Slovenia is a small country located in Central Europe and is known for its strong military and defense. The Slovenian Armed Forces (SAF) is the military branch of the country and consists of three branches: Army, Air Force, and Special Forces. The total active personnel stands at around 8,000 with an additional reserve force of around 2,000 personnel. Slovenia has a higher defense budget compared to its GDP as it spends about 1.8% of its GDP on defense. The country also imports weapons from countries such as the United States, France, and Germany. Slovenia also has strong ties with other countries in the region such as Austria and Croatia which allows them to cooperate militarily when needed. As a result of this strong military presence in the region, Slovenia has become an important regional hub for security and stability in Central Europe. See naturegnosis to learn more about the country of Slovenia.
Defense
The defense, which has been on a voluntary basis since 2004, comprises 6,650 men and is organized into a brigade, a smaller battleship and eight combat helicopters. The reserves amount to about 20,000 people. Semi-military security forces, police units, amount to 4,500 men with about 5,000 men in reserve. Prior to the 1991 dissolution, Yugoslavia’s standing defense was led mainly by Serbian officers and was under central command. After the end of the first service, the conscripts were transferred to the states. At the time of the liberation, Slovenia therefore stood with a large trained reserve, few own officers and an old-fashioned equipment of Soviet origin. The new defense has been gradually built up.
Slovenia applied for membership in NATO in 1997 and joined in 2004. Defense spending amounted to 1.8% of GDP in 1996 and had fallen to 1.5% in 2001. Slovenia participates in a number of UN peacekeeping efforts, including with about 80 men in Bosnia and Herzegovina (SFOR II). To see related acronyms about this country, please check ABBREVIATIONFINDER where you can see that SLO stands for Slovenia.
Slovenia joined NATO in 2004. Military duty was abolished in 2004. Slovenia’s armed forces have a staff of 7250 active personnel, with a reserve of 1,500 personnel (2018, IISS).
Slovenia has no navy or its own aircraft. Since joining the NATO, Italy and Hungary have had fighter jets stationed in Slovenia.
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Army
Of the material, the army has 14 M-84 tanks (which is a Yugoslav license-produced variant of the T-72), and 115 armored personnel vehicles. The Army has an air component with 610 personnel, 19 training aircraft (nine of which are PC-9M which can also be used as light attack aircraft), four transport aircraft and 16 helicopters, and a sea component with 130 personnel and two patrol boats.
International operations
Slovenia participated in the NATO operation in Kosovo (KFOR) in 2018 with 241 personnel, and had 50 personnel deployed in Latvia (Enhanced Forward Presence).
In addition, Slovenia participated, among others, in the UN operation in Lebanon (UNIFIL) with 18 personnel, and in the EU operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina (EUFOR) with 14 personnel.
The entry into the war of the USSR (June 1941) made more solid the first hints of resistance, organized before, timidly, by the communists with the discontented, the persecuted, and the remains of the 16 local parties. The “liberation front” was formed which incited the general revolt and supported, in July 1941, the first clashes with Italians and Germans. And since not all Slovenes responded to the call, rather they were working more or less openly with the occupiers, tens of thousands of Catholic Slovenes ended up in the “sinkholes” of the Carso, murdered by their compatriots. Then the resisteuza struggle was organized militarily with a series of ambushes, reprisals, etc.
From Ljubljana, the seat of the command of the 2nd Italian Army (subsequently held by Gen. V. Ambrosio, M. Roatta, M. Robotti and T. Orlando), the military and political directives departed, then extended, with the so-called “Supersloda” up to Montenegro. But they did not succeed in taming the resistance or even in increasing the number of sympathizers, who, at the time of the Italian armistice (8 September 1943), found themselves exposed without defense in a country overwhelmed by chaos. The Germans took the place of the Italians, but with their hard and heavy manner they led to the flight of vast sections of the population, who ended up seeing in the resistance movement the only way to any return to order. Tito found, then and then, among the serious and hardworking people of the Slovenes his best collaborators (Kardelj, legislator; Boria Kidrić, executor of the five-year economic plan; Alessandro Bebler, Foreign Minister; Miha Marinko, president of the People’s Federal Republic of Slovenia) and managed in a short time to gather all the communist and national forces around him (the collaborators fled partly to Austria, partly to Italy) and to give after the military victories (May 1945) also to the Slovenian federal organization.
On 30 November 1946 the Slovenian Constituent Assembly (the first event of its kind in the modest history of the Slovenian people) approved the statute compiled on the type of that of the other 6 Yugoslav federal republics. The Slovenian Federal People’s Republic, which embraces all the territories inhabited by Slovenians, has recovered its regions of the Mur, taken back to Hungary, and noisily claims Slovenian Carinthia (with Klagenfurt and Villach) which in 1920 it had preferred, with a plebiscite, remain united with Catholic Austria rather than being incorporated into Orthodox Yugoslavia, and the few lands inhabited by Slovenes within the borders of Italy to the west of the Isonzo (including the Natisone and Resia valleys, up to the Tagliamento). The republic measures 16,229 sq km in all, and has just over one million residents; adjoins the Austria, Hungary, the Croatian republic and Italy. The Ljubljana-S. Pietro del Carso-Abbey-Rijeka now runs entirely in Yugoslav territory and facilitates Ljubljana’s relations with the sea, in order to favor the industrial development of the Slovenian capital.
Marburg, after the Yugoslav reoccupation, has seen its ethnic configuration completely changed with the almost complete elimination of the German element and is becoming a notable industrial center, which will benefit from a large hydroelectric power plant that will exploit the waters of the Drava and supply the electricity to the whole western part of Slovenia, for railways and for new industrial enterprises.