At a press conference, Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner looked back on the deployments of the Austrian Armed Forces in the past year. Together with Chief of the General Staff General Robert Brieger and the Head of the Operations Section, Lieutenant General Karl Schmidseder, she presented the achievements of the soldiers and civilian employees of the defense department. “You can rely on our army,” emphasized Klaudia Tanner. “It is there when no one else can.”
The highlights of the past year were:
- The first partial deployment of the militia,
- extended military service for around 2,300 conscripts.
At peak times, up to 8,600 soldiers helped – for example with contact tracing, carrying out and supporting mass Covid testing, border controls and delivering over five million test kits. The Armed Forces also disinfected kindergartens and police stations and set up five strategic CoV emergency camps. In Burgenland, Styria, Tyrol and Carinthia, an average of more than 800 soldiers per day supported the security authorities in security police assistance operations. In all federal states, with the exception of Vienna, almost 290 soldiers were also on duty at the border every day to support the health authorities in the fight against the coronavirus. In addition to providing support during the coronavirus crisis, the army also provided assistance during natural disasters last year: Among other things, storm damage was cleared, roofs were freed from snow loads and forest fires were fought from the air. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKU66cqHr84&feature=emb_title
