JOSIP LUCIC intends to stay on at the head of the Croatian Armed Forces General Staff to the end of his term, even though it is high time that fresh and better-educated people come to the head of the army.The Croatian Army will have to undergo personnel and organisational changes over the coming year because the current model of administration, which depended mostly on improvisation up to the accession to NATO, can no longer survive. "Improvisation has come to the end of the line and this situation can only continue up to the end of the year, but after that the growing demands to harmonise with NATO will cause big problems and cracks in the system, and the Croatian Army will not be able to meet the obligations that arise from membership," a high-ranking military official recently admitted to Nacional. Over the past months the Croatian Army has looked more and more like a parade and event organiser that uses protocol activities to cover up deficiencies in its management, personnel and expertise; all the more evident since the accession to NATO.

There is a chain of command in the Army, but no chain of responsibility. Serious omissions like the catastrophic preparations for the fire-fighting season and the negligent maintenance of aircraft are tolerated. Acquisitions and the modernisation of the Armed Forces are more the result of circumstance than systematic planning in the military organisation. Officers like General Jozo Milicevic that have no future and that violated the Defence Act are sent to the most prestigious US schools. Key strategic documents that will redefine the future goals of the Armed Forces, and which should have been completed this year still do not exist. The Strategic Defence Overview, the Long Term Armed Forces Development Plan and the Defence Strategy will not be completed this year, and were supposed to have been. At a time when large-scale modernisation and acquisition projects are being launched in the Armed Forces one would expect that there would be numerous teams leading these projects. Four engineers, however, are simultaneously leading four projects, which has led to delays, nervousness and a situation that is ever closer to their departure from the ranks of the Armed Forces. There had been word that high-ranking retired officers would be engaged in these assignments, but that has not materialised.

The Armed Forces Supreme Command lacks capable people with expertise and the few good ones are doing everything they can to get into the military diplomacy. Besides a handful of top military officers with both a civilian and military education, which is the rule in NATO, all high-ranking Croatian officers are at the level of Command Staff and War Schools completed in Croatia. And if they did graduate from a civilian university, they did so back in the 1990s. Chief of General Staff Josip Lucic, unfortunately, has no high military education, and has a civilian degree in kinesiology. These kinds of officers are very inflexible in their thinking, limited to a very narrow area of activity and lack breadth and vision, are not inclined towards civilian education and a long professional career, and therefore, besides their regular duties and because of a lack of a good system to manage their careers, are concerned only with how and whom to curry favour with for their personal promotion and professional advancement.

In this kind of system they have an uncritical approach to everything the top military brass discusses as obedient yes-men opening paving the way for their own personal advancement. There is no room for this way of running the Armed Forces in NATO. There is no doubt that the Croatian Army lacks a breath of fresh air in its administration, at the highest echelons. The long-time rule of Chief of General Staff Josip Lucic is having an ever-greater effect on his closest aids. Nacional has learned these days that it is no secret that Lucic's deputy, Lieutenant General Slavko Baric, is ready to leave the Armed Forces by the end of the year as soon as he gets his doctorate, because he feels that the way Lucic works and his leadership of the Armed Forces is no longer a model that can exist in the frame of Croatian membership in NATO. Lucic is, however, not considering his departure, but is rather inclined to staying on to the end of his term, another four years. He clearly feels that he is irreplaceable or, as he once told reporters in Brussels, that no Croatian general has yet to impose themselves on politics or has enough political savvy to replace him.

THE ARMY Because of good preparation for the ISAF mission the Army is considered the best branch of the Armed ForcesThe fact is that Croatian soldiers in international peace missions are the most valuable asset the Croatian Army currently has, but that is above all the result of international military cooperation with the USA and the training carried out in professional units, the experience of Homeland War veterans and the military diplomacy. Illustrative of the mindset of most Croatian generals at the moment Croatia acceded to NATO is an example from three months ago.

