General Dr. Gábor Böröndi

G e n e r a l  G á b o r  B Ö R Ö N D I  P h D .

Chief of Defence Staff - Hungarian Defence Forces

Born in Kaposvár on 6th April 1971, General Gábor Böröndi PhD. is married with three children. Having graduated at Kossuth Lajos Military Academy in 1992, as a mechanized infantry officer, he was posted to the 26th Mechanized Infantry Brigade in Lenti, where he served as the Platoon Leader, Company Commander and Battalion Executive Officer in consecutive order. In 1996, on leaving Lenti to his new position at the 4th Mechanized Division Command, located in Székesfehérvár, he began his studies at the Faculty of Law at the University of Miskolc and graduated in 2001.

Beginning in 1997, he was deployed to the UNFICYP HQ as OPS officer for a one-year period. His career continued at the Ministry of Defence (Budapest) between 1999 and 2006. During this phase, he was promoted to Major, then Lieutenant Colonel and finally Colonel reaching the position of Head of Department of Defence Planning through the position of the Head Secretariat of State Secretary. He served his second tour in 2002 when deployed to SFOR MSU as LNO. In 2003, he was selected to deploy as the first Hungarian soldier in Afghanistan to ISAF HQ as J-3 OPS officer. For a brief time, by utilizing his own experiences gained abroad, he led the PSO Department of the Operations Command Centre of the Hungarian Defence Forces.

In 2007, he was assigned to be the Deputy Commander of the 5th Bocskai István Infantry Brigade, located in Debrecen. The same year, he started his 2nd tour in Afghanistan at the ISAF HQ as HUN NMR. In 2009, he took over the Commander position of the 5th Bocskai István Light Infantry Brigade. He was appointed to be the Chief of Land Forces (Deputy Commander) of the Joint Force Command of the Hungarian Defence Forces in 2013. In 2017, he completed his studies at the National War College of National Defence University in Washington, USA. From 2018 as Major General, he served as the Chief J-3, (Deputy Chief of Defence for Operations) General Staff of the Hungarian Defence Forces until his appointment to Deputy Commander of the Hungarian Defence Forces (DCHOD) with the rank of Lieutenant General, in 2019.

In the summer of 2021, he was appointed to the Military Representative of Hungary to the NATO and EU, which took up to his new assignment to Hungarian Chief of Defence Staff on 4th May 2023. On the recommendation of the Minister of Defence he was promoted to the rank of General on 20th August 2023. Between 2017-2021, he was responsible for developing the Digital Soldier Program while he was the Military Supervisor of the Zrínyi Defence and Military Development Program.

General Böröndi’s national and international decorations and awards, among numerous, including the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic Knight’s Cross, the Order of Merit of France and the Legion of Merit of The United States of America.