As has been repeatedly said and written, at the end of September, not all contracts for the State Defense Order for this year were concluded. The "balance" was about five percent. And they talked about this in different ways: in some publications it was written that only 5% of the contracts remained to be concluded, while in others the headlines shouted about the failure of the order. Let's leave the news feed on the conscience of the journalists who submitted it.
The total volume of the defense order for this year amounted to more than 580 billion rubles. Advance payments have already been made for three quarters of orders - almost $ 370 billion has been spent on this. It is expected that all products for these orders will be delivered by the end of November. Although, if manufacturers take care of the relevant issue in time, the terms may be shifted by two to three months. The main thing is that the Military-Industrial Commission was notified in time about the impossibility of completing the work on time and issued its permission for this.
Russian Helicopters, Almaz-Antey Air Defense Concern, the Moscow Institute of Heat Engineering and the United Aircraft Corporation have already received their orders and are working on them. But with the United Shipbuilding Corporation, things are worse. A considerable part of those five percent is accounted for by the USC. The Ministry of Defense is not satisfied with the fact that shipbuilders are unable or unwilling to provide a clear and transparent estimate for their work. First Deputy Defense Minister A. Sukhorukov notes that a thorough study of the estimates submitted for the competition allows reducing the total cost of equipment or weapons by 15-20%. And this is only due to the clearly inflated profits of the competing companies.
And one can understand this undertaking by the Ministry of Defense. It is useful to recall the bad American experience: with the beginning of the Cold War and the arms race, the Pentagon began to demand new technology from designers and factories. Often with characteristics that are difficult to reach for the time of the formation of the terms of reference. But the United States did not skimp and paid for all the required R&D, regardless of their final cost. In the conditions of the American market economy, such an approach to financing could not but lead to an increase in the number of all intermediaries, commissions on tenders, commissions on technical requirements, and so on and so forth. A particularly striking example of all this is the F-22 fighter. When this plane was only in the form of a technical assignment, it was planned to purchase it in an amount of more than a thousand pieces. However, the program gradually increased in price and in 1993, 1994 and 1997, plans were reduced to 750, 442 and 339 units, respectively. Later, in the 2000s, when the US defense budget was constantly decreasing, the tendency to decrease purchases of Raptor continued, and in 2010 it was decided to limit itself to only 187 vehicles. In turn, the promising RAH-64 Comanche helicopter did not go into production at all. And before the end of the work, he managed to "eat" more than $ 8 billion for development and another one for "compensation for the closure of the project" for Boeing and Sikorsky.
19-20 trillion rubles is a huge figure, to put it mildly. But not enough to throw money around like this. So you need to keep track of expenses, which is what our Ministry of Defense is trying to do. But the ministry also exhibits a kind of "humanism" - the cost of contracts initially includes an increase in the cost of resources expected during the period of its implementation. This practice will be especially useful for complex orders that take several years to complete. For most orders, the deadline is set within 3-4 years, for complex ones, primarily for naval ones, long terms are provided - both seven and eight. At the same time, at the moment, the Ministry of Defense has the right to transfer only 30% of the order amount to enterprises at once.
The Ministry of Defense will monitor the implementation not only in terms of timing and financing. Soon, special quality management departments will appear at our defense enterprises. It is planned that this body, duplicating the military acceptance, will help improve the quality of products. Those enterprises that do not want to fulfill the terms of the contract risk losing 5% or more of its amount, and a penalty will be charged for each day the deadlines are missed. In addition to this, from next year, a new article of the Administrative Code will come into force, providing for large fines for non-performance of the contract. In some, especially neglected cases, it is even possible to repeat the "punishment" in relation to "Almaz-Antey", when, after the disruption of deliveries of the S-400 air defense system, several people from the top management of the concern lost their jobs at once.
All these measures are being taken with one goal - to upgrade a third of all weapons and equipment of our armed forces by 2015. By the end of the rearmament program in 2020, the country's nuclear triad should be updated by 70-80%, and the rest of the troops by 65-70%.