On the occasion of the accession to NATO Brigadier General Nikola Skunca issued a command on 2 April 2009 to Support Command units to play music more often, not specifying what kind, that they bring their soldierly comportment, saluting, shaving, haircuts to a higher level and that they wear clean and orderly uniforms, as if that had not been the case previously. These past months hundreds of pages of NATO documents in English have been pouring into the Armed Forces, documents that have to be thoroughly studied. But you can count the number of officers at the Croatian Army Supreme Command who speak English fluently on the fingers of one hand and who can translate what the documents say without anybody's help. If there was a testing of the knowledge of English carried out among high-ranking Croatian Army officers, the results would be devastating from the rank of brigadier upwards. There is no quality in the selection of high-ranking officers to be sent to prestigious military academies, because if there was then the Chief of General Staff General Josip Lucic would not have proposed Major General Jozo Milicevic, for whom this is now the second time that he is attending the War School. And besides, an officer at the level of brigadier - brigadier general should have been sent for further education, and not a major general. By all he has been doing over the past ten years Milicevic should have been declared unpromising, because he has spent more time on sick leave and unassigned than participating in any kind of important processes in the development of the Armed Forces. An example like this one does not leave much hope to those who work diligently and wait their turn for further education. There is no career management system in the Croatian Army. It is, instead, important to be someone's player and to belong to a clan with whose help a vacant spot can be found when appointments are made.

Just how organisationally incapable the Armed Forces are was demonstrated in the example of the catastrophic preparation of military aircraft for the fire-fighting season. At the very least one would expect the dismissal of the responsible persons or cuts in their wages as a warning to others. Chief of General Staff General Josip Lucic, however, has done nothing in this case, as if nothing had happened. This is not the first time that he has protected his subordinates when they make a mess of things.

For over a year two Mi-8 helicopters have been grounded, because faulty motors came from them from an overhaul in Azerbaijan. Lucic knows who drafted the contracts and how and who was responsible on the part of the Croatian Army, but is doing nothing except to find out all he can about who is giving the information to the press. He will lash out verbally at his subordinates when the President and Prime Minister ask him what happened with the aircraft in preparation for the fire-fighting season, but it never goes beyond a tongue-lashing. Only former helicopter pilots have led the Croatian Air Force since it was established.

Slavko BaricWhy this is so and why has the Supreme Command led by Lucic done nothing to groom any of the high-ranking officers of the fighter aviation for the post of commander of the Croatian Air Force, is a question no one has offered a coherent answer to. If for no other reason a change would be welcome in, at least for appearances sake, breaking the helicopter lobby that has taken all of the leading position in the Croatian Air Force chain of command, and as such better positioned to cover for the shoddy maintenance of fire-fighting aircraft in first level maintenance, the procurement of expensive aircraft equipment that is not used because of a lack of trained personnel and the like. But the real problems for the Air Force are yet to come if Croatia decides to acquire multipurpose fighter jets. The situation in the Air Force is reflected in the popularisation of a military career among pilots. Judging by this year's results in the enrolment of new students for an education as military pilots at the Faculty of Transport Sciences, Croatian could soon find itself without Air Force pilots. Only 75 candidates applied this year, unlike not so long ago when there were over a thousand applications. To make matters worse, none of the 75 passed the physical exam, making this the first year in which there are no candidates to become Air Force pilots after a four year course of study.

When the Defence Ministry sent requests for information on their products and maintenance to aircraft manufacturers it received clear answers form some that Croatia will, among other things, have to assign 300 to 600 people for training on aircraft maintenance. Currently Croatia does not have this kind of manpower when it comes to both civilian and military maintenance personnel together. The Aeronautics Technical Centre has lost some twenty engineers at top positions over the past year at their own request with severance packages.

Any of the commanders at the Aeronautics Technical Centre could have prevented these departures, but failed to do so. Croatia had to pay out several million kuna in severance packages and has lost an inestimable knowledge base. It is a frightening fact that there are only two people in Croatia with the expertise required for the maintenance of motors on MiG-21's. They say jokingly that they never travel together so that something bad does not happen to both. It is all the result of years of not investing into people and a lack of preparation for the arrival of new technologies. When it comes to the Croatian Navy it is somewhat saddening to listen to its highest-ranking officials over the past years when they say that they now, for the first time since independence, have two missile corvettes with which to carry out all the necessary training and firing practice. What they have are two used Finnish missile corvettes over 20 years old, procured by pure luck at more than favourable prices. Their procurement was not the result of systematic consideration, but was rather a fluke. Had it not happened the Croatian Navy would not now be in a position to defend the Adriatic Sea from foreign submarines and to join NATO ships in international operations. The Croatian Army, led by General Mladen Kruljac, is struggling to provide a better standard of living for its soldiers by trying to build and renovate barracks.

