In future we may have to shop elsewhere--Russian arms industry in decline

ashdoc

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MOSCOW: Russia's ailing defence industry has received one of its biggest boosts in years with a huge fighter jet deal with India, but much of the sector remains stuck in a Soviet-era time warp, analysts said.

India announced Wednesday it planned to buy up to 300 fifth-generation stealth fighters that would be jointly developed with Russia in a deal that may be worth up to USD 30 billion (22 billion euros).

Last year's record arms sales helped mask systemic troubles in Russia's defence industry that have pushed even the Russian military to seek hardware abroad in its drive to overhaul outdated weaponry.

"Russia needs the Indian money like it needs air to accelerate the production of fighter jets for its own military," said Ruslan Pukhov, head of Moscow-based Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies ( CAST).

"It's not only good but revolutionary news." The deal is the biggest ever for India -- one of Russia's top three arms buyers -- and crowned two years of growing defence bookings for Russia that will ensure a steady revenue in the coming years.

But Russia has struggled to innovate technologies to meet the needs of modern warfare and is relying excessively on a few high-performing refurbished Soviet-era models, which form the bulk of its arms sales.

President Dmitry Medvedev lashed out at the "poor" state of the industry last month, as the defence ministry announced it was tripling its procurements budget over the next decade, bucking global trends.

Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov stressed Russia would not hesitate to spend the allotted 19 trillion rubles (USD 613 billion) on imported arms where Russian makes "did not meet the required standards."

"Our producers want to issue outdated models, but we don't want to buy them," Serdyukov told the weekly Russian Newsweek.

The world's second-largest arms supplier has been in talks with France to buy its Mistral-class warships in what would be its first ever purchase of hardware from a NATO member.

The planned procurements are part of a massive military reform that gained speed after Russia's 2008 war with Georgia showed the need to drop its Cold War-style structure to ready for modern-day, irregular warfare.

"Overall the situation in the defence industry is very negative and not consistent: It needs to be diversified," military expert Konstantin Makienko said.


Read more: India jets order boosts ailing Russian defence industry - The Times of India India jets order boosts ailing Russian defence industry - The Times of India
 

ashdoc

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Most of our military hardware is of russian origin .

Nehru's antipathy for the west ,combined with his pro-communist leanings meant that we established a cozy military relationship with the former USSR , which supplied arms at 1/3rd rate to indians.

Our air force got loaded with migs ,and sometimes this was not always beneficial as planes like mig-21s turned out to be flying coffins .

Navy too got kashin class destroyers which were better ,as were the kilo-class submarines.

With the ending of the cold war ,the russian military budget came down drastically ,and no orders for several weapon systems were in place ,as no money was there.

Well ,the situation now is that India may have to bail out the russians if their arms industry has to be saved.

Otherwise ,without any orders ,it just might collapse.......
 

ajtr

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russian industry was in dumps in 1990 then india financed su-30 program now today india has best fighter in its kitty.
 

sayareakd

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russian industry was in dumps in 1990 then india financed su-30 program now today india has best fighter in its kitty.
not only finance but we also paid for R&D also that is why it is better then Su30 MKK.
 

badguy2000

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well, several years ago, here I once said that Russia's defence industry would decline after Russia ate up the fat Soivet left .

At that time ,many Indians jumped and bashed me.....

now, it is time to judge who is the right.
 

pankaj nema

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If Russian government really wants to improve quality then why doesnt it increase the salaries of its engineers who are forced to migrate to the west.

And if really Russian govern ment decides to buy arms from the west by ,spending its scarce forex reserves , then which former cold war adversary will give Russia the latest technology
 

plugwater

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Russia is not in danger. Last week only they announced 600billion spending for its defense forces.

Why do you think west wont sell new techs to Russians! Heard about Mistral and Israeli UAV?
 

ashdoc

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=sad
Russia is not in danger. Last week only they announced 600billion spending for its defense forces.
some of it will however go towards buying non-russian weapons.:angry_7:
 

badguy2000

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If Russian government really wants to improve quality then why doesnt it increase the salaries of its engineers who are forced to migrate to the west.

