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They have already purchased Mistral helicopter
carriers, Italian IVECO armored vehicles and Austrian-made
Steyr-Mannlicher SSG 04 sniper rifles. Now, the
Russian military are testing the Italian-made
wheeled tank destroyer, the Centauro. As RIA Novosti
learned from a source in Rosoboronexport, a manufacturing
license for these vehicles for production in Russia
may be purchased upon completion of tests.
The First Deputy Chairman of the Military-Industrial
Commission Yury Borisov immediately corrected
his defence industry colleagues, saying that if
they do purchase anything at all, it will be samples
of the equipment to study its specifications and
the underlying technology.
What is this all about? A clever move that is
really intended to introduce the latest NATO equipment
to the Russian military?
Or is this new evidence of the collapse and the
neglect of the interests of the Russian defence
industry, which has always been the traditional
supplier of “unique and unparalleled,” products
that were in no way “inferior, and in some ways
superior” to the best foreign specimens?
Some Russians still believe that Russia is a
world leader, and that the defence industry is
a gold mine of skilled talent that can work miracles
if only they are assigned the right tasks. Others,
fed up with the official propaganda of the late
Soviet Union, deny the domestic defence industry
(and the Russian industry as a whole) any technological
or industrial independence or prospects.
are witnessing a typical battle between two
psychological traumas. Things are more complicated
in real life, though. At the height of its power
in the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet Union was a
recognized world leader in a number of areas.
In other areas, it struggled to try not to let
the technological gap between it and the advancing
West grow even larger. The situation changed dramatically
in 1991, but not for the better. Even the earlier
available substandard technical knowledge and
competences were lost.
It became very obvious after they started pumping
up government defence orders in the late 2000s,
and several “leading designers” showed their total
inability to field more or less functional pieces
of equipment, even ones that may have for a long
time been considered a thing of the past in other
countries, such as the United States.
What recourse does the political leadership of
a country have (that is used to considering itself
a first-tier superpower) in the circumstances
where it is struggling to meet the material and
scientific requirements of such leadership?
You can shut down the entire defence sector to
prevent any contact with the external world, re-nationalize
it, restore the system of defence ministries and
flood the defence industry with contracts and
defence R&D institutes with orders for new designs.
That is, if we act on the assumption that foes
are everywhere, and we must do everything on our
own. Otherwise, they will gobble us up and then
enslave us.
20-Russia Buying Western Weapons-(46-47).indd
46 7/6/2012 5:44:34 PM June 2012 IndiaStrategic
47 Given the current situation, this choice will
further degrade the already troubled domestic
mechanical engineering and R&D sectors. Besides,
such isolation will not only fail to help close
the gap, but it will widen it. This lag already
has a systemic nature and cannot be overcome using
domestic resources alone.
Alternatively, you can buy what you need if you
can afford it. You can buy from domestic manufacturers
if they can deliver, or from abroad in all other
cases. The ultimate outcome of such a policy can
be seen from the experience of Saudi Arabia, where
the purchase of modern weapons using petrodollars
has become a sport and a source of personal enrichment
for the ruling circles.
There is a third option, though, which, unlike
the previous two, requires high-quality management
and even more high-quality scientific and engineering
expert analysis. Additionally, it will require
30 or 40 properly articulated strategies dealing
with the development of the innovative sector
and the manufacturing industry for the next 15-20
years.
To top it off, it also requires a properly aligned
foreign policy aimed at global integration (sic),
which makes it possible to take advantage of the
contradictions between foreign countries in order
to derive maximum benefits.
The cooperation between Russian optical electronic
engineers with French defence holdings is perhaps
the best example of how this third option can
be initially put to use.
The Soviet military-industrial complex has systematically
lagged behind its competitors in optoelectronic
technologies: domestic thermal imagers and infrared
cameras are a case in point. The situation is
slightly better with optical location stations.
Work with the French follows a familiar scenario:
at first, we attempt to reproduce the design,
which requires a missing technology in order to
be successfully manufactured. Once mastered, things
climb to a new level. For example, under the license
from the French company Thales, a Vologda-based
enterprise assembles thermal imagers that are
used in exported T-90 tanks. In a collaborative
effort with another company, Sagem, the Urals
Optical and Mechanical Plant engages in the production
of thermal imaging cameras.
This was a preferred method in the early years
of the Soviet Union. Actually, it laid the basis
for accelerated modernization of the armed forces
and the industrial retrofitting carried out under
Joseph Stalin. Back then, the gap between the
Soviet Union and industrialized Western countries
in a number of areas was even larger.
Purchasing pilot batches of weapons and equipment,
copying and mass-producing them (and later improving
them using their own scientific and engineering
resources based on foreign technology that they
had mastered), the Soviet government almost managed
to remain on par with the major league players.
This practice worked well before World War II
(as the Soviet Union was building its own heavy
industry), and immediately after when they started
copying truly critical designs, such as cruise
and ballistic missiles, aircraft jet engines or
the Tu-4, a counterfeit copy of the American B-29.
This is difficult, extensive and painstaking
work that requires conducting thorough industry
expert analyses, mastering the industry’s manufacturing
process (with an understanding of the potential
bottlenecks and points of growth), and stripping
the final recommendations of the influence of
local and departmental lobbyists and corrupt interests.
The results of this work cannot be used to report
with bravura to the first persons in the government
at the end of the fiscal year, only to forget
about the launched processes and spent funds the
day after the report, as is often the case with
capital-intensive infrastructure projects paid
from the budget.
However, there’s no alternative to this approach
if we are talking about long-term industrial and
technological government policy. It’s still not
clear what the real issue is all about and what
will grow on this wasteland 10-15 years from now,
except for the weeds that are sure to remain no
matter what. n (RIA Novosti) The author is a military
affairs columnist
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