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More Weapons in Russia
// If the new state order can be met
The new government Military-Industrial commission will hold its first official meeting this Thursday. The agenda for that meeting includes a review of the Russian defense industry's fulfillment of the state order in 2005 and confirmation of the projected order for 2007, when expenses on the defense order will increase by 20 percent as compared to this year. Deputy chairman of the commission Vladislav Putilin said that the Ministry of Defense order for 2007 would be 302.7 billion rubles. The largest part of the order, 145 billion rubles, would go for the purchase of new military equipment and weapons. That is a 22 percent increase over this year. Another 60 billion rubles (up 15.7 percent over this year) will go to reconditioning existing equipment, and 98 billion rubles would be spent on research and development, an increase of 20 percent from this year. In addition, 14.6 billion rubles will be spent to equip the forces of the internal troops and Interior Ministry forces.
The fulfillment of last year's military order will also be discussed at the meeting. According to Putilin, the order was met by 97.3 percent last year, leaving more than a billion rubles' worth of orders unfulfilled. “Not all enterprises were ready for the growth of the state order that took place last year,” Putilin commented.
The continual growth of both the state order for munitions and foreign orders, which increased by $10 billion to top $23 billion last year, cast doubt on the Russian defense industry's ability meet all its orders. Putilin considers the order fully realistic, however. “We determine the order based on the defense industry's ability,” he said. He added that the Military Industrial Commission intends to improve coordination between programs. A Kommersant source in the government said that it was poor coordination that was responsible for shortfalls in supplies to modernize Topol-M ballistic missiles, explaining that the Russian Space Agency is responsible for creating the shafts to house the missile. There are eight ready missiles in the factory without shafts available for them.
The Military-Industrial Commission was established by presidential order on March 20. It is headed by Defense Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Ivanov and made up of deputy chairman Putilin and five more people who were appointed by Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov.
Konstantin Lantratov
All the Article in Russian as of May 10, 2006
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Photo: Mihail Fomichev
