This year, Hungarian soldiers participated in two key international military exercises on the African continent, which further solidify Hungary’s integration into the Western alliance. These are the 2026 iterations of the military exercises ‘African Lion’ and ‘Flintlock’.
At these events, African and Western militaries practise operational and tactical collaboration by deploying selected units of their armed forces to host countries in Africa and conducting planned joint exercises, primarily focused on special operations. African Lion is held in its traditional host country, Morocco, while the Flintlock 26 is taking place in Libya and Côte d’Ivoire. The African Lion is not a peregrine exercise, as it has always been held in Morocco since its inception in 2004, while Flintlock is, with the previous one held only in Côte d’Ivoire.
Hungary participates in these activities alongside its Western allies, but its engagement is not solely about alliance commitments; it also serves to gain operational experience, engage with new partners, and strengthen interoperability between African and European militaries. In cooperation with its Western partners, Hungary is developing close defence relationships and networks across the African continent.
Without overstating the case, such exercises—during which Hungarian soldiers operate in environments ranging from the deserts of Libya and Morocco to the terrain of Côte d’Ivoire—form a practical, everyday but nonetheless significant component of a broader geopolitical effort. Continuous interaction and the development of personal and professional relationships can help establish a framework for constructive cooperation with Europe. These seemingly modest, routine activities may, over time, influence how emerging military and political elites perceive the international environment, thereby shaping professional cultures and strategic outlooks.
These are exercises with a longstanding tradition; the US Africa Command has organized them since the early 2000s. During the Cold War, exercises with newly independent African nations were not the order of the day for the US, given that any US involvement was extremely sensitive to these governments. Military cooperation thus launched in earnest only after 9/11, when presence in relatively peripheral countries and a continuous global footprint became essential for the Americans.
Consequently, the African Lion exercise was launched in 2004 as a bilateral exercise with the Kingdom of Morocco. In 2005, the Flintlock was launched in Senegal as a multilateral initiative involving both European and Sahel countries, including West African governments that are members of ECOWAS.
These exercises now grew into an all-European approach. Generally, throughout history, when European armies have deployed in the African continent, it was not very well perceived locally. These exercises can build an environment where Europeans are now seen as friendly allies offering collaboration, building up a whole new framework of perception.
‘These exercises can build an environment where Europeans are now seen as friendly allies offering collaboration’
While the Chinese deploy infrastructure on a massive scale, and the Russians have their backdoor access, especially with anti-Western regimes, Europe, and the West, in its outreach to Africa, is the strongest in the field of ‘human resources’: education, health, and, possibly, in military cooperation. Building and maintaining these networks that connect Maghreb and Sub-Saharan African militaries to European militaries is, in a way, essential.
Hungary, with its participation in recent years, is only stepping up to be on par with other nations of the Visegrád Group (V4). Poland, for instance, has contributed its GROM special forces unit, which, since its establishment in 1990, has gained extensive operational experience across multiple theatres and has participated in exercises such as Flintlock since 2016 and African Lion since 2021. The Czech Republic has broadly followed a similar trajectory and timetable of engagement. Taken together, these exercises operate across multiple levels of cooperation and provide support to different tiers of Hungary’s alliance frameworks within NATO, the European Union, and beyond.
In both cases, the Hungarian Defence Forces are deploying assets specifically organized and configured for global outreach. During the exercises, the newly expanded airlift capability is also employed: Flintlock 26 marks the first time that the new KC-390 transport aircraft, capable of ‘tactical airlift’, has participated in an operation outside Europe, whereas the Côte d’Ivoire deployment was still supported by Airbus A321 aircraft.
In both exercises, units of the Hungarian Defence Forces Special Operations Command are involved. In the African Lion, marksman teams, combat medics, and Forward Aircraft Controllers are confirmed to be part of the Hungarian mission. As for Flintlock, the ‘mid-planning event’ was already held in Budapest in November 2025, and it is confirmed that Hungary is deploying a group of 40 soldiers there between 11 April and 3 May.
The Hungarian Special Operations Forces is the component of the Hungarian Defence Forces that most urgently requires the kind of global experience that operations in tropical environments, in cooperation with local militaries, can provide. This Command was created in 2016 to oversee the 1st Bertalan Árpád Special Operations Brigade (originally formed as a regiment and upgraded to brigade status in 2017), which itself was established through the merger of the 34th Bercsényi László Special Forces Battalion and elements of the 88th Light Mixed Battalion, explicitly following an American model.
‘We can now observe on the battlefields…that infantry operations are increasingly concentrated in small fire teams’
This was an innovative step, especially in retrospect from 2026. We can now observe on the battlefields of the Caucasus and Ukraine that infantry operations are increasingly concentrated in small fire teams, where individual soldiers require a broad set of capabilities. It can therefore be argued that in this type of warfare—despite its greater intensity—special operations forces are among the best equipped to operate. They represent a core element of the future of infantry warfare.
This is the context and rationale for Hungary’s participation in these exercises. They are, by now, no longer entirely unfamiliar within African military circles. Prior to 1989, Hungary was an arms exporter to several African countries, and Hungarian officers took part in peacekeeping operations in both Angola and Mozambique in the 1990s. Today, however, new US-led frameworks offer an entirely new scale of opportunities for cooperation with African militaries.
This participation also coincides with a relatively rare moment in which Hungarian Africa policy has entered the public spotlight, accompanied by a number of exaggerated claims regarding the previously planned—and later abandoned—counterterrorism intervention in Chad. It is important, however, that public debate does not swing to the opposite extreme, resulting in a wholesale rejection of Hungarian engagement with Africa. Most of these operations are conducted in a well-organized manner, in close cooperation with Western allies, enhancing Hungary’s standing on the international stage and providing networking opportunities of an unprecedented scale.
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