with the Hungarian government complaining in 2017 that “the Obama-era State Department elite” had damaged U.S.-Hungary relations by seeking to undermine Budapest’s pursuit of anti-mass migration, pro-family policies.
Even after President Trump’s inauguration the State Department was allocating hundreds of thousands of U.S. taxpayer dollars to support what it described as “objective media” in Hungary — foreign interference on behalf of the opposition, in the Hungarian government’s eyes — with former U.S. ambassador Faith Whittlesey denouncing the scheme as an attack on “a good NATO ally and a robust democracy” by globalist bureaucrats who disliked Orbán’s politics in an article for Breitbart.