Status of Russian Military Industrial Complex (MIC)

They were not making tanks with three shifts before. I don't see the reason for all the incredulity that production of three tanks can be initiated per day.
Mercouris refers to 1500 new tanks from UVZ. I can't find any such claim from Medvedev. He did not mention UVZ and the new tank models.
The original Russian quotes are ambiguous enough that 1500 could include rebuilds. I would consider this to be new tanks in terms of functionality.
But Medvedev tends to flex so he is probably talking about 1500 brand new tanks. This is not such a large number for Russia. The 250 per year
figure from a while back is basically factory idle production. Russian military factories do not retire capacity like in NATzO.

Russia presented Ukraine and the West with a powerful armored fist, by Yuri Zainashev for VZGLYAD. 03.24.2023.

The domestic military-industrial complex has “fired up”, most of the factories are working in three shifts, said Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev. As a result, according to him, Russia will produce 1,500 tanks this year. Our army will have the most powerful armored fist in all of Eurasia. The superiority of forces on the Ukrainian battlefield will become indisputable. Due to what resources will a record rate of production of armored vehicles be achieved?

Russia will produce 1,500 tanks this year, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, promised on Thursday. “We will make one and a half thousand tanks this year. Calculate how much our enemy will receive even according to the most optimistic calculations - here is the answer for you, ” RIA Novosti quotes Medvedev.

“Yes, we didn’t think about it some time ago, but it became necessary to launch new arms production. The Soviet Union, let me remind you, in order to achieve at least a balance with Nazi Germany during the Great Patriotic War, it took several years, but it didn’t happen right away - T-34s appeared, and Katyushas, ​​and so on, ” Medvedev recalled.

The Deputy Chairman of the Security Council is convinced that the Russian T-90M "Breakthrough" in terms of its tactical and technical characteristics is superior to Western models of Leopard and Abrams.

“It is quite obvious that, for example, the same T-90M Proryv tank is our newest tank. But, in my opinion, this is now the best tank in the world. In the world! It is certainly better than the Leopard, than the Challenger, than the Abrams, including in terms of its tactical and technical data, even in terms of such a component as mass, ”says Medvedev. The politician noted the maneuverability of the "Breakthrough", speed and good combat work. According to the deputy chairman of the Security Council, "the most important thing is to produce now all this in the required volumes." And for this, according to him, new production facilities are being launched in Russia.

The simplest calculation shows that such a speed means the release of five tanks per day. According to Medvedev, such a pace is quite achievable, since the domestic military-industrial complex has changed markedly.

“The military-industrial complex has become hot, it works actively, most enterprises (I’m talking about this firsthand, but because I drive around them) work in three shifts, they work, as they say, from wheels - they directly give everything to the troops, produce the most modern Russian types of weapons, yes also in a situation where they are really trying to deprive us of components, cut off oxygen in certain areas,” Medvedev added.

The total number of tanks that Russia has in its arsenal is between 10,000 and 12,000, Belarusian military expert Alexander Alesin believes. “At one time, according to the Vienna Document, they were withdrawn beyond the Urals and left in storage there for 30 years. One and a half thousand tanks is one sixth of this number. Most of all there are T-72 models that turn into T-72 B3M, which are not inferior to either Leopards or Abrams. The quantity that Medvedev is talking about is not so much the production of new ones, but rather the “upgrade” of old reserves,” Alesin explained to the VZGLYAD newspaper.

As a result, in the next year and a half, Moscow will have the most powerful armored fist not only on our continent, but also in Eurasia. This will become a very strong argument in negotiations with Western "partners," Alesin predicts.

“True, a very important task arises - to provide tank factories with components for such modernization. There is a bottleneck here. I think that China will help us with elements of an electronic database - and as a result, the obstacle will be overcome by the forces of Russia and Belarus, ”the analyst hopes. He considers the pace announced by Medvedev to be quite realistic.

