Status of Russian Military Industrial Complex (MIC)

Very good article & vote from my side. I like your post in the sense that it entails the urge to develop products rather high-end products for civilians. Remember why the Boeing was not selected for the JSF programme (even though their plane was simple in many aspects) is because the elites knew that Boeing (unlike Lockheed) isn't dependent solely on military planes but rather largely upon civilian planes.

It must be stated too that Russian nano-electronics recently got a push from Putin... As far as I know AMD was going to headquarters in Russia...do shed any light upon it. I will be much happy to buy a Russian built processor but alas we don't have any Russian motherboards...processor is a long way ahead.

Also super-computers were also smuggled into Russia & China; why because they were not capable in those days to manufacture something similar domestically
SuperComputer Proliferation

In the end thnx again & good links

nightcrawler wrote:Very good article & vote from my side. I like your post in the sense that it entails the urge to develop products rather high-end products for civilians. Remember why the Boeing was not selected for the JSF programme (even though their plane was simple in many aspects) is because the elites knew that Boeing (unlike Lockheed) isn't dependent solely on military planes but rather largely upon civilian planes.

It must be stated too that Russian nano-electronics recently got a push from Putin... As far as I know AMD was going to headquarters in Russia...do shed any light upon it. I will be much happy to buy a Russian built processor but alas we don't have any Russian motherboards...processor is a long way ahead.

Also super-computers were also smuggled into Russia & China; why because they were not capable in those days to manufacture something similar domestically
SuperComputer Proliferation

In the end thnx again & good links

Angstrem Russian Integrated Circuits manufacturer bought 130 nm process fabrication tools from AMD. But this does not mean that AMD itself is building manufacturing facility in Russia.
Rosnano is a goverment company that is basically driving the Nanotechnology sector in Russia.

Here is some maybe a bit older but good nevertheless overview:
http://igorrgroup.blogspot.com/2009/11/russian-chip-makers-part-1.html
http://igorrgroup.blogspot.com/2009/11/russian-chip-makers-part-2.html

Estimates are that the nanotechnology research will bring forth first its fruits in 2015.
I can't wait to see them.

Motherboards are not a problem. If you develop so sophisticated chip as CPU with up to date performance, you usually have the technology and means to also develop Northbridge, Southbridge - in other words a complete chipset on the motherboard and then its only a small step to complete motherboard. However when it comes to CPU back... one thing is to design it, the other to manufacture it. From what i know the intellectual capabilities are there to develop up to date CPU, however what is missing are manufacturing facilities for this.
Most powerfull Russian CPU have to be manufactured in Taiwan.
Sitronics had plans to build 45 nanometer production process fab but im not sure about the status of this project.

So, if I understand correctly, than Russian domestic electronics producers are able to produce all needed components for computers, radars,..., for domestic military needs, that army could be independent of foreign parts. Export products are more depending on buyers wishes. If they wont foreign parts, they could have them.

Russian high-ranking officials sacked over state defense order

RIA Novosti

20:06 17/05/2011

MOSCOW, May 17 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian government has dismissed a number of military and defense industry officials for their poor performances in implementing the country's ambitious arms procurement program in 2010, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on March 10 instructed the government to take adequate measures to improve the situation with the state arms procurement program and punish the officials directly responsible for the disruption of the program.

"Due to undersupplies of weapons and military hardware, a number of officials from the Defense Ministry's procurement bodies have been discharged from military service, including Deputy Chief of the Armed Forces' Main directorate Maj. Gen. Vaganov, chief of the Directorate for procurement of aircraft Col. Krylov, and Navy Deputy Commander for Armaments Vice Adm. Borisov," the Kremlin said in a statement.

In addition, Vladimir Grodetsky, the general director of Izhmash, and Arkady Khokhlovich, the general director of the Electrical Engineering Research Institute, have been dismissed from their posts.

General director of Information Satelliete Systems Nikolai Testoyedov and general director of NPO Mashinostroyenia Alexander Leonov were issued warnings.

The board of directors of Russia's Sevmash shipyard will discuss the future of general director Nikolai Kalistratov in June.

