Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Analysis: Will Russian rearmament program fall through?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Analysis: Will Russian rearmament program fall through?

    Analysis: Will Russian rearmament program fall through?

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Kislyakov) - This year Russia will concentrate on a State Arms Program to be carried out by 2015. One of the program's priorities is to equip the armed forces with high accuracy weapons. Last February the Military-Industrial Commission headed by First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov held a special session at the Moscow Research Institute of Precision Instrument-Making.
    At first sight, it seems that the plans and legislative initiatives fully correspond with military-technical achievements. The latter include the development of the non-nuclear tactical Iskander missile (NATO reporting name SS-26) for the ground troops.
    High survivability, a quick refilling system, a perfect data processing system, and a dual capability to carry both ballistic and cruise missiles allow Iskander to deal surgical strikes at small size command and communication posts, and to destroy area targets, such as enemy troops. Proceeding from the results of tests, Russian military experts maintain that given active enemy resistance, Iskander is capable of hitting standard targets with one or two missiles, which is equivalent to the use of a nuclear warhead.
    Under the program, the ground forces will be equipped with such modern weapons. But this gives rise to some questions.
    Last June, Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces General of the Army Alexander Maslov said that under the Arms Program until 2015 the missile and artillery forces will receive five missile brigades, each equipped with the Iskander-M missiles (NATO reporting name SS-26 Stone).
    But why not six? The ground forces, which had nine combined arms armies and one army corps in 2004, are divided into six military districts. It would be logical for each district to have at least one brigade.
    By the end of last year, only the North Caucasus Military District received a missile brigade. Two years ago, Major-General Vladimir Zaritsky, head of Russia's artillery and missile forces, promised that in 2007 missile brigades in the Volga-Urals Military and Far Eastern Military Districts will receive Iskander-M systems.
    For some reason, the introduction of these badly needed systems, developed by the Kolomenskoye Design Bureau of Machine-Building more than ten years ago, has been going at a very slow pace. But the production of even such a small number of Iskanders at the current rate does not make sense because high technology weapons quickly become obsolete, and these missiles may soon lose all of their advantages.
    It transpires that now the program itself will be amended. Deputy director of the Industry and Energy Ministry's defense and industrial complex department Valery Voskoboinikov reported in early February that a number of financial parameters will be specified in the course of the program's adjustment. It appeared that the program's cost is much higher than its budget parameters because of rising prices of materials and spare parts, and it is impossible to meet its goals both in the range and quantity of hardware.
    This lack of foresight is simply amazing, considering that the program was endorsed quite recently - at the end of 2006. This was a serious miscalculation, considering that Voskoboinikov had to make this statement just a year later.
    Defense Ministry planners have now made the unmistakable conclusion about the need to reduce the range or the quantity of military hardware. I have strong doubts that the reduction will affect the range - modern Russian arms have been reliably hidden into the golden cage of export contracts. T-90 tanks in the Russian armed forces can be counted on the fingers of one hand. But 310 of these tanks have already been produced for India, and there are contractual commitments to supply it with another 347. The Iskander system is no exception. It has long been popular in the Middle East.
    If the situation remains the same, our tanks will leave our tank-training grounds, and our surface aircraft will land on foreign ships. But in this case, the effectiveness of our own program of rearmament will be close to zero

    RIA Novosti - Opinion & analysis - Will Russian rearmament program fall through?
    Is there changes in the Present day Russian doctrine from the Soviet Union? Or do they still follow the same.

    Russians spend 50 billion dollars in defence

  • #2
    Originally posted by Adux View Post
    Is there changes in the Present day Russian doctrine from the Soviet Union? Or do they still follow the same.

    Russians spend 50 billion dollars in defence
    Well, Russia is doing the best it can, the problem is that it can't do everything. In the days of the USSR the Soviets attempted to gain capabilities for superiority on land, equality in the air, and denial at sea, while having the ability to match the US in nuclear capabilities at every level (tactically, operationally, and strategically). In reality they achieved rough equality on land (perhaps limited inferiority after the low point the US reached in the early 1970's... they made up for inferior equipment with larger standing armed forces than the US), limited inferiority in the air, and didn't have a chance at sea.

    Keep in mind this was when the US and the world was in the beginning stages of moving into an information age economy, and the USSR was still trying to match us everywhere (European NATO alone had a larger economy than all of the Warsaw Pact including Russia at this time). Now the United States has had 17 years of prosperity (in high technology as well... which doesn't hurt), while Russia has had a very hard time. So now Russia is trying to maintain itself in the least expensive way possible... its nuclear deterrent. Equipping conventional forces and keeping them capable of meeting other first world militaries is much more expensive than maintaining a nuclear deterrent. And so Russia spends money upgrading as much of their nuclear force as they can, and the conventional forces R&D has to be paid for with export sales, meaning that they can't equip their forces with the new weapons they produce any more. This is really no different than in the 1990's, except that Russia is able to drastically improve one of their arms.

    Comment

    Working...
    X