The 7th International Exhibition "Russian Defense Expo 2012", held in Nizhny Tagil, was able to visit about 25 thousand people. One of these 25 thousand turned out to be the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Government Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees the issues of the military-industrial complex. Incidentally, this is the only Russian official of such a high level who took the time to get acquainted with the samples of military equipment demonstrated at the exhibition grounds and in specially equipped rooms.
Initially, the organizers said that the Russian president was to arrive at Expo 2012, but then it turned out that Vladimir Putin had canceled his visit. The president's entourage linked the cancellation of the visit to Putin's preparations for the APEC summit in Vladivostok.
In total, during the exhibition, the products of 253 different enterprises were demonstrated, most of which represented the Russian Federation. If we talk about foreign participation, then 3 countries acted as direct participants of Expo-2012 in Nizhny Tagil and another 28 states sent their own, let's say, observers.
The last exhibition caused quite controversial comments from many experts. On the one hand, there was optimism that there are more and more domestic samples of military equipment and dual-use equipment at Russian international exhibitions. