The Hungarian air fleet has been complemented with a Dassault Falcon F7X business jet which will also be able to carry out courier and transport missions, Colonel Jenő Szénási, department head at the Ministry of Defence said.
This new addition comes shortly after the delivery of an Airbus A319 in February and is in line with the requirements of the Hungarian military doctrine laid out in a 2005 joint document of the five ministries involved. The doctrine specifies that the Armed Forces is responsible for the transport and protection of select state leaders.
Previous, larger military transport and cargo planes are also able to fulfill this role, albeit at significantly higher operational and maintenance costs. The FX7, on the other hand, is ideally suited for this task at considerably lower costs and over larger distances.
The three-engine FX7 has a range of 11,000 kilometres at a cruising speed of Mach 0.8 and can take off and land on relatively short runaways of 1,700 meters.
The Ministry did not provide any financial details of the deal.