“The preponderance of forces on the battlefield, in fact, has already been achieved. The fact is that after the collapse of the Union, Western countries stopped updating their tank fleet. Many factories were closed, capacities were curtailed. In order for them to modernize their current models or launch new ones now, it will take a lot of effort, time and money. So Medvedev's words are a very serious claim,” the Belarusian expert told the VZGLYAD newspaper.

The head of the IAMP center of the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Vadim Kozyulin, following Alesin, believes that it is hardly realistic to produce so many new armored vehicles that Medvedev speaks about, and most likely it is about modernizing old arsenals. “According to open data, during the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia got 6400 tanks, most of them have since been disposed of, scrapped, cut up,” Kozyulin recalls.

“A lot of armored vehicles were simply “parked” on the territory of factories, behind a fence somewhere, in the open air - and they rusted there for many years.

Unfortunately, this method of "slow disposal" was common. Therefore, the compilers of the reference books did not consider these machines. As a result, the 2020 Military Balance yearbook counted 2,750 tanks in Russia, and 987 vehicles in Ukraine. The Armed Forces of Ukraine were mainly armed with T-64 models. There were about seven hundred of them - in various modifications. At the same time, armored vehicles there also used to stand behind a fence in the open air for years, that is, “in storage” - there were more than a thousand of them, that is, in total in Ukraine by February 24 last year there were more than two thousand tanks, ” Kozyulin emphasizes.

“In principle, we still have the capacity - several tank factories, including UVZ. Probably, now, from behind the fence, ready-made cars are being rolled out from the warehouses, they are repairing, updating, improving, - suggests Kozyulin. - In any case, if Medvedev's promise is fulfilled, it will mean a very high pace of work of our military-industrial complex - high by any world standards. It is clear that as a result of this, a powerful disproportion in favor of Russia should arise on the battlefield in the NVO zone.

According to TASS estimates , in total, Ukraine can receive about 100 modern Western tanks. Earlier, Kyiv had already received from abroad 350-400 Soviet-made tanks, mainly T-72s.

In terms of money, tank modernization is “about 30% of the cost of producing a new similar tank,” MK explained.military expert Alexei Leonkov - and it is precisely through such modernization, in his opinion, that the average production of five tanks per day, which Medvedev speaks of, will be achieved. Leonkov does not exclude that such an old model as the T-64 - or, more precisely, the T-62M, will also be "upgraded". Maybe these vehicles are "morally obsolete, but they can be used as tanks to support infantry." They cannot participate in anti-tank battles, although lightly armored vehicles - armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles - can be easily handled. They can also come in handy for the second echelon of troops on the defensive, when it will be necessary to close gaps if the enemy accumulates a huge force and breaks through the first line, Leonkov admits.

Last week, the German publication Die Welt released its own study, in which it provides its estimates of the pace of work of the Russian tank-building industry. In particular, the publication estimates the needs of the Russian front as two hundred armored vehicles per month. The publication claims that no more than 20 modern T-90 tanks are manufactured at Uralvagonzavod (UVZ) every month.

“And since the need for tanks is ten times greater, the enterprise also modernizes eight tanks of the older T-72 class every month. At three other plants, 50 cars are being modernized per month, and at two more plants under construction, they plan to modify 30 units per month (quote from InoSMI ). As Alexander Goltz, an expert on military affairs and armaments at the Swedish Foreign Policy Institute, explains to the German publication: “In the battle of wear and tear that is now going on in Ukraine, it is more reasonable to use two old tanks than one new one.”

The Russian Kommersant reported in October that another military-industrial complex enterprise, armored repair plant No. 103, located in Atamanovka, Zabaikalsky Krai, received a state order for the repair and modernization of 800 tanks in the next three years.

https://vz.ru/society/2023/3/24/1204442.html

The scary part was, that on the very same meeting, Dima was reading loud telegrams Stalin was sending to the Soviet MIC back in 1941.
With charmful suggestions about how far East they will be visiting if not stop joking with one plane a day

He left the citation without much comment as I guess was not needed.