"These and other measures in relation to the defense industry and military officials, who disrupted the implementation of state defense order, are sufficient both for the improvement of discipline and personal responsibility and for preventing future interruptions in arms supplies," the Kremlin said.

Russia's new 2011-2020 arms procurement program stipulates the upgrade of up to 11% of military equipment annually and will allow the country to increase its modern weaponry to 70% by 2020.


http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/russia/2011/russia-110517-rianovosti01.htm


I just hope they are not scapegoats....

medo wrote:So, if I understand correctly, than Russian domestic electronics producers are able to produce all needed components for computers, radars,..., for domestic military needs, that army could be independent of foreign parts. Export products are more depending on buyers wishes. If they wont foreign parts, they could have them.

That would be wishfull thinking, but no... As said previusly... most sophisticated Russian CPUs are manufactured in Taiwan. That said, in designing phase ordinary PCs are used where the CPU is either AMD or Intel made. But step by step they are aiming for this independence.


And regarding the official firings... way to go!
Putin needs results, not promises and empty words.

And when it comes to develop new stuff. Most of the time you are right Garry you need to look what others have and start from there. But it is know that Russia nad China often does have innovative approach to certain things and this approach often needs to reinvent the "wheel" totally from scratch. Remember the coaxial rotor system? Remember the legendary K36 ejection seat? The guys here had to throw away the conservative thinking and start from beginning. Scramjet is a perfect example of this. People want to have faster planes? Ok. But instead of making the current jet engines more powerfull how about focusing on developing a completely new engine working on new physical principles. But i have no doubt you know this

This is so very true... the west does not always do things the "Right" way.

From WWII the west had an enormous heavy four engined bomber fleet... the Germans looked at cruise missiles and ballistic missiles as an alternative and one would have to say that with modern technology applied it was the German solution that ended up being the best.
Rocket powered torpedos.
Having a semi automatic sniper rifle in every unit (SVD).
The whole idea of an IFV.
Tank gun fired precision guided missiles.
The use of submachineguns to allow a firepower advantage over an enemy with bolt action rifles.
The idea of the assault rifle... though the invention of the term is German.
The replacement of the submachine gun with the assault rifle as a standard firearm for an entire army.
Supersonic AShMs.
The first ship operational with vertical launch systems was the Kirov and currently many Russian SAMs are vertical launch systems.
The first to combine guns and missiles in air defence systems.

Now what i am about to tell you migh sound completely shocking but: Japanese industrial robots are not actually that good.

I am a little behind the times in robots, the Japanese mainly dominating the potential commercial robot as a sort of live in slave to care for an aging population.

Which is... you need state of the art electronics industry. You need to have a processor capable of raw computing power ideally equal or even better than best foreign counterpart. Very large portion of your economys destiny lies in this single fact.

You understand. So many high tech stuff relies on critical electronics... and not even 22nm super high tech stuff. Even just decent digital controller chips from Texas Instruments can make a critical difference in how hardware can be made to work.

A case in point is the difference between the RVV-AE (R-77) and the RVV-SD (R-77).
The latter is much more capable and can be updated via a software patch or software upgrade. The former you need to rip out the electronics and replace it to upgrade.

I remember that starting arround 2000 there was a huge story that some moscow computer scientific institutedeveloped microprocessor more powerfull that Intel Itanium.

I remember that too. All they needed was a few hundred million dollars funding.

However im not sure to what degree this will be a successfull strategy. However what i am saying here that if they will be carefull enough, they can catch up with the rest very quickly and take over the lead in High technology sectors like the military one is.

Indeed, with the military able to subsidise the process by offering a guaranteed market this shouldn't be that hard. One of the largest users in the world of high speed computers is the NSA of the USA. It is not just about fast chips, it is about grouping processors in a way to maximise their performance by making super computers.
New chips don't seem to be getting faster, but the current trend is multicore CPUs but that demands programming and motherboard layouts that support such a growth.
GPUs or Graphics processing Units are much much cheaper than CPUs and also offer another way to improve processing power of a computer with physics processors and huge bandwidth connections to the north bridge controller chips they can operate very fast and move enormous amounts of data quickly.

Also super-computers were also smuggled into Russia & China; why because they were not capable in those days to manufacture something similar domestically.

