The domestic military-industrial complex has made a leap forward, primarily due to a large-scale program of rearmament of the army and the expansion of sales markets. But the war in Syria also played a role, in which some of the latest domestic developments were tested. What can the Russian army boast about in the near future?
The state of science and high-tech industries in Russia has traditionally been correlated with the state of the military-industrial complex, in common parlance - the "defense industry". In the twentieth century, the lion's share of domestic promising developments was carried out in the interests of the military and other security officials. On the one hand, this created the most powerful physical, technical and mathematical schools, supported not only applied, but also fundamental research. On the other hand, by the end of the 1980s, a paradoxical situation had formed in the USSR: the country, which created super-complex space and nuclear technologies, was unable to provide its population with a sufficient number of normal TVs and washing machines. The subsequent experiments on the reprofiling and dismantling of defense research institutes and factories, the purchase of ready-made foreign technologies led to what they began with: you need to be able to do everything yourself, because there are sanctions and restrictions, but a free world market, on the contrary, does not exist.
The Russian civilian sector of the high-tech industry has not yet risen to its feet, and in some places is more likely dead than alive. It is enough to look into any apartment and evaluate who and in which countries created the electrical and electronic household appliances available there. Experiments in the spirit of "beating swords into plowshares" showed that Russian radar creators in general could not learn how to make, for example, microwave ovens, but they did not forget how to design radars, so the innovative products of the Russian military-industrial complex continue to regularly come to the attention of international media and experts.
Within this framework, the war in Syria remains the main background, which is quite understandable. In addition to fighting terrorist groups, it, in fact, serves as a giant testing ground for military developments, which, in general, is not hidden by the military leadership of the Russian Federation. Moreover, we are talking not just about testing in the conditions of the desert, but also when interacting with unfriendly technologies of "Western partners", directly or indirectly peeking out from behind the backs of local bearded men.
The list of new or deeply modernized Russian developments that have been spotted in Syria is extensive - especially in terms of aviation and missile technology (given the predominantly remote nature of the war). First, it is combat aviation: the latest Su-35S, Su-30SM fighters, Su-34 fighter-bombers, and Su-30 multipurpose heavy fighters. Secondly, these are the Kh-101 and Caliber high-precision missiles with their famous voyage from the Caspian Sea. However, if the creation of new aircraft and missiles is a traditionally strong area in the USSR and Russia, then, for example, combat robots is a relatively new global trend that has not passed the Russian defense industry, and business is not limited to a noisyly promoted cyborg on an ATV.
In particular, in Syria (and before that - in Chechnya and Ingushetia), mine-clearing robots "Uran-6" were tested in the case. This remotely controlled vehicle with a trawl system is capable of destroying ammunition in the ground or initiating its detonation. In the SAR, it was actively used by sappers in Palmyra - judging by the shots of the explosions, the robot did not get bored from the lack of tasks. In mid-January, the chief of the engineering troops of the RF Armed Forces, Lieutenant-General Yuri Stavitsky, announced the following models being developed on the basis of "Uranus" based on the results of its field tests.
But if a sapper robot is an officially recognized device for supporting operations, then the picture with the use of fire support robots in the RF Armed Forces is still based mainly on rumors. Russian and Western sources report the use of Russian offensive systems such as "Argo" and "Platform-M". Such developments really exist in the armed forces and are capable of both collecting information about the battlefield and destroying detected targets under the control of the operator. The blogosphere reported that there was at least one fact of a "high-tech" assault on the fortified area by Russian robots in conjunction with the Syrian infantry, Russian artillery support under the control of the UAV and overall coordination through the Andromeda-D battlefield control system.
A trend close to robotization is the appearance in the Russian army of a security system for objects made in the form of stationary and mobile combat platforms, specialized, for example, for the needs of the Strategic Missile Forces. Armed with automatic grenade launchers and machine guns, they can move out of a protected shelter to fire at detected saboteurs, or move with the same purpose on the ground. Thus, the post of the "man with a gun" will be additionally strengthened by an electronic armed assistant.
One cannot but rejoice for the Crimean developers of high-tech weapons who are not sitting idle after the reunification of the peninsula with Russia. So, in the Sevastopol JSC Scientific and Technical Center Impulse-2, a universal remote-controlled autonomous combat module "Whirlwind" was created, which is being tested on a robotic combat platform on the BMP-3 chassis and other carriers.
