Recently, it has become a fashionable trend to criticize the Russian defense-industrial complex: corruption, overpricing of products, inability to develop and manufacture modern weapons that would be responsible for the safety of the country from real modern threats are the main "points of accusation." The main department, the Ministry of Defense, also gets it: a significant reduction in the number and disorganization of military units and industrial facilities, the modernization of obsolete military equipment in exchange for the purchase of new and promising ones, and the placement of orders abroad.
The continuing weakening of our country's defense capability is an indestructible topic for discourse in the media and society as a whole. Under Anatoly Serdyukov, the Ministry of Defense has actually moved away from the interests of the domestic defense industry, having taken the position of a client in the market. And all kinds of PR around the agreements with foreign gunsmiths in almost everything is subordinate to one thing - to give a basis for reflection. We need, the military department points out, such weapons and at such a cost. Not ready? Then we go to Germany, since the purchase must be made, and with all this we do not care at all whether you can sell such a product or do not want to.
Over the past decade, the Russian defense industry has taken a number of measures to centralize regional governance and consolidate financial assets. A whole set of built-in holding structures has been formed. Others of them have become "natural monopolists" in their own market sectors, absorbing the production and design potential of Russia. Not many of these structures strive to improve their work, but more and more use the previously accumulated developments of Soviet enterprises and design bureaus.
However, the problem of pricing for SDO executors was not only not resolved, but on the contrary, it worsened. The Ministry of Defense often asks its own contractors to disclose the entire cost structure, in order, on the one hand, to check the correctness and validity of the markups wound in different parts of the technological chain, and on the other hand, to work together with the contractor to balance the chain given to us, to find out the "bad places" of the business in the defense industry. But the defense industry is in no hurry to discover the components of prices, this is a kind of "taboo". Unfortunately, the manifestation of a kind of philistinism remained in the blood of our high-ranking officials, and even more so the modern nouveau riche.
If you do not go into details, then one gets the impression that, despite the annual increase in the military budget, "things are still there" - missiles do not achieve their goals during tests, fighters fall with the usual regularity, and at the technical level, complex weapons begin to acquire abroad. However, in order to realize how these visible processes are a reflection of the state of the system as a whole, it is necessary to look at the real history of defense science and industry over the past two decades.
Since the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s, practically all Russian industry, including the military, has been virtually completely destroyed. The only exceptions were oil and gas, food and mining industries. Of the 24,000 industrial companies working partly for military purposes and producing the necessary dual-use products, only 1,200 survived. With all this, all these factories and plants, lacking funding, did not progress - neither at the technical level, nor mentally. While they "stood still", military special technologies in competing advanced countries stepped forward. And among more than 5, 6 thousand research institutes and hidden research centers developing modern military special technologies, only 677 remained, and even then in a weakened form - without qualified personnel, without the current technical base. Of the 126 thousand experts of classes A1-A3 (according to the systematization of the ILO) employed in the defense industry in Russia in 1990 (we are not talking about the USSR in aggregate), 102 thousand, or more than 80%, left to work in foreign countries and are not going to return …
William Fokkingen, who at the Pentagon is responsible for international military-technical and defense-industrial cooperation, in June 2000 at a conference on state security said: “According to our estimates, less than 6% of Russia's defense potential remains. If the existing trends continue, 0 will remain in 5 years. " In 1999, the defense budget was only $ 3.8 billion - the amount that is now spent on paying for 2 ground brigades. And the costs of R&D development have been equated to zero for many years.
And now tell me how the system, created over half a century and which is about 100% destroyed, and only through political freedom and start-up investments, can it be revived in a couple of years. We are not even talking about how to restore the lost technologies in any way, but also about modern development. In world history, there was only one example of the miracles of industrialization - in the era of Stalin in the USSR. However, it was associated with massive violence against the inhabitants of the state. Now, in times of democracy and human rights, only an evolutionary path of improvement is available - the effective use of existing financial and mental sources.
Over the past 10 years, the power of the state has contrived, from among the ruins that it inherited, to build again the system of the military-defense industry - with a distinct hierarchy of scientific, production and design centers. However, the indicator of Russia's defense capacity according to the systematization of Defense Review has grown from 12.4 in 2000 (46th in the world) to 49.8 in 2010 (6th). The growth of the state defense order over the past 11 years amounted to 5600%! During this period, 104 universities of the state have introduced special educational programs developed by the military-technical commission of the Ministry of Defense. In leading research institutes that have retained their own scientific potential, at least to some extent, the salaries of workers have been increased several times. For example, now the average salary of an ordinary design engineer in the marine design bureaus of St. Petersburg is 55 thousand rubles, in the "rocket" scientific centers of Moscow - more than 70 thousand rubles.