The Russians certainly do make supercomputers, they are not near the top of the worlds fastest computer list but they do have supercomputers and are making and distributing them to various companies like Sukhoi etc so they are less reliant on wind tunnel time to test shapes or RCS ranges to test aircraft and weapons.

An analogy is like cars... you want your biggest and most important companies to have fast powerful cars, but compared to the worlds fastest land vehicles the cars you actually mass produce and put into service are no where near the top of the list for the worlds fastest... the worlds fastest computers often have extreme methods of making them so very fast that is no practical for mass production and widespread commercial use.

That would be wishfull thinking, but no... As said previusly... most sophisticated Russian CPUs are manufactured in Taiwan.

The Russians also have a close relationship with South Korea, and that includes electronics. The South Koreans are building a shipyard in Russia based on their method of shipbuilding which is state of the art at the moment.
I have not read anything about it but I would suspect that Russia would be interested in getting South Korean electronics companies interested in their new silicon valley program which will be a driving force behind pushing Russia to the next level.

Russia has the intellect and the talent, but lacks the infrastructure to take business ideas from the prototype through the testing and into the tooling and preproduction phase into the mass production phase. Hopefully their new program with be the piece of the puzzle that has been missing... and that includes in electronics.

I like the japanese. they might not be the best in induustrial robots, but they often have innovative approach as to how to use and where thoise robots. Elderly people care is one of them.

About the Elbrus. Guys working at the Elbrus CPU were bought by Intel together with their intelectual property. Thats the american style of solving an issue of potential concurent. And also asort of a way of appreciation of ones work and its quality. The fact that intel was forced to buy them tells the rest of us that it was serius stuff.

When it comes to modern processors. There are couple of problems. For example there is a limitation of hardware implementation of so called instructions. Another thing is energy consumtion. Another thing is frequency. For example the technological way to create the transistors on silicon waffers is so that if you densely pack so many transistors one after another and try to indefintiely raise frequencies, then you will have enormous heat dissipations and also capacitance will be a problem as well. However usually with more transistors packed onto small area you need lower power input, but on the other hand they will generate more heat, and if you increase the frequency then even the power will rise up. So you will come to the point where you need better energy and heat management. And thus they introduced the moder of mullticore chip. Which means that during high performance peak all cores can be working on single task (process), something called multithreading or it can be single core working on single task (process), while other cores will be running other tasks processes - something called multitasking. And if the system is idle some of the cores might be underclocked or completelly turned off. With this multicore approach you have way better energy management. However when it comes to frequency, the current physical process model of chip manufacturing has its limits ow many chips you can put on silicon wafer. And thus it has frequency limits. If you would overclock the chip too much you might overheat it so that the structures on the chip would melt or the physical properties of the transistors on the chip would not produce desires behaviours since the clock will seem to them so high that it would allmost be a direct current with no clock at all or the transistors would be not responsive enough to clocks. And this would be a huge problem. The reason why there is so much money into nanotechnology is partially because of these current limitations. People need to again reinvent the wheel how to make chips even smaller and more powerful (more dense). And Russia have pumped collosal amount of money into this research and as said previously.... it seems they are trying to skip the very costly most modern manufacturing chip processes and jump on their own newly developed nanotechnological processes from their own research labs.

When it comes to supercomputers. The TOP 500 list is kind of thing of image. Although the supercomputers are primarily made for research institution for heavy resource demanding detailistic simulations. They are often used in their second role as kind of marketing the brand of creator. Most of the time you don't need their raw computing power, and most of the time it is technologically not that difficult to make a system with more Tera flops than the one first in the TOP 500. Why? You simply connect more server nodes - blades with more processors. However by time you might come to the limitations of their physical interconnects. Kind of data highway. Because in order for the system to really act virtually as one you need paralel processing capabilities and this kind of thing needs physical interconnects between the nodes with data latencies so low, and data throughputs so high that it would be as if nearly instant enormous data transfers. I know that common computers from the perspective of human sense have this kind of capabilities. However High Performance computing needs way more than that. Because you usually use them for epic amount of mathematical calculations that you need to perform on little timeframe. So the HPC interconects are very important and Russia is doing a serious research on this.
But more than server clusters and focusing to have a own ocmputer system in top 500, companies should focus on chip performances. Because when you are building a big computer system with high performance computing capabilities you are not that limited by space. Data center of big companies are usually huge. However in consumer electronics and military hardware you are VERY limited on space. And thus it is important to have all the performance and capabilities on single chip. Which is no easy task.