An important component of the above-described means of high-tech power operations is the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In this respect, the previous year was rich in announced developments. The progress with drones in Russia is especially obvious when compared with the situation of the five-day war in South Ossetia, after which the Russian Federation urgently bought ready-made models and their production lines from Israel against the background of a clear failure in its own development. Eight years later, the picture is in a sense the opposite: the Israeli air defense reports a failed attempt to destroy someone in their skies (the IDF hints whose) a UAV that flew from Syria - he survived a successive attack by two anti-aircraft missiles and an F-16 fighter-interceptor. Another promising example of the use of drones is an attempt to pair them with tanks: developers from the Moscow Aviation Institute and Moscow State Technical University. Bauman created a device flying 20-30 meters above the tank, receiving energy from it through a cable and transmitting information to the board. This gives the crew an overview of the battlefield and can quickly pinpoint targets.
In the best traditions of the “shield and sword” struggle in Russia, the evolution of electronic warfare (EW) systems continues. This also generally reflects the global trend towards the transfer of confrontation to the field of digital technologies, to the interception of weapons control systems. It is worth noting at least two complexes that have visited Syria.
The first of them - "Leer-3" - a hybrid technology of UAVs and electronic warfare. The mobile systems are mounted on the basis of the Orlan-10 drone and the vehicle control center and have been operating in the army since 2015. In fact, they are capable of simulating GSM base stations, suppressing and replacing cell towers, after which all calls and messages pass through completely military-controlled equipment, becoming a valuable source of data for intelligence officers. In addition, subscribers in the Leer-3 area receive SMS and audio messages, and in the near future they will receive video clips as well. So the Russian military in Aleppo sent messages to civilians about the location of corridors to exit the city and areas for the distribution of humanitarian aid. Using a similar technology, the militants received samples of applications for a truce from the RF Armed Forces. Thus, planes throwing leaflets over enemy positions with a proposal to surrender received a high-tech competitor. According to experts, in the future, drones will be able to create virtual mobile networks up to the interception of traffic control and calls from users' smartphones.
The second electronic warfare system that gained fame in Syria was "Krasukha-4". It is designed to counter a wide range of onboard radars of enemy strike and reconnaissance aircraft. It is argued that the system is capable of suppressing not only the radar, but also the UAV control radio channels, which makes the complex especially relevant in modern digital high-tech warfare.
The evolution of Russian military technologies is not only about combat robots, interception of information flows and other realities of digital warfare. At the moment, there is a subtle evolution in many areas, for example, in such a specific industry as the fight against biological threats. In this area, there are no such striking artifacts as automatic steel monsters with grenade launchers rushing through the desert, but the scale of the danger of biological threats is much greater. It is not for nothing that so much attention all over the world is focused on the foci of epidemics, for example, the Ebola or Zika viruses, about the contribution of Russian biologists to the fight against which the VZGLYAD newspaper has already written.
So, following the results of the fight against the outbreak of anthrax in Yamal, the "Modular complex for the analysis of pathogenic biological materials and decision support for operational groups of the Russian Ministry of Defense operating in emergency situations of a biological nature" (MCA PBA) - or simply "Sych" became known. In fact, it is a multifunctional autonomous biological laboratory on wheels, capable of moving into the biological emergency zone and promptly receiving information about the pathogen. The key factor here is speed. Traditional methods of analyzing infections took from tens of hours to tens of days. Modern ones are based on PCR analysis, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and other express methods that allow obtaining data in almost real time. In the developed complex, all the necessary equipment is combined with microbiological protection boxes and is placed on the chassis of typical KamAZ trucks. Before the Yamal incident, the ICA PBA was on duty, for example, in the zone of the 2014 Olympics in Sochi. The RChBZ troops have similar new systems for radiation and chemical monitoring.
In fact, at the moment, the demonstration of the results of the return on investments made in the Armed Forces and the military-industrial complex in the period after 2008 continues. Indisputable is not only the fact of survival and preservation of the domestic intellectual and industrial potential after the hard times of the 90s, but also its active evolution in recent years. Further trends can be judged by the results of the publication of research results of such large structures as the Advanced Research Fund (analogous to DARPA in the USA), but also by developments from smaller, but nontrivially thinking "intellectual front fighters" from experimental "scientific companies". And since the drift of military developments into the civilian sector is not only a perceived necessity, but also a goal formulated by the head of state, I hope that in the foreseeable future we will see not only sapper robots, but also, for example, original Russian domestic robots.