Russia Increases Production of Conventional, High-Precision Arms Multiple Times, 04.01.2023.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The production of conventional and high-precision weapons for the Russian troops, participating in the special military operation in Ukraine, has increased multiple times, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Saturday.

Earlier in the day, he held a meeting at the Russian grouping's headquarters on issues of providing troops with ammunition, and also heard reports on the current situation, according to the ministry.

"Thanks to the expanded production capacities and increased labor productivity, the number of products to support the troops has increased multiple times. These are both conventional and high-precision types of weapons. All of the above allows to deliver the objectives set by Supreme Commander-in-Chief [President Vladimir Putin] in accordance with the plan for conducting the special military operation," Shoigu said.

The minister also noted that "the supply volumes of the most demanded ammunition has been determined, and the necessary measures are being taken to increase them."

https://sputniknews.com/20230401/russia-increases-production-of-conventional-high-precision-arms-multiple-times-1109024021.html

Sanctions Gave Russia’s Defense Sector a Big Boost: Here’s How, 04.05.2023.

President Putin has traveled to Tula, an industrial city south of Moscow known for its arms factories. The visit came shortly after an interview in which Putin assured that Russia would be able to outgun NATO in the proxy war in Ukraine. What state is Russia’s military-industrial complex in today? Sputnik spoke to military experts to find out.

Speaking with workers from the Tulazheldormash railway engineering plant on Tuesday, Russia’s president highlighted the “absolutely key” priority of ensuring Russia’s technological sovereignty, and striving for “100 percent” localization in the production of goods of “critical” importance.

“Where we see that it’s possible to establish stable, good, reliable relations with partners who really want to work with us over the medium and long term, we will cooperate with these partners, of course…But in critical sectors, of course, we must achieve full sovereignty, and in order to achieve this, we will work in several areas. We are already doing this, actually,” Putin said.

Import Substitution, Military-Style

This same logic certainly holds true for the defense sector, says Alexei Leonkov, one of Russia’s most prolific military analysts, and editor of Arsenal of the Fatherland, a Russian military publication.

“Our military-industrial complex (MIC) began a modernization and import substitution program in 2014. The majority of enterprises received targeted financing to renew their scientific, component and hardware parks,” the observer explained. “Enterprises received new machine tools, new equipment necessary for the manufacture and arming of military equipment. And many enterprises have managed to complete most of this program.”

Russia’s defense sector today accounts for between 2.5 and 3 million workers – or about 20 percent of all manufacturing jobs in the country. Defense factories specializing in nuclear weapons and rocketry, aviation, armored vehicles, ships and engine-building are sprinkled across the country, from Europe and the Urals to Siberia and the Far East.

Major defence holding companies and enterprises include Rostec, Oboronprom, Motorstroitel, Uralvagonzavod, the Izhevsk Machine-Building Plant, United Aircraft Corporation, Almaz-Antey, Tactical Missiles Corporation and others. Before the escalation of Ukrainian crisis into a full-blown Russia-NATO proxy war last year, the defense sector constituted a big chunk of Russia’s non-resource exports, bringing in close to $15 billion in revenue in 2021. This figure fell to about $8 billion in 2022 as the sector retooled and redirected production for the Russian military’s needs in Ukraine.

“In the framework of the special military operation, we’re talking about weapons and ammunition that are needed in a modern conflict, given that the theater of operations has been saturated with Western armaments. From the first months, the directions in which it was necessary to expand the production of weapons, ammunition became clear...And of course, this was also a question of technology, because military technology is always at the forefront of technological progress generally,” veteran military observer Alexander Mikhailov, chief of the Military & Political Analysis Bureau, a Moscow-based think tank, told Sputnik.

Successes at a Pace 'Many Did Not Expect'

While he declined to delve into specific figures, Mikhailov assured that the Russian MIC’s production of weaponry has increased “multiple times over” over the past year, while output of ammunition had jumped by “dozens of times” in some cases.

President Putin offered hints on the MIC’s output in a television interview in late March, saying that over the period that the US and its allies expect to send 420-440 main battle tanks to Ukraine, Russia will produce or modernize “over 1,600,” giving it more than a three-to-one advantage. “Russian production, the military-industrial complex, is developing at a very fast pace – at a pace many did not expect,” Putin said.

The arms now being produced by Russia’s MIC “fully meet the challenges” of the moment, and in many areas –such as military aviation, air and missile defense systems, Russia’s arms industry is ahead of foreign partners and adversaries alike, Mikhailov said.

Room for Improvement

Of course there is always room for improvement, the observer admitted, citing areas like unmanned aerial vehicles, communications systems, “and other military-technical innovations" that the enemy is now actively using. “But Russia is rapidly increasing its competency in these areas,” Mikhailov said.

Leonkov echoed these sentiments, saying the MIC has run into and had to solve a variety of logistical problems and headaches, both since 2014 and after February 2022. While some sectors have succeeded in replacing imports by 80 percent, others have done so by only 70 percent or even less. “But our factories are working, and the special military operation has served as an added impetus, because over its course various types of weapons and military equipment are being used; they need to be produced and the forces engaged in fighting need to be reequipped.”

“Obviously, Western countries, knowing about our use of some imported components, hit precisely at these weak points. Take for instance the aircraft industry and composite wings. We are now developing our own technologies, which will not only completely replace [Western ones], but make it so ours are even better than those from abroad. This is a tough job. It’s still in progress. But I think the result will be achieved. And, if the West suddenly lifted sanctions and said ‘let’s be friends, let’s trade again’, we will have no reason to do so,” Leonkov added.

Thanks, Sanctions

Leonkov believes that the West’s efforts to sanction Russia into submission, more than any other factor, will help assure import substitution and real independence in strategic sectors.

“I think some industry figures and officials thought that the West would come to its senses, that at any moment it would be possible to reestablish old ties. But the dynamics of international relations today show that this is unlikely. The West has clearly set a course for confrontation with Russia in all areas. All technologies related to metalwork, printed circuit boards, computing power, machines, equipment and so on – in these areas we were oriented on Western production. That is, we just bought the components and made something out of them. Now, we have made a turn to the East. And we’re not just buying something from China, but will be creating production lines that will allow us to replace all of this 100 percent.”

Today, the military observer said, direct purchases of components from the West are already virtually nil. “Now, the West, enacting its latest package of sanctions, will do even more to ensure that we cannot bypass them, make ‘parallel imports’ to receive the components we need. But we something to answer with – good [economic] links have begun to form in our country, trade with China has expanded. We can buy some things, but it’s better to be completely independent and produce everything in-house. And we are moving in this direction by leaps and bounds, with the main issue in the defense sector now being the expansion of production.”

Russia is unlikely to experience a return to normal relations with the West for at least the next 10-20 years, and the country’s leadership realizes this, Leonkov said. Therefore, Russia must learn to rely only on itself, he said, “because the experience of Ukraine shows that when a country is completely dependent on deliveries from abroad, it will always be in a vulnerable position which inexorably leads to defeat."

'Wonderful Phrase'

After Tuesday's visit to the Tula plant, Putin held a meeting of the Presidium of the State Council, where he started off a discussion on the development of Russian industry under sanctions by recalling what one of the people he spoke to at the factory told him.

“In the company we visited today, one of the managers, one of the owners of the enterprise uttered a wonderful phrase. He said ‘we were forced to switch to import substitution where we had not thought about it before’. This phrase ‘we were forced to’ is key...As things are, our colleagues are doing it, and it’s working out for them,” Putin said.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20230405/sanctions-gave-russias-defense-sector-a-big-boost-heres-how-1109128913.html