page_title: Hungary
section_title: Military
hierarchical_section_title: Hungary / Government and politics / Military
caption_attribution_description: A pair of Hungarian JAS 39 Gripens at Kecskemét open day 2007.
context_page_description: Hungary is a country in Central Europe. Spanning 93,030 square kilometres in the Carpathian Basin, it borders Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and Slovenia to the southwest, and Austria to the west. With about 10 million inhabitants, Hungary is a medium-sized member state of the European Union. The official language is Hungarian, which is the most widely spoken Uralic language in the world, and among the few non-Indo-European languages to be widely spoken in Europe. Hungary's capital and largest city is Budapest; other major urban areas include Debrecen, Szeged, Miskolc, Pécs, and Győr.
  The territory of present Hungary was for centuries inhabited by a succession of peoples, including Celts, Romans, Germanic tribes, Huns, West Slavs and the Avars. The foundations of the Hungarian state were established in the late ninth century AD by the Hungarian grand prince Árpád following the conquest of the Carpathian Basin. His great-grandson Stephen I ascended the throne in 1000, converting his realm to a Christian kingdom.
context_section_description: The 2016 Global Peace Index ranked Hungary 19th out of 163 countries. The President holds the title of commander-in-chief of the nation's armed forces. The Ministry of Defence jointly with Chief of staff administers the armed forces, including the Hungarian Ground Force and the Hungarian Air Force. Since 2007, the Hungarian Armed Forces has been under a unified command structure. The Ministry of Defence maintains the political and civil control over the army. A subordinate Joint Forces Command coordinates and commands the HDF. In 2016, the armed forces had 31,080 personnel on active duty, the operative reserve brought the total number of troops to fifty thousand. In 2016, it was planned that military spending the following year would be $1.21 billion, about 0.94% of the country's GDP, well below the NATO target of 2%. In 2012, the government adopted a resolution in which it pledged to increase defence spending to 1.4% of GDP by 2022.
  Military service is voluntary, though conscription may occur in wartime. In a significant move for modernization, Hungary decided in 2001 to buy 14 JAS 39 Gripen fighter aircraft for about 800 million EUR. Hungarian National Cyber Security Center was re-organized in 2016 in order to become more efficient through cyber security.
  In 2016, the Hungarian military had about 700 troops stationed in foreign countries as part of international peacekeeping forces, including 100 HDF troops in the NATO-led ISAF force in Afghanistan, 210 Hungarian soldiers in Kosovo under command of KFOR, and 160 troops in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Hungary sent a 300-strong logistics unit to Iraq in order to help the US occupation with armed transport convoys, though public opinion opposed the country's participation in the war. One soldier was killed in action by a roadside bomb while serving in Iraq.
  During the 18th and 19th century, Hungarian Hussars rose to international fame and served as a model for light cavalry in many European countries. In 1848–49, Hungarian forces achieved successes against better-trained and equipped Austrian forces, despite the Austrian advantage in numbers. In 1872, the Ludovica Military Academy officially began training cadets. By 1873, the Hungarian military consisted of over 2,800 officers and 158,000 men organized into eighty-six infantry battalions and fifty-eight mounted squadrons. During World War I, out of the eight million men mobilized by Austro Hungarian Empire, over one million died. During the 1930s and early 1940s, Hungary was preoccupied with regaining the territories and population lost as a result of the Trianon peace treaty at Versailles in 1920. Conscription was introduced on a national basis in 1939. The peacetime strength of the Royal Hungarian Army grew to 80,000 men organized into seven corps commands. During World War II, the Hungarian Second Army was heavily depleted fighting on the banks of the Don River in December 1942 during the Battle for Stalingrad. During the Socialist and the Warsaw Pact era (1947–1989), the entire 200,000 strong Southern Group of Forces was garrisoned in Hungary, complete with artillery, tank regiments, air force and missile troops with nuclear weapons.
caption: JAS 39 Gripen multirole combat aircraft
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