South koreans are bulding a shipyard in Russia? I didn't know about that. But again i highly doubt that they have some kind of innovative technology Russians don't have so that it will give them huge performance boost and time savings when building ships. I think theh problem is in the corruption in Russia and old geezers. And when it comes to South Korean electronics industry. Don't worry the Eagle is already in his nest Russians and Koreans are already in a very cooperative mode. The problem is in japan. Japanese could be as well if they were not that dumb when it comes to Kuril islands matter. They are stubborn - and by the way most of the ordinary japanese people don't care. Its only the goverment making a huge fuss over it and ultranatitonalists. But then again ultranationalists in japan are again Koreans and against anybody else in Japan.

^^ So much to learn...Flanky you really are a valuable addition to this forum ...u some electrical engineer?

nightcrawler wrote:^^ So much to learn...Flanky you really are a valuable addition to this forum ...u some electrical engineer?

Even better: Programmer

Well i don't have a degree in electrical engineering yet, but im working on it.
I might know some things about high performance computing because i work for company that specializes in server segment.
Im earning my pay as web developer but i do have broader programming skills.
So thats about my background

I like the japanese. they might not be the best in induustrial robots, but they often have innovative approach as to how to use and where thoise robots. Elderly people care is one of them.

What I like about the Japanese is that they will focus their technology to help a consumer group that doesn't have a lot of disposable income (the elderly).
They develop technology to genuinely help a group that is actually respected in their society.

In the west we spend more on keeping prisoners locked up than we do on our senior citizens and I think that is disgusting...

About the Elbrus. Guys working at the Elbrus CPU were bought by Intel together with their intelectual property. Thats the american style of solving an issue of potential concurent. And also asort of a way of appreciation of ones work and its quality. The fact that intel was forced to buy them tells the rest of us that it was serius stuff.

It also points to why America has so much innovation and high tech... they buy it most of the time, or the wealth of the country attracts it. This is something Russia needs to emulate.

When it comes to modern processors. There are couple of problems.

Without repeating the entire block of text I agree... if you consider the CPU as a factory you will find most of the time it is fairly inefficient because data can only be delivered and retrieved from it at a certain rate and the older single core model CPUs could only actually do one thing at a time. By using its very high speed it could flick between jobs to make it appear it was doing lots of different things at once it actually wasn't. With very early desktop computers there would often be a turbo button which often enabled a maths processor, or increased the clock speed of the processor. These days having multi core CPUs is a much better solution but again leads to bottle neck problems to realise their true potential.
Some companies are working on 80+ core CPUs and I have seen talk of 300 core CPUs in some computer magazines.

Note most super computers use multiple CPUs to simulate multi core processing, but use multiple northbridge controller chips and multiple ram... so with 50 CPUs you also have 50 controller chips and 200+ RAM slots with 4 RAM slots per CPU.
The test is to program software that takes advantage of this setup.

They are often used in their second role as kind of marketing the brand of creator. Most of the time you don't need their raw computing power, and most of the time it is technologically not that difficult to make a system with more Tera flops than the one first in the TOP 500.

In NZ someone made a super computer... and they made it out of about 2,000 Motorola chips from Amiga 500s. The chips were incredibly cheap and operate at about 7.14 Mhz which is pretty pathetic for CPUs, but with multiCPU systems it is more about throughput than actual speed.

South koreans are bulding a shipyard in Russia? I didn't know about that. But again i highly doubt that they have some kind of innovative technology Russians don't have so that it will give them huge performance boost and time savings when building ships.

It is management and modular construction techniques that the Koreans have over the Russians... and many other ship building countries.

Read this: http://russiadefence.forumotion.com/t861-new-shipyard-being-built-in-far-east-russia

The problem is in japan. Japanese could be as well if they were not that dumb when it comes to Kuril islands matter. They are stubborn - and by the way most of the ordinary japanese people don't care. Its only the goverment making a huge fuss over it and ultranatitonalists. But then again ultranationalists in japan are again Koreans and against anybody else in Japan.

