Bulgaria to select new fighter jet by July 2018 - report

Karakachanov told reporters on Thursday that the defence ministry will send letters to fighter jet manufacturers by the end of November, seeking offers, public radio broadcaster BNR reported.

He also said the ministry will seek an offer from Boeing for its F-18 multirole fighter jet.

In December 2016, the defence ministry sent a request for proposals (RFP) to Italy, Portugal and the United States, and Sweden for the procurement of a new type of combat aircraft to replace the Bulgarian Air Force's ageing fleet of Russian-made MiG fighter jets. Bulgaria received offers for new Gripen jets from Sweden’s SAAB, used F-16 from Portugal, equipped with US weaponry, and used Eurofighter Typhoon from Italy.

In April 2017, the working group in charge of assessing the offers appointed by the defence ministry ranked the Swedish offer at the top.

In September, however, an ad-hoc parliamentary commitee, set up to supervise the selection process, recommended to relaunch the procedure, saying one of the participants had been unfairly disqualified from the race, preventing a proper evaluation of all submitted bids.

In June, the defence ministry said it plans to spend 3.54 billion levs ($2.1 billion/1.8 million euro) on rearmament programmes between 2017 and 2029. The programmes envisage purchasing new combat aircraft for 1.5 billion levs, multi purpose modular patrol vessels for 820 million levs and military equipment for land forces for 1.22 billion levs.

In 2014, at the NATO summit in Wales, Bulgaria committed to a defence spending target of 2% of GDP, to be reached in the following 10 years.

(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)