01.08.2020.
COMMUNIQUE
Regarding the malicious and false claims of the retired General Sreta Malinović, the Ministry of Defence points out that the Regulation on Aviators and Air Service stipulates that the Commander of the Air Force and Air Defence awards pilot badges, so it is not true that pilot badges are awarded by a flying officer, i.e. a pilot.
It is unbecoming for a former member of the AF and AD to state such malicious untruths and attack honourable officers of the Serbian Armed Forces, and it is especially shameful for Malinović to say that the pilot badge is awarded exclusively to pilots, and at the same time not to mention that in 2008 he was the strongest advocate of awarding a pilot badge to the then Minister of Defence, Dragan Šutanovac, who was awarded the pilot badge when Air Force was about to be abolished.
Unlike the time when Malinović awarded decorations to ministers and did not ask them why pilots had lower salaries than their colleagues in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and why they closed down secondary school for technicians who were supposed to perform maintenance on our aircraft, today’s Air Force and Air Defence of the Serbian Armed Forces have new and the most modern helicopters and aircraft, higher salaries, the best overalls, educated NCOs who graduated from the renewed Secondary Vocational Military School, and after 20 years, a runway with renewed lighting system at the “Colonel-Pilot Milenko Pavlović” airfield.