THE TRUE FACE OF THE CROATIAN ARMY Over the past months the Croatian Army looks more and more like a parade and event organiser, and not the armed forces of a NATO memberIt is in fact the members of the Army that are engaged in NATO and UN international military operations, and that are the most to thank for the excellent image Croatia has in NATO, and much more attention should be afforded to them. For the moment the best advocate of their better status is the head of logistics at the Croatian Army, Major General Josip Stojkovic, who is trying to work in parallel on two projects - to secure modern kitchen blocks and working on completing the military base project in Petrinja, which would serve as a model for all future military bases in Croatia. The job is progressing with great difficulty because the military budget has been significantly reduced this year, and is expected to be further reduced with a rebalancing of the budget. Stojkovic is feverishly trying to contract out all of the obligations prior to the budget rebalancing so that the Armed Forces do not once again find themselves short of money. The high point of training in all Croatian Army units is a wait on the list for deployment to Afghanistan, where even now there are evident absurdities, because some soldiers are preparing for their third straight tour, which their colleagues with the same education and skills have been rejected for a second or third time. The interest among soldiers for deployment to Afghanistan is largely related to their material situation, because when on the ISAF peace mission in Afghanistan the per diem alone is 100 euro. Another problem are wage benefits. It is absurd that military intelligence agents at the Military-Security Agency in Zagreb, who spend most of their time at their offices at Zagreb's Crnomerec quarter and on Kresimir Square have wage benefits to the tune of 1,000 kuna for harsh working conditions, which members of the 350th intelligence battalion are not entitled to. Of late there is a noticeable trend for soldiers, NCO's and officers deployed to Croatian Army units in Benkovac, Knin, Ogulin and Delnice to seek a transfer to Zagreb, Zadar or Karlovac.

More than 60 percent of all soldiers, NCO's and officers in professional guards and other units are up to 100 kilometres from their bases. About ten thousand soldiers are on the road every day and are, along with secondary school pupils, the leading daily migrants, travelling upwards of two hours to their place of work. They get back to their families at about 6 in the afternoon. There is not much sense in their staying at the bases at which they work over the week, because conditions are far from normal, families are separated, and there is nothing to occupy them for the rest of the day in military bases and the towns they are located in. They are also not motivated to stay because the wage benefit for living apart from their families is reduced by 500 kuna if they sleep in military barracks. Every attempt by perspective and highly educated officers to move on to new duties where they would get additional training, because they think with their own heads, and cannot accept this mindset, is met with obstacles, and for a bizarre reason - General Lucic wonders what qualified people will remain to work with him. This was demonstrated by the example of Frigate Captain Robert Hranj, until recently the head of the Office for NATO and the former acting Assistant Minister for Defence Policy. Hranj is one of a very small circle of self-denying but also the best educated officers in the Croatian Army. Regardless of his excellent qualities and marks Robert Hranj was not promoted for over eight years, and General Lucic was not inclined to let him go to Brusssels to serve as the deputy to the Croatian military delegate. The proposal did manage somehow to get through only because General Lucic was on vacation.

All of these problems are not just the result of many years of improvisation in the Armed Forces, but arise also out of the country's attitude towards the military. The Defence Ministry has for years financed the state apparatus from its budget instead of investing the funds into knowledge, education and improving the standard of living of soldiers. There is no sensible explanation for why the Defence Ministry budget is used to pay for the procurement of Canadair aircraft and Air Tractors, that the Defence Ministry finances search and rescue missions, the transport of hospital patients from the islands and the like. The total price of three Air Tractor aircraft is 6,767,722 euro or 2,255,907.33 per aircraft. Along with the appropriate equipment and training, costing 866,171.70 euro, the deal is worth 7,633,893 euro. Two Canadair CL-415's cost 62 million US dollars. In 2007 and 2008 Mi-8 military helicopters had a total of 2,200 flights just on medical missions. If the cost of an hour's flight on a Mi-8 is about 1,500 euro, it does not require too much intelligence to calculate the cost. If the Interior Ministry has drawn up a price sheet for its services, the Defence Ministry should do the same and issue bills to, for example, the Health Minister.

Furthermore, tens of millions of kuna has been spent by the Defence Ministry over past years on utility costs for buildings that have already been turned over to local governments, which is entirely absurd. With the way the state has behaved towards the Defence Ministry so far there is no cause to expect promises to be met this time either, i.e. that the Defence Ministry will recoup at least a small portion of what has been taken from it from year to year. Almost 600 million kuna have already been stripped from the Defence Ministry budget this year, and a new rebalance is in the offing. Unlike President Mesic, who celebrated last Christmas with Croatian troops stationed on the Golan Heights, Prime Minister Sanader has, in the almost six years he has been in office, never paid a visit to members of the Croatian Armed Forces in any of the NATO or UN peace missions. Slovenia Prime Minister Pahor managed to visit Slovenian soldiers in Kosovo just two months after taking office.