The Elara plant is one of the most successful and topical. Its products are avionics, in other words, mental systems for military and civilian aircraft of just about all types. From navigation and control to combat sight. This set is the author's development and the real pride of the factory workers. Prepared for fighters and attack aircraft. In addition to the super-modern electronics filling, the designers were able to reduce its weight from the first versions of 200 kilograms to 17 kilograms today.
"The remote control system is designed to control the aircraft so that the pilot is not distracted from the performance of the assigned combat mission. In reality, this system is mental - it controls the aircraft itself," Ilya Sharov, deputy technical director for special equipment, said.
Capacitors, transistors, microchips are the element base on which the accuracy and safety of devices in combat aircraft directly depends. In recent years, the quality of manufactured radio components has fallen sharply. The country no longer controls this area. Those who were responsible for the quality of the work of enterprises manufacturing radio components were simply reduced. The deterioration in the quality of components affects not only the production in the section of the time frame, but is also reflected in the final cost of the product.
At the same time, despite all the problems associated with the outflow of competent specialists abroad, and the loss of thin threads of special technologies that were lost in the nineties, Russian gunsmiths still manage, albeit gradually, to reach the level of the modern 5th generation of weapons. The state defense order for 2011 exceeds 0.5 trillion rubles, considering the purchasing power parity, this is the third place in the world after the United States and China. And the state program for the rearmament of the army until 2020 assumes an increase in this indicator to a high 1.2 trillion rubles. The idea is primitive: in the innovative and industrial formation of the state, in the aggregate, the leadership has relied on the domestic military-industrial complex as having the greatest potential for making a progressive technological breakthrough. In the industries in which we are hopelessly behind - control and communication systems, computer electronics, cybertronics, robotics - the Ministry of Defense meets the needs by purchasing the latest special technologies abroad. For example, the Mistral landing craft capable of carrying helicopters was acquired specifically to master the promising and recognized Senik 9 fleet management system, the best in the NATO states, the transfer of which was actively opposed by France's allies in the military alliance. DCNS together with the ships transfers all technological documentation, which makes it possible to copy all the implemented special technologies, as well as the secret codes of combat control. The same applies to modern unmanned aerial vehicles purchased from Israel. However, the import of special technologies is needed only in 10-15% of cases. The rest of the weapons and equipment manufactured at Russian enterprises are either not inferior in quality to foreign counterparts, or surpass them.
Of the 12 states that are trying to create a 5th generation fighter, investing $ 10 billion, so far only two have actually succeeded - the United States and Russia. The Chinese analogue, which shortly, like ours, made the 1st flight, in reality does not meet the requirements of the Air Force for the 5th generation of front-line aviation. The Russian T-50 (PAK FA) not only meets these requirements, but also surpasses its overseas rival in some respects. The F-22 Raptor develops the highest cruising speed of 2 thousand km / h, the T-50 - 2, 4 thousand km / h, our plane has a sufficient runway length of only 300 meters, the overseas one needs 450. It also surpasses the F-22 in flight maneuverability. By the way, the Raptor is so expensive ($ 140 million) that the United States stopped its creation in 2010. And the Sukhoi company, which made the Russian 5th generation fighter, on the contrary, plans to produce it not only to meet domestic needs, but also for export purposes.
Of course, the strength of any weapon depends on what technologies are used in the manufacture. Soviet and now Russian gunsmiths have always been leaders in this matter. The same Americans have always recognized the superiority of Russian weapons and, as a rule, their systems and weapons complexes came out with some temporary delay. The same China, in fact, does not have its own scientific military base in the defense industry complex, their main successes are the copying of the weapons systems of Russia and the United States and the subsequent release of weapons under its own brand. But there is one thing, but both the United States and China spend billions of dollars, some on the development of new systems, others on the purchase for subsequent copying, but in Russia, in this regard, the situation is somewhat different. So the necessary money is not always allocated in full, which leads to delays in payment, and sometimes to the cancellation of already concluded contracts. It is believed that these are all temporary difficulties, given that the current Russian government is aimed at reviving the military-industrial complex of the state.