And if really Russian govern ment decides to buy arms from the west by ,spending its scarce forex reserves , then which former cold war adversary will give Russia the latest technology
it has not much to do with the engineer's salary,but have something to do with Russia's shrinking industry chains,which is already broken.

Once, Soviet had global second most full industry chains,although many sections of the chain were less advanced than west's.
But after Soviet collapsed,many sections of Soviet's full industry were left in other republiics of USSR . Russia not only could not rebuilt missing sections,but also could not maintain the sections left in Russia.
 

badguy2000

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Russia is not in danger. Last week only they announced 600billion spending for its defense forces.

Why do you think west wont sell new techs to Russians! Heard about Mistral and Israeli UAV?
600 billion ? for how long?
600 billion for 5 years might be something. 600 billion for 10 years might be a few things. 600 billion for 20 years is just nothing.
 

sandeepdg

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I seriously doubt that the Russians have the financial resources to pull off this stated 600 billion dollar stunt !! There's no dearth of talent there, but there's acute lack of resources for funding cutting edge research in the defense sector, and this has been one of the main reasons for the downfall of military industrial complex. A country that was the first in putting a man in space and launching a satellite is surely capable of doing great things that can always fascinate the world.
 

maomao

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well, several years ago, here I once said that Russia's defence industry would decline after Russia ate up the fat Soivet left .

At that time ,many Indians jumped and bashed me.....

now, it is time to judge who is the right.
You are still incorrect, because this is speculative news above all its a justification (in the making) to why we are buying American and European weapons. You need to read between the lines not take everything literally.
 

Agnostic_Indian

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Russian experience and talent with indian money can brign magic..we can also learn new things from jv's. america wants to dominate and control and make us always dependent on them..they will not share any knowledge but russia is not like that..yes they some times overprice, delay, and support of spare parts also is a problem.. But still feel comfortable with russian arms rather than american.
 

Tshering22

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MOSCOW: Russia's ailing defence industry has received one of its biggest boosts in years with a huge fighter jet deal with India, but much of the sector remains stuck in a Soviet-era time warp, analysts said.

India announced Wednesday it planned to buy up to 300 fifth-generation stealth fighters that would be jointly developed with Russia in a deal that may be worth up to USD 30 billion (22 billion euros).

Last year's record arms sales helped mask systemic troubles in Russia's defence industry that have pushed even the Russian military to seek hardware abroad in its drive to overhaul outdated weaponry.

"Russia needs the Indian money like it needs air to accelerate the production of fighter jets for its own military," said Ruslan Pukhov, head of Moscow-based Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies ( CAST).

"It's not only good but revolutionary news." The deal is the biggest ever for India -- one of Russia's top three arms buyers -- and crowned two years of growing defence bookings for Russia that will ensure a steady revenue in the coming years.

But Russia has struggled to innovate technologies to meet the needs of modern warfare and is relying excessively on a few high-performing refurbished Soviet-era models, which form the bulk of its arms sales.

President Dmitry Medvedev lashed out at the "poor" state of the industry last month, as the defence ministry announced it was tripling its procurements budget over the next decade, bucking global trends.

Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov stressed Russia would not hesitate to spend the allotted 19 trillion rubles (USD 613 billion) on imported arms where Russian makes "did not meet the required standards."

"Our producers want to issue outdated models, but we don't want to buy them," Serdyukov told the weekly Russian Newsweek.

The world's second-largest arms supplier has been in talks with France to buy its Mistral-class warships in what would be its first ever purchase of hardware from a NATO member.

The planned procurements are part of a massive military reform that gained speed after Russia's 2008 war with Georgia showed the need to drop its Cold War-style structure to ready for modern-day, irregular warfare.

"Overall the situation in the defence industry is very negative and not consistent: It needs to be diversified," military expert Konstantin Makienko said.


