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Night Hunters Heading for Venezuela
// Dmitry Medvedev and Hugo Chavez get friendly with weapons
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will make his military-technical debut this month. Venezuela intends to buy aviation and naval military technology worth a total of around $2 billion in the next month. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is expected to make an official visit to Moscow at the end of May to conclude the necessary agreements with Medvedev.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is planning to come to Moscow to sign new agreements on Russian-Venezuelan military and technical cooperation before the end of May. “President Chavez has already spoken with both Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev since the presidential elections in Russia,” Venezuelan Ambassador to Russia Alexis Rafael Navarro Rojas stated sat the end of April. “This is evidence that he intends to see the Russian people gain. Very likely, Chavez will return to Russia to see Putin, his friend, and President Elect Medvedev.” According to the ambassador, Medvedev and Chavez came to an agreement in March on mutual visits.
Clearly, the agreement with Venezuela will be the first large arms contract signed under the patronage of the new Russian president. Former president Putin paid particular attention to military cooperation in his international contacts, along with energy. In the time he was in power, export of Russian arms rose from $3.68 billion in 2000 to about $7.5 billion last year.
For the last three years, Venezuela has been one of the largest purchasers of Russian weaponry and military hardware. Caracas has already obtained about $4-billion worth of weapons from Russia. “Russia is meeting all of its obligations, and very meticulously, in the area of military-technical cooperation,” the Venezuelan ambassador said. At the end of last week, at the end of Venezuelan group military forces exercises, Brigadier Gen. Luis Jose Berroteran Acosta stated that plans for the reequipping of Venezuelan military aviation were being successfully implemented. “The Air Force will receive its last four Su-30MK2V fighter jets this year. Thus, all 24 of the planes ordered from Russia will be in service in the country’s Air Force,” he said.
Now Venezuela is ready to place a new weapons order. The Polish magazine Altair reports that the Venezuelan Air Force has completed tests of two Russian Il-76MD-90 transport planes and was satisfied with them. The planes will remain in Venezuela as a part of a group of 12 transport planes. In the near future, a contract will be concluded for the purchase of the two planes and eight more Il-76MD-90 planes and to Il-78-MK refueling planes. Those planes are to replace six old American Lockheed C-130H Hercules transport planes and two Boeing 707-320C refueling planes. The contract will be worth a total of $600 million. Deliveries will be completed next year.
This will be the first major contract for the sale of Il-76/78 planes since the fiasco with plans for the delivery of 38 of the planes to China (34 Il-76MD and 4 Il-78MK). The $1.045-billion Russian-Chinese was signed by the Chinese Defense Ministry and Rosoboronexport in September 2005, with deliveries planned between 2008 and 2012. However, the Tashkent Aviation Production Association refused to sign a contract with the Rosoboronexport commission for the mass production of planes of that type at the price agreed upon with China. Sources in the Russian government said that the Tashkent plant had had no large orders since the end of the 1990s, and it would not be capable of fulfilling such a large order without significant subsidies. The plant estimated that the real cost of assembling the 38 Chinese machines would more than $400 million more than the price in the contract with Beijing. Consequently, the Russians were unable to confirm the contract with Beijing. Now, the Ilyushin company thinks “the Tashkent plant is capable of assembling ten machines for Venezuela in by the deadline agreed upon.”
Caracas has expressed the intention of obtaining new Russian Mi-28NE Night Hunter strike helicopters. The Venezuelan Air Force plans to use them to supplement its force of ten Mi-35M helicopter it bought. It seems that Caracas will buy no fewer than ten Night Hunters for a total of $200 million, with delivery beginning in the second half of 2009. The Venezuelan Air Force will include the Mi-28NE models in its 15th special operations air group to replace its outdated American Rockwell OV-10 Bronco light storm helicopters purchased in the early 1970s. That will be the first export of the Mi-28NE. Andrey Shibitov, general director of the Helicopters of Russia holding, reported at the beginning of the year that “negotiations on deliveries of an export version of the Mi-28NE are underway with more than three states.” It was reported earlier that the Night Hunters may be exported to two Latin American countries and Saudi Arabia. Mi-28N helicopters were accepted into the Russian Air Force only last September. The first four of them will join the Russian Air Force.
In addition, Moscow and Caracas have reached an agreement on the conditions of the contract for four Project 636 submarines, estimated at a minimum of $1.2 billion. The new Russian-Venezuelan contract package may reach $2 billion.
Konstantin Lantratov
All the Article in Russian as of May 12, 2008
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