Croatia

On this page you will find a selection of my work for Croatian armed forces and about military events in Croatia.

Please feel free to download some PDF copies of my published work for non-commercial purposes.

If you work in the Croatian armed forces and you would like to hear about me from someone you may know, I have personally met and worked closely with the following persons who are well aware of the work I do:

H. Bagarić (EH), D. Barišić (93 ZB), D. Belančić (EA), A. Ćurković (ETH), R. Matok (EH), K. Ražov (EH), D. Turković (PPE), T. Vacenovski (PPE).
_{(first names are withheld for privacy reasons, ranks because they change over time)}

Dirk Jan de Ridder

Firebosses and Super Scoopers, in Air Forces Monthly (July 2017)
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Croatian Warriors, in Combat Aircraft (September 2018)
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Croatia’s new Kiowa Warriors, in Global Aviator (October 2018)
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“We qualified as independent Croatian crews using the .50 caliber machine gun, Hydra 70mm rockets and [simulated] Hellfire missiles with all the required manoeuvres and techniques. For us, the first live firing with the gun and rockets was amazing. First with the [American] instructors, then with the Croatian crews by day and night.”

LtCol Krešimir Ražov
about live firing training with their brand new OH-58D helicopters

“What we try to do is catch the head of the fire. In some other countries, they try to reach the fire from behind or they try to flank it and then keep narrowing the flanks. We don’t have the space for that. It’s like in a war. The big countries can trade space for time and then exhaust the enemy, so in some countries they are just protecting houses and infrastructure as they wait for the rain. The narrowness of the Croatian coastline is not wide enough for us to wait.”

LtCol Davor Turković
about Croatian firefighting tactics