Read more: India jets order boosts ailing Russian defence industry - The Times of India India jets order boosts ailing Russian defence industry - The Times of India


I don't think that Russia's significance in our arms industry is going our soon. The thing is, the moment Russian industry feels the crunch, they'd be smart enough to conduct JV companies if they cannot sell it themselves with our own L&T, TATA, Mahindra and other bigwigs. We must remember that Russia still is far far more technologically advanced than we are in arms industries and therefore, this is a golden opportunity that India has got for itself--- a defence partner that gets the benefit of sharing profits (which is better than 0 profits anyday), we get some critical foundation technologies and at the same time both Indian and Russian militaries become cutting edge and easily interoperable incase joint actions against terrorist agencies are needed in future.

You might call me a dream boy, but I am seeing a great potential of unparalleled arms manufacturing and military cooperation between India and Russia in the coming future. Remember that in the coming 10-15 years, most of the stuff we would be quite self-sufficient and to speed up research, development, estimates and strategy, India cannot find a more willing, reliable and long term partner than Russians (apart from Israel of course). This means we don't have to look elsewhere to "shop" as most of the stuff would be similarly done as BrahMos or even better deals where the technology would be tilting in our favour.

If the NATO effort in Afghanistan fails and our darling neighbour just implodes, we might as well need to jump into action before Taliban enters POK and (goodness forbid) India. This would mean Russia would equally be sleepless about these scumbags entering its area of power and influence i.e. the CAR. This is where we will be coordinating with the Bear BIG TIME not just in intelligence but also possibly joint special forces operations, recon missions, sabotage and independent and light surprise assaults if it gets down to a situation as bad as that. Here, jointly manufactured cutting-edge weapons technologies for both countries would be coming in handy bigtime. As our own domestic industrial base increases, we will enter into more JVs with Russian companies like Izhmash, Uravagonzavod, United Aircraft Corporation etc and even space companies like ROSKOSMOS.

The net result of this would be:

- Russian industry would make it into future
- Indian industries would get a huge boost
- Both armed forces will be highly interoperable and synergized due to almost similar platforms possibly

A windfall gain for our own industries if our GOI babus can make it easier for such things to happen through removing red-tapism nonsense.
 

civfanatic

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Why would we "shop elsewhere" in the future??

In the future, we should shop from only INDIA and no where else. The day that all our tanks, fighter jets, ships, etc. are made in India is the day that we will truly be safe.

Russian arms will last us another decade. Joint ventures will last us another decade after that. But from 2030 onwards, any foreign military equipment (be it Russian, French, Israeli, or other) should be shunned.
 

pmaitra

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For products, we should shop predominantly from India and maybe a little bit from here and there.
For consultants, technicians, scientists, professors, we should always shop not only in Russia but wherever we can. We need them to groom our future scientists, so that we do not have to shop outside India.
 

Parthy

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We should not boycott our cold war friend.. It is Russia who pressured China and supplied arms during 1962 war.. We should jointly boost defence ties and manufacturing..

We are the sole-close mate to Russia and they indeed believe in that... Let us be a Loyal friend... :happy_8:
 

Neil

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We should not boycott our cold war friend.. It is Russia who pressured China and supplied arms during 1962 war.. We should jointly boost defence ties and manufacturing..

We are the sole-close mate to Russia and they indeed believe in that... Let us be a Loyal friend... :happy_8:
russia didnt supply anything to us during 1962 it was US....it did it in 1971.....

russia doest consider us to be their close mate n stuffs...ithey just care about the money we provide them.....live in reality bro there are no friends or enemies in world politics there are just interest.....
 

Parthy

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russia didnt supply anything to us during 1962 it was US....it did it in 1971.....

russia doest consider us to be their close mate n stuffs...ithey just care about the money we provide them.....live in reality bro there are no friends or enemies in world politics there are just interest.....
If Russia is interested in India, then why can't it be a vice-versa?? We know we have a very long relationship with Russia since cold-war..

ithey just care about the money we provide them.....live in reality bro there are no friends or enemies in world politics there are just interest.....
Yes, its all about money in this world... And we need them to keep everybody's interest on us. If you're not considering Russia as our closes Ally who else will you consider??
 

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