Re-arming the arsenals

Russia is defining its military budget for 2010. At the end of October the State Duma, a lower chamber of the Russian parliament, approved in the first reading the federal budget for the next year. According to the draft budget, the spending for the national defense will amount to 1,253 billion rubles (about $43 billion under the current exchange rate). This figure in rubles shows a slight increase by 3.4% compared to 2009, but it’s much smaller than a year ago when the national defense expenses grew by 16% compared to the previous year. Nevertheless the share of military expenses of the overall budget spending will increase from 12% to 18%. It shows that despite the efforts to cut the budget expenses in the hard times of the economic crisis the Russian government is keen to support and strengthen the national armed forces.
But the parliament members criticized the draft budget, saying that taken into account the forecasted inflation rate for the next year the real volume of the defense expenses will be by 2.3% smaller than in 2008. The Duma’s Defense Committee also mentioned that the share of the national defense expenditures in the country’s GDP will decrease from 3.1% in 2009 to 2.9% in 2010. According to the lawmakers, this figure is below the level of the defense expenditures set up by Russia’s Security Council – 3.21% of GDP.
More than 75% of all defense expenditures in 2010 – 946 billion rubles will go for the armed forces. This article shows a 5% increase while the most of the other expenditures such as defense researches and the development of the nuclear weapons have been cut down. The largest growth is planned for the spending for the peacekeeping and collective security missions. They will skyrocket from 0.6 billion ruble in 2009 to 11.1 billion ruble in the next year. The most of this money – 10.5 billion rubles will be spent for the construction of the Russian military bases in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
The Defense Committee also points out that the draft budget for 2010 calls for 10% decrease in the defense procurement. As the result the share of the procurement in the Defense Ministry expenditures will amount to just 44.8% compared to more than 47% in 2009. The committee stresses that it goes against the earlier plans to reach 50:50 balance between the Armed Forces’ re-armaments programs and operational expenditures by 2011. By 2015 the balance should be 30 to 70 in favor of the procurement, mention the lawmakers.
But on the other side, the procurement budget for 2010 will give more priorities to the purchase of new weapons and military equipment. The weapons purchases will amount to 65% of the procurement budget compared to 56% in 2009. The expenses for the repair of the existing equipment will contrary will be decreased from 18% to 15% of the procurement spending.

New procurement priorities
Earlier this year the government discussed the new defense procurement strategy that will be reflected in the defense budget for 2010. During his meeting with the country’s President Dmitry Medvedev in July the deputy prime minister Sergey Ivanov announced that the defense procurement budget for 2010 will be based on seven priorities.
The main priority, however, will remain quite traditional – the development of the strategic nuclear forces. Besides, the 2010 budget will focus on space systems and ballistic missile defense; purchase of new weapons and equipment for conventional forces as well as repair of their existing hardware at minimally required level. As the fifth priority Ivanov pointed out the implementation of long-term contract for sophisticated weapons signed by the Defense Ministry and other security agencies in 2008-2009. He explained that the backlog of such contracts amounted to 178 billion rubles (about $5.7 billion).
The last two priorities are evidently the response to the results of the last year war in the Caucasus. The Russian military will reinforce their forces in the Southern Russia and The Black Sea fleet. Following the earlier decisions taken by the Russian president and the prime minister the Armed Forces will also increase the procurement of new combat aircraft.
"These priorities will enable us to fulfill the government defense procurement program and to maintain the combat effectiveness of the Armed Forces and other security services at the required level", explained Sergey Ivanov. In September the vice premier announced that the government defense order that includes the purchase and repair of armaments for the military and law-enforcement agencies, will grow by 8% in 2010 to reach 1.1 trillion rubles.

From repair to new weapons
The procurement strategy allows the Russian military to increase the purchase of new equipment. As the deputy defense minister and chief of armaments of the Russian Armed Forces Vladimir Popovkin has recently mentioned, "for the last two year we managed to change the defense procurement situation – in fact, from the repair orders we began to switch to the purchases of weapons in batches suitable to re-arm a company, battalion and squadron".
The results of such shift are already visible this year. According to Popovkin, in 2009 the Russian Armed Forces are to receive 9 strategic missiles, 6 spacecraft, 43 combat aircraft, 41 helicopter, one corvette, three Iskander tactical missile launchers and 13 missiles for them.
Among other services, the significant share of the procurement expenses – up to 40% goes to the development of the naval strategic nuclear forces. Nevertheless, the plans for this year prove that the military are keen to strengthen their air power – for the fist time over the more than a decade the Air Force are receive large numbers of new aircraft. Partly it became possible due to the refusal of Algeria to take 34 MiG-29SMT and MiG-29UBT fighters. At the end of 2008 the Russian Air Force agreed to take the rejected aircraft. The first 12 aircraft were handed over to the Russian military in the beginning of the year. Besides, the Air Force should have received modernized Su-27SM fighter and Su-25 ground attack aircraft, a pair of Su-24 tactical reconnaissance aircraft and a first Yak-130 advanced jet trainer.
Moreover, in 2009 the Air Force placed some new orders. In August it signed contracts for delivery of 64 aircraft in 2010-2015, including 12 single-seat Su-27SM and 4 Su-30M2 double-seat fighters and 48 new Su-35 multirole combat jets. These contracts were supplemented by large order of air-launched weapons for Su-35 and MiG-31BM aircraft.
So taken into account the new orders, the Air Force will continue to modernize its fleet – in 2010 the service is expected to purchase 17 combat aircraft and 48 helicopters. Besides, next year the Russian military plan to purchase one mobile strategic missile system, 5 battalions of S-400 long range SAM system and to launch 11 military satellites, told Popovkin. The Navy should receive two new submarines, one corvette and will launch the construction of five more ships.
Nevertheless, the deputy defense minister stated the further re-armament plans may be delayed due to the limited production capacity of the national defense industry. This problem has been recently discussed at the special meeting on development of the defense industrial complex headed by the Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. He pointed out the necessity to speed up the modernization of the defense production capacities and called to the local manufacturers to improve the quality of the produced weapons and to cut down the production costs. According to Medvedev, this will allow the industry to reduce the price for the defense products and will enable the military to expand their procurement programs.   

Некоммерческое использование материалов сайта ATO.ru (в том числе цитирование и сокращенное изложение) разрешается при условии размещения прямой ссылки на цитируемый материал или на главную страницу www.ato.ru. Любое коммерческое использование, а также перепечатка материалов возможны только с письменного разрешения редакции.