I remember in the early 1990s one of the fears of the Hawks in the west was that Japan might trade its money and knowhow and join up with the Russians aerospace knowhow and really get into aircraft and space technology. Up until WWII the Japanese were as high tech as anyone when it came to aircraft. It was feared they might take the opportunity to regain that position with Russian tech and Japanese know how.

At the same time the was a huge fear that all the manufacturers of the west would suddenly move into Eastern Europe to take advantage of the skilled workforce used to low wages.

Neither really happened.

Russia's defence sector riddled with corruption
By Guy Faulconbridge, Reuters

MOSCOW - A fifth of Russia’s state defence spending is stolen every year by corrupt officials, dishonest generals and crooked contractors, Russia’s chief military prosecutor said in an interview published on Tuesday.

President Dmitry Medvedev says endemic corruption is holding back Russia’s development, but anti-bribery groups say the problem has become worse since Medvedev was steered into the Kremlin by his mentor Vladimir Putin in 2008.

“Huge money is being stolen - practically every fifth rouble and the troops are still getting poor quality equipment and arms,” chief military prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky told Russia’s official gazette, Rossiiskaya Gazeta. “Every year more and more money is set aside for defence but the successes are not great,” he said, adding that kickbacks and fictitious contracts were being used to defraud the state.

Fridinsky did not give specific figures, but Russia has set more than 1.5 trillion roubles ($53 billion) for national defence in its 2011 budget, indicating theft of more than $10 billion a year from the sector.

While western countries roll back defence spending Putin has promised to spending nearly 20 trillion roubles over the next decade to renew the country’s rusting armaments with new submarines, nuclear missiles and air defence systems.

Medvedev has repeatedly warned Russia’s notoriously corrupt defence sector to clean up its act and this month sacked several industry chiefs over what the Kremlin said were unfulfilled contracts.


Russia is still the world’s second-largest arms exporter but its defence industry is riddled with corruption and thousands of young men each year try to bribe their way out of having to do their national service.

Corruption is a way of life in Russia, from small bribes slipped into the pockets of traffic policemen or doctors to the vast kickbacks which investors say senior officials demand for access to state contracts in the natural resources sectors.

Transparency International rated Russia joint 154th out of 178 nations in its corruption perceptions index last year, along with Cambodia, Kenya and Laos. It was Russia’s lowest ranking since the index began in 1995. In 2009 it was 146th.

Russia was perceived to be more corrupt than any other member of the G8, G20 or even peers such as India, China and Brazil, which were ranked at 87th, 78th and 69th.

When asked if he thought senior officials were involved in the corruption, Fridinsky said: “Work it out for yourself.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2011/05/24/18184406.html

Well good thing is those figures being said is smaller by each passing year. Im not really sure how much do they reflect efficiency of MIC in comparison with real corruption being present everywhere.

The problem seems to be in most cases that the corruption goes up too high and all of a sudden the people chasing corruption suddenly get told by their bosses to back off.

In many ways it is the whistle blowers that end up paying the biggest price and that is the opposite of what should be happening to sort out the problem.

American Defense Contractors will scour the globe for smart Engineers and promise them big wages.

Then those people are brought into American with the H-x Visa Waiver Program. They are forced to have their wages deducted for Federal Taxes, Social Security, Medicare, then State Taxes. So they end up not really making the money they thought they were going to get.

Total cost to get them to work for America instead of India= almost nothing.

Noshir Gowadia was an Engineer brought from India into America and he worked on the B-2 bomber and other projects. India has been demanding America pay those workers Social Security benefits when they get old.....America's been saying tough luck. No Medicare or Social Security for you.

Noshir Gowadia gave the B-2 Blueprints to China and other countries and also designed China some stealth cruise missiles. Ooopsie.

But America did end up making the B-2 bomber for almost nothing. So when's Russia going to get smart and scour the globe for smart engineers to work for them and promise them huge wages? Then tax them out of wages and ditch them when the project is done??

You have to admire America's creativity in making something for nothing. Russia lacks an Israel for creative financing techniques. America is making a killing right now killing it's own people. They have all these old people and they figured out how to make money off of them, even if it kills them.

