Hungary's growing defence sector

Tuesday 23 December 2025

Hungary sits on the eastern half of NATO’s European map, bordering Ukraine and lying on the main land corridors that would matter in any wider Russian attempt to coerce, fracture or, in an extreme scenario, invade Europe. Budapest’s political rhetoric about Russia has often been discordant with many of her allies, yet the growth in the Hungarian Ministry of Defence’s practical capacity since 2017 tells a different story. It is the story of a state that has decided, quietly but steadily, to rebuild the administrative machinery, industrial base and armed forces structure needed for deterrence in a continent that has returned to hard security.

That growth has not been a single project so much as an interlocking set of reforms: a long modernisation programme (Zrínyi 2026) that tries to replace Soviet legacy equipment with NATO-compatible systems, a turn to domestic production through partnerships with major European manufacturers and a renewed emphasis on reserves, territorial defence and air and missile defence. In aggregate, these measures increase Hungary’s capacity not simply to possess better equipment but to field, sustain and expand combat power, which is the real currency of deterrence.

From a “support” force to a force meant to fight

The most important shift is conceptual. For years after the Cold War, Hungary’s armed forces were often discussed, even by official documents, as being suited mainly to combat service support tasks in coalition operations rather than to high-intensity national or collective defence. The Zrínyi 2026 programme and the strategic documents that followed were explicitly intended to change that orientation. A 2025 Hungarian professional paper hosted by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences describes a deliberate decision to institutionalise transformation, not merely modernisation, including changes in procedures, concepts, doctrine and professional mindset. It links this to a 2020 National Security Strategy and a 2021 National Military Strategy that set out a target force that is modern, sustainable, flexible and deployable across crises, with a planned multi-brigade structure, including a heavy and a medium brigade, plus light or special-purpose elements. 

This matters because ministries do not build capability by purchasing metal alone. They build it by changing what the armed forces think they are for, then aligning procurement, training, personnel policy, logistics and command structures with that purpose. The doctrinal and planning shift is therefore the foundation stone of everything else.

Defence spending and the administrative load it creates

Growth in capacity also means growth in the ministry’s ability to plan and spend. Zrínyi 2026 was tied to a spending trajectory aimed at reaching NATO’s two per cent of gross domestic product benchmark by 2024, as summarised in a 2025 research note by FINABEL (a European military cooperation organisation), which also argues that Hungary has surpassed the two per cent threshold in recent years. Reuters reported in May 2024 that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán spoke publicly about the need to boost defence spending further if the Ukraine war dragged on into 2025, explicitly connecting budget choices to the persistence of the conflict next door. 

A rising budget is not automatically rising capacity, but it creates an immediate administrative challenge that forces capacity to grow. Larger acquisition programmes require contract management, programme governance, compliance, auditing, training pipelines, maintenance and spares frameworks, infrastructure projects, ammunition stocks and personnel systems that can absorb and sustain new platforms. In effect, money compels bureaucracy to mature because complex defence procurement is a discipline in its own right.

Platform modernisation: building credible land combat and air defence

On land, Hungary’s procurement choices have been aimed squarely at rebuilding heavy and medium manoeuvre capacity. One of the flagship purchases was the December 2018 order for 44 Leopard 2A7+ tanks and 24 PzH 2000 self-propelled howitzers, publicised by Rheinmetall, which is involved as an original equipment manufacturer for key elements and as a partner in the broader modernisation effort. 

Armour and artillery are not fashionable, but they are the grammar of European land warfare, especially when the Russian threat is framed as the possibility of coercive mass and armoured penetrations. Tanks and self-propelled artillery also impose high institutional demands: heavy maintenance units, tracked vehicle recovery, large-scale ammunition supply, gunnery training, range capacity and an officer corps accustomed to manoeuvre warfare rather than to expeditionary support tasks. In other words these purchases force the Ministry of Defence to build the sustaining institutions that make a brigade truly deployable.

In the air defence domain, the shift is equally telling. Hungary has introduced NASAMS, a modern ground-based air defence system, with handovers reported in 2023 and official Hungarian statements describing it as a major generational change in capability.  Air defence is one of the clearest lessons of Ukraine’s war: without layered, networked systems, a state becomes vulnerable not only to aircraft and cruise missiles but to drones and loitering munitions that can paralyse mobilisation and logistics. Bringing NASAMS into service requires radar integration, command-and-control networking, specialist training and a doctrine that ties air defence into manoeuvre forces and civilian infrastructure protection. Again the purchase is an institutional catalyst as much as it is a tactical upgrade.

Industrial capacity: the shift from buyer to co-producer

Perhaps the most consequential growth in capacity is industrial. Hungary has pursued a model of “strategic partnerships” with European manufacturers that both modernises equipment and localises production, which FINABEL highlights as central to Zrínyi 2026, noting that Hungary acquires nearly all major weapon systems from European suppliers while revitalising domestic defence industry through such partnerships. 

Rheinmetall has become a symbol of this approach. The company opened an infantry fighting vehicle factory at Zalaegerszeg in August 2023 intended to produce the Lynx vehicle, describing it as a major milestone and a cutting-edge facility. It also established a joint venture to build a large ammunition production centre at Várpalota, with Rheinmetall stating that it is intended to supply ammunition to the Hungarian armed forces and explicitly linking the effort to the Zrínyi 2026 initiative. 

