Jana Černochová

Jana Černochová is a member of the Chamber of Deputies for ODS and a former defence minister in the government of Petr Fiala.

Jana Černochová is a member of the Chamber of Deputies for ODS and a former defence minister in the government of Petr Fiala.[1][2][3] She handed over the office to the current leadership of the ministry in December 2025.[1]

Cancelled tender for armoured vehicles

On 25 September 2026 the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic cancelled the tender for a universal wheeled platform, that is, the purchase of up to 185 armoured vehicles for several branches of the army, including engineers and the Military Police, with an estimated value of roughly CZK 24.7 billion.[1][3] As its reason the department stated in the public contracts register, among other things, economic circumstances. Ministry spokesman Petr Pešek said that the cancelled tender lacked risk assessments and a financial analysis, and that the department plans to announce a new procedure.[3]

Černochová described the justification in the register as too general. She recalled that Defence Minister Jaromír Zůna (for SPD) had stated in the Chamber of Deputies as late as February 2026 that the department's budget would allow all modernisation projects already begun to continue.[3] She sent him an interpellation with nine questions. She wants to know who was responsible for preparation and oversight, since when the department knew about the shortcomings, how it was possible that funding had not been secured in advance, and why he did not complete the tender.[1] According to her text, the platform was listed among strategic projects at the handover of the office in December 2025, with deadlines of 31 March for the framework agreement and 30 June 2026 for the first partial contract. These deadlines were not met.[1] Zůna was first deputy chief of the General Staff from January 2019 to July 2022, and Černochová points out that the project had been under preparation since 2018.[1] Member of the Chamber of Deputies Ivan Bartoš (Czech Pirate Party) and the chairman of the Chamber's defence committee Josef Flek (STAN) also commented critically on the cancellation.[3]

Dispute over F-35 fighter jets

The Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Tomio Okamura (SPD), in an interview for MF DNES, again questioned the purchase of American F-35 fighter jets and said that SPD would cancel the contract. He also said that Černochová had caused the Czech Republic great financial damage by the purchase.[2] Černochová replied on a social network that the aircraft are not being bought so that the Czech Republic would go to war with Russia, but so that Russia would not dare to wage war against the Czech Republic. In her view, the fact that the F-35 can carry nuclear weapons in some configurations does not mean that the Czech aircraft will receive them.[2]

The purchase of 24 F-35A Block IV aircraft was approved by the government of Petr Fiala in September 2023 and confirmed by a memorandum in January 2024. The Czech Republic will pay just under CZK 150 billion for them.[2]