The Spine plastic cage project. They've been ripping their spine discs out by going into their sides and hammering a plastic spacer between their vertebrae then closing the patient up. They are billing insurance and patients for a full spine fusion even though they never bolted the vertebrae together. They are making big money crippling/killing their own. Getting rid of Government Liability and making lots of money at the same time.

Citizens are expendable. America's been making +1 million foreigners new American citizens every year to keep up. Chaos Economics? No....they are smart. They are killing their own to make money.

They adopted Adolph Hitlers medical practices and have been making poison medications. Vioxx, Bextra for example were all killing people causing heart attacks. Billions were made peddling those poisons onto their own people.

Old Citizens are expendable....if you want a huge empire and want to take over the world.

Russia never embraced such practices to create a massive economy. Therefor it can't keep up with the West.

Russia never embraced such practices to create a massive economy. Therefor it can't keep up with the West.

If ignoring their elderly is "keeping up" then screw them... Russia does not need to embrace that.

Russia doesn't need to be first or the best, what they need to focus on is being good enough to be safe from potential opponents, and making Russia a place people want to go to for a better life. Whether you actually let other people in is of course up to the people already there...

You can be successful without being number one... there is a lot of pain and sacrifice involve in becoming number one that simply isn't worth it morally and ethically.

I hope Russia doesn't fall back into the same game of the Soviet Union... Russia doesn't need to push any product to the world... they don't need to sell any ideology.

Just trade and be happy.

Russia in the opposite to other powers is not dependent to import anything. All they need, they have at home, water, food, energy, row materials, industry, etc. They don't need to invade any other country, only to defend their own territory. This is the point, where Russian philosophy, doctrine and strategy base.

Russia signs off 2011 arms procurement deals

RIA Novosti

15:12 01/09/2011 STAVROPOL, September 1 (RIA Novosti) - Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said he has signed all deals under an ambitious weapons procurement program except for one, following official criticism that the military was falling short of its annual plan.

"The signings took place yesterday and the day before, there's only the contract with the United Shipbuilding Corporation that's left," Serdyukov told reporters on Thursday.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had instructed the ministry to conclude all deals under the procurement program for 2011 by September. The ministry has been criticized by the Kremlin for making slow progress on the program.

Alexander Sukhorukov, the former head of the Russian arms procurement service Rosoboronzakaz, was appointed deputy defense minister by President Dmitry Medvedev earlier on Thursday.

Sukhorukov will be overseeing an $730-billion procurement program through 2020.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/russia/2011/russia-110901-rianovosti01.htm

This is from the KBP website in the Russian language news section:

Family members CBI, in which at least 3 children of preschool and school age, to receive financial assistance in the amount of profbyudzheta 1,500 rubles per student child. This 60 children from 32 families.

This decision was taken in July, the company's trade union committee to help large families prepare for the new school year. On the proposal to allocate for this category of funds for the families better prepare children for the school year came the commission for trade union activities among women and children.

The company has fully realized benefits package, including children's issues are resolved successfully. This is kindergarten, and monthly payments, and recreation. In all, 1880 employees of school and preschool children. In accordance with the collective agreement for each of them paid a monthly allowance of 850 rubles. Every summer for the organization of summer camps and recreation of children bought tickets to summer camps. And this year, after changes in the organization of leisure and recreation of children, trade union continues to help parents. Was purchased 70 tickets to a country summer camp "Space" area at Alexinsky II and III shift. In addition, children with their parents relax in the resort of Anapa "Black Sea" and on the basis of rest "Sunny Beach" Dubensky district. In total, this year will improve more than 500 children.

To prepare for the new school year, school buildings patronized number 3 company was assisted in its repair in the amount of 400 thousand rubles.

These sorts of hidden costs KBP takes on on its own volition... there are some western companies with such social programs, but these are often part of marketing strategies or "human resources" programs to keep the workers happy at otherwise being underpaid.

Faced with the extra costs of properly looking after their workers many western companies simply move production offshore where they have no social responsibility for workers or their families and benefit from lower wages and much more lax safety requirements and that all goes to the bottom line... profit.