This industrial turn increases capacity in at least four ways.

First, it improves wartime sustainability. A state that can produce, assemble or at least service key platforms at home is less exposed to supply chain interruption or allied prioritisation during a continent-wide crisis.

Secondly, it increases peacetime readiness. Domestic production often comes with domestic maintenance, spare parts warehousing and technical expertise, all of which shorten repair cycles.

Thirdly, it creates surge potential. Ammunition plants are particularly important because ammunition, not platforms, tends to be the binding constraint in high-intensity war. Europe’s post-2022 industrial expansion has focused heavily on ammunition, with major reporting highlighting large-scale growth at sites including Rheinmetall in Hungary, supported in part by European initiatives to increase output. 

Fourthly, it enlarges the Ministry of Defence’s policy toolkit. When a ministry can influence industrial output, workforce training and supply planning within its own jurisdiction, it moves from being a customer to being an organiser of national defence power.

Budapest has also experimented with the political economy of defence industry ownership. In June 2025 Reuters reported that Hungary planned to privatise a majority stake in a new entity holding defence industry assets, including stakes connected to Rheinmetall and Airbus facilities, which underlines how central the defence industrial portfolio has become to the state’s strategic planning. Whatever one thinks of the politics, the fact that such decisions are now a matter of national debate is itself evidence that defence industry has become a pillar of Hungary’s security posture.

Manpower and mobilisation: rebuilding reserves and territorial defence

If the Russian threat is framed as the possibility of a European invasion, then mobilisation capacity is as important as front-line strength. Hungary suspended peacetime conscription in 2004, so her mobilisation model rests on professional forces plus a structured reserve. An OSCE document filed by Hungary in 2023 describes an evolving voluntary reserve system with multiple elements, including voluntary defence, operational and territorial defence reserves, and notes that around 20,000 voluntary reserve positions had been built up. 

FINABEL describes Hungary’s efforts to establish a territorial reserve force with battalions in each county, grouped into regiments, promoted through a public campaign aimed at embedding defence in local communities. Whether recruitment numbers fully match the ambition is another question, but the institutional point remains: a territorial structure requires local command frameworks, training standards, equipment pools and civil-military coordination. Those are precisely the bureaucratic capacities that matter in a crisis, including for border security, infrastructure protection and rear-area resilience.

Rhetoric versus readiness

Hungary’s defence growth must be understood against a political backdrop in which Budapest has often presented herself as a dissenter within the European mainstream on Russia. FINABEL captures this contradiction directly, arguing that Hungary’s defence actions show a continuing commitment to NATO and EU military cooperation despite diplomatic tensions, and yet it warns that a multi-speed Europe in defence could emerge without states seen as obstructive. 

This contradiction is not merely hypocrisy. It reflects a structural reality. In a continent where Russia has demonstrated a willingness to use force, a state can posture politically, but it cannot responsibly plan defence on the assumption that war is impossible. Ministries of defence, especially within NATO, are compelled by alliance planning, capability targets, interoperability requirements and the hard arithmetic of geography. The Hungarian Ministry of Defence’s capacity growth therefore reads as a hedge: whatever Budapest says, the ministry prepares for a region in which coercion and military risk have returned.

What “capacity” means if the worst case arrives

If one takes seriously the phrase “Russian threat of European invasion”, then the test of capacity is whether Hungary could contribute to deterrence and, if deterrence failed, to collective defence in a sustained campaign. The trajectory of Hungary’s defence growth suggests at least five concrete improvements.

1. A heavier, more credible land force built around modern armour, artillery and infantry fighting vehicles, supported by doctrine that assumes high-intensity war rather than expeditionary support. 

2. A more modern, networkable air defence layer, vital for protecting mobilisation, logistics and critical infrastructure. 

3. A domestic industrial base that can produce or support key platforms and ammunition, improving resilience and potential wartime surge. 

4. A reserve and territorial defence framework that strengthens depth, resilience and internal security functions in crisis. 

5. A ministry that has had to learn programme management at scale, because large procurement and industrial partnerships force institutional maturation whether politicians like it or not. 

None of this guarantees battlefield effectiveness. The hardest parts are cultural: training quality, leadership, combined-arms proficiency, maintenance discipline and honest evaluation. Yet capacity growth is visible in the direction of travel. Hungary is building the scaffolding that makes readiness possible.

A Central European ministry preparing for a darker continent

Hungary’s Ministry of Defence has expanded her capacity in response to the Russian threat not primarily by issuing new slogans but by rebuilding the practical foundations of deterrence: modern heavy and medium forces, contemporary air defence, domestic production partnerships and a deeper reserve framework. These are the building blocks of a state that assumes that Europe’s security order is no longer guaranteed by history’s optimism.

The significance is regional. Central Europe’s deterrence is collective: Poland, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary each sit on different pieces of the same strategic geography. Even when politics diverges, capability tends to converge, because Russian power, and the fear of coercion, imposes convergence.

Hungary’s defence growth therefore points to a sober conclusion. In a Europe where war has returned, the ministries that endure will be those that can translate fear into institutions: budgets into logistics, contracts into battalions, factories into ammunition stocks and slogans into mobilisation plans. Hungary is attempting that transition, and whatever Budapest’s political theatre, the machinery of defence is moving.