On October 10, at a meeting of the Federation Council, Deputy Head of the Ministry of Economic Development A. Klepach announced the disruption of the state defense order this year and its possible disruption in the next year. This loud statement was made against the backdrop of repeated assurances by Anatoly Serdyukov that all problematic issues related to the implementation of the state defense order will be resolved in the very near future.
At the hearings devoted to the consideration of the draft state budget for 2012–2014, A. Klepach said literally the following: "The state defense order for the current year will definitely not be fulfilled, and with a very high degree of probability this will not happen next year either." Deputy Chairman of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation Valery Goreglyad supported Klepach's fears and noted that defense spending is one of the least transparent and most ineffective in all Russian budgets over the past few years. “The 23 trillion rubles that were envisaged until 2020 is an incredibly large amount, but it is highly unlikely that it will be spent properly,” Goreglyad said.
At the same time, the Ministry of Defense categorically denies the failure of the defense order this year. The ministry confirms that the process of placing orders for the current year is proceeding normally, and the necessary documents have already been prepared to conclude 60% of contracts for next year, which will be signed immediately after the approval of the new budget. Last week, Defense Minister Serdyukov noted once again that the placement of the defense order for the current year is "practically completed." “Of the allocated amount, equal to 580 billion rubles, only a little twenty are left to master,” the minister said. It is with this amount of money that the contracts of the Ministry of Defense with the United Shipbuilding Corporation and the Moscow Institute of Heat Engineering are evaluated. The military department has not yet signed a contract with USC for the construction of the new Yasen nuclear submarine, as well as two Borey submarine missile carriers capable of carrying Bulava ballistic missiles. USC also confirms that the contracting process is still ongoing. And according to RIA Novosti, First Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Alexander Sukhorukov said that the ministry had decided to postpone the deadlines for the execution of part of the contracts for the state defense order from 2011 to the next 2012. We are talking, in particular, about the 3rd and 4th regimental sets of the S-400 air defense system, as well as the purchase of Yak-130 combat training aircraft.
The reason for the postponement of the supply of these types of weapons was, according to the Deputy Minister, the belated execution of contracts with representatives of enterprises of the military-industrial complex. The protracted process of negotiations between the military and military-industrial complex enterprises and the untimely conclusion of contracts are explained by the Russian Ministry of Defense by the need to reduce prices for the products of defense enterprises.
The topic of the implementation of the state defense order turned out to be one of the central ones after the May meeting in the presence of President Medvedev, who gave officials a real blast for the failure to meet the planned deadlines for the implementation of the defense order. On the instructions of Prime Minister Putin, which he gave back in August, both Defense Minister Serdyukov and Deputy Prime Minister Sechin tried to solve the problem of the state defense order. However, the timing of the implementation of the defense order has been postponed all the time. The deadline for resolving the problem was last set for mid-September.
Meanwhile, President Medvedev has already chastised officials for disrupting the defense order in 2010, when they managed to utilize only 70% of the amount allocated from the budget, and in 2009, the defense order was only half completed.
In order to prevent a repetition of the current situation, in the next 2012 the Ministry of Defense plans to implement the state defense order in accordance with the new rules. The main innovation, which should significantly simplify the relations of the ministry with industrialists, is the total prepayment of even transactions under those contracts, the implementation of which implies long terms (a year or more). Defense Ministry officials emphasize the fact that "there are no such convenient conditions for cooperation for representatives of the military-industrial complex, perhaps anywhere else in the world."
I. Korotchenko, a member of the public council under the Ministry of Defense, expresses confidence that after the total introduction of the practice of making an advance payment, the system of federal contracts will finally work without interruptions. However, according to Korotchenko, the ministry wants representatives of the military-industrial complex to make the structure of the cost of production open. “There is information that the profitability of some contracts reaches 800%,” the expert notes.
In the meantime, industrialists have their own position regarding the new system of payments. They agree that the new system is more transparent than the old one, where orders and control over their execution were concentrated in the same hands. However, the Ministry of Defense proposes to calculate prices using annual deflators of 1–2%, which would be like economic suicide. Therefore, USC insists that when implementing the defense order, it is necessary to focus on the inflation rate determined by the forecasts of the Ministry of Economic Development, that is, 6-7%.
The head of one of the large defense enterprises called the situation around the defense order critical. “The old mechanism for implementing the defense order was destroyed to the ground, and the new one was not created, not only administratively, but also from a regulatory and legal point of view,” the head says. "In an amicable way, it would be better to work out a new mechanism for implementing the state defense order on separate contracts." Among other things, the guarantees promised by the state for defense contracts discredit themselves in their current form, since they do not compensate for the cost of repaying loans.
Konstantin Makienko, Deputy Head of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, identifies three main components in the current problem. “This is the introduction of a new contracting system, the massive start of purchases and the departure from his post to another place of work of an iconic figure in the arms procurement system - Deputy Minister Vladimir Popovkin,” the expert said. However, Makienko believes that categorical statements about the disruption of the defense order are extremely unexpected. According to the expert, at the moment there is a bargaining process between the interested parties.
Note that in total, within the framework of the 2011 state defense order, the military department planned to purchase 109 helicopters, 35 aircraft, 3 multipurpose nuclear submarines, 1 combat surface ship, and 21 air defense systems. At the end of March this year, Defense Minister Serdyukov said that, according to the 2011 state defense order, the troops are expected to supply two strategic nuclear submarines, 36 strategic ballistic missiles, and two dozen strategic cruise missiles. The total amount of financing of the state defense order in the current 2011 is about one and a half trillion rubles.