Personally I like what KBP does, and the next time I am going to buy an ATGM I will look at their products first...

Russia to Upgrade, Scale Down Gunpowder Production

16:10 11/03/2012
MOSCOW, March 11 (RIA Novosti)

Russia will overhaul its gunpowder manufacturing plants and start manufacturing superior gunpowder by 2016, but overall production will decline sharply, the Izvestia daily reported quoting a source in the Industry and Trade Ministry.



As a result of the modernization program, some of the plants will close and the total number of plants will shrink.



One reason is that some manufacturing facilities are located in residential areas.



Meanwhile, new gunpowder formulas and production technologies are being developed.

Executives at Russia’s two largest gunpowder plants - one in Tambov and the other in Kazan - have declined to comment on the modernization plans.

According to Izvestia, by 2016, the Russian Defense Ministry will reduce gunpowder procurement to 20,000-30,000 tons a year from the current 100,000-150,000 tons.

Hopefully the new more efficient propellent will greatly improve small arms performance with more consistent ammo, and cleaner burning ammo.

Hopefully also safety will be improved with propellent makers moved away from residential areas.

One thing I would be interested in is finding out how well the new propellent stores, because reducing production capacity by the amount they are talking about will have a serious impact on production capacity in Russia.

Of course the private sector could take over a little as export of small arms ammo for sporting purposes and other purposes should be a fairly solid business as the ammo tends to be cheaper than western ammo... with new cleaner burning higher energy more consistent propelents should lead to high muzzle velocities without increasing pressure too much, less residue so the weapons are are easier to clean after use, and a consistent burn of powder is a key to accuracy. Once you get your tightest groups on the paper, you can then shift the sights to centre the group on the bullseye and get good accuracy too.

Modern scopes like the new thermal scopes the VDV will be getting have built in laser rangefinders and Glonass receivers and ballistic computers.

Which brings us to a new point...

If they are planning a changeover in 2016 then that tells us they plan to pretty much replace all their current weapons in 2016.

If you think about it, new propellent will mean more efficient use of barrels, so the powder is used more efficiently and the pressure is scaled to the barrel length to accelerate the projectiles to as high a velocity as is possible in a specific barrel length.

The new ammo will mean all existing iron sights and ballistic computers, and optical sights will need to be adjusted for the new performance of the new ammo.

In many cases it might just be cheaper to replace the whole weapon... and introduce new calibres and get rid of old calibres...

In the future they should be using less ammo, with emphasis on accuracy in rifle fire and of course the use of simulations where no ammo or fuel is used at all will also greatly effect wear and tear on equipment.

All Defense Industry Plants Must Stay Afloat - Putin

Defense industry enterprises that are not part of the new rearmament program should not be neglected, Prime Minister and president-elect Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.

The program for the development of the Russian defense industry, prepared by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, does not envision the modernization of industrial plants, which have not been given defense orders under the state arms procurement program until 2020.

“Make sure that these plants are not neglected and left without defense orders or modernization plans,” Putin said at a meeting with government officials on the implementation of tasks set out in his program published during the recent presidential election campaign.

“We cannot do this to the workers at these plants,” he said.

Putin asked Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees the defense industry, and officials from with the Economic Development Ministry and the Health Ministry to help with the management of such plants, to resolve any social problems that may arise, supply the enterprises with alternative orders and retrain their personnel.

“We cannot just abandon them,” Putin said.

Putin has made social issues and the improvement of living conditions of the Russian citizens, especially the working class, a priority of his election campaign.

If you read the comments section of the above article:

http://en.rian.ru/mlitary_news/20120322/172332987.html

A Canadian chap suggests that Canada and Australia pulling out of the F-35 program could be an opportunity to sell Mig-35s.

I think he is being a bit optimistic in regard to Australia, but I think if MIG made a public statement that they were going to develop a 5th gen light fighter and were prepared to cooperate with foreign countries like Italy and Greece and Germany and France and Brazil and Canada and even Australia if they are interested to make a truly international program to make a new modern fighter aircraft it would be interesting to see the US back track on some things regarding the F-35... I think the UK will suddenly be allowed access to the software to integrate their own weapons and systems and the whole F-35 program will become much more flexible.

Even if it fails then the Russian investment will not be enormous and the experience will be useful. If it succeeds then Russia gets a new light fighter on the cheap and it will certainly hurt the F-35 program too.

Of course this thread is largely about the goals of Putin here not to retain old companies that keep making Soviet era stuff, but retooling, retraining and refocusing such companies to get them producing and their workers keep working.

Gary,


"A Canadian chap suggests that Canada and Australia pulling out of the F-35 program could be an opportunity to sell Mig-35s."

Yanks would never allow this to happen; politically it would be a no-goer!! But there is also teh questoin of overall compatability with their other assests. I'd suggest they wouldn't work [IFF]

Nothing makes something more desirable than being told you can't have it.

At one time Canadian aerospace technology was right up there with the Avro Arrow... the right marketing campaign from Russia pointing out that Canadas neighbour it its south seems to have a lot of control over decisions made in Canada and their past record for making decisions for Canada have not always worked out the best for Canada... what did Canada gain by going to Vietnam and now Afghanistan... is Canada really safer because of this?

I certainly agree that buying Russian kit is not a high probability, and importantly these are for political reasons rather than practical reasons.

Countries with large borders to patrol with relatively small populations like Australia and Canada and Russia actually have a bit in common and I would expect if they each sat down and formulated their own wants and needs together they could come up with an excellent aircraft... but I realise that is not likely in the current political climate.

Perhaps the US needs to start one or two more pointless and wasteful wars and Canada and Australia might realise they haven't hitched their wagon to the gravy train, they have hitched it to the SS Titanic.

Regarding IFF the Russians would never share their own IFF codes with anyone and they would have no reason to. The Canadians already have an air defence network and will have their own code system they can install themselves to ensure any new aircraft they introduce are compatible.


The US alternative will be Super Hornets or the more expensive option would be the F-15E or a variant.

The Russians could sweeten the pot by offering Australia and Canada the chance to develop a light 5th gen fighter with Mig.

If it fails then it cost the Russian military nothing, if it succeeds then a Russian light 5th gen fighter is developed on the cheap and probably available in numbers to replace conventional fighters faster.

I agree that while it makes economic and military sense it will never happen with the current politics.

Seems to me that the best way for Russia to break into markets is with weapons.

South Korea didn't really have much to do with Russia till it got some T-80s to pay off debt for the South Korean electronic components they were buying. Now it is SAMs in joint development. Who knows where it might lead.

NATO countries seem to be reducing the size of their armoured forces, so if high tech European companies want to get involved in state of the art armoured vehicles then currently Russia is the biggest game in town...

Yeah, it is pretty frustrating, but it is changing slowly.

I remember in NZ Guns magazine the 7.62 x 39mm round being described as being largely pointless in New Zealand and that you were much better off with a 30-30.

Well an abundance of SKS rifles and the low price of the Russian ammo... $14-16 bucks for 20 rounds when you buy one packet at a time compared to $30+ for NATO calibres... it is not hard to see the economic benefits of converting an old 303 at about 50 bucks for 20 rounds.

I think most people these days blame the Americans for the state of the world economy and so opinions might start to change.

A major disaster in the Asia Pacific region in 5 years time and the Russians bowl up with a Mistral class carrier to help and I think opinions will change even more.

I still think NZ should ditch the over priced Hercs and replace them with a dozen new build Il-476s which would actually have a strategic flight range with a payload and we could probably get all 12 for less than the cost of one C-17. Apart from the A-400M... is that program still going?, we really don't have much choice and our stupid government will take late model Hercs, which admitted to have improved performance, but also greatly increased prices.

It would be cheaper to move up a plane size, except the only American plane in that slot is the ridiculously expensive C-17... half a billion for one plane... we could buy submarines that that sort of money...

But no, stupid NZ government will stick with American which means a plane that could actually make it to Australia with a payload and is cheap enough to buy and operate in numbers, and would be a welcome contribution to foreign joint operations is not to be considered because it is not American.

Even if we had a Labour party in power I don't think they would make the sensible choice.

They don't even have the brains to pretend to consider it even as an outside chance to get a better deal on the over priced western aircraft they were always going to buy... just look at our new helos... quite capable, but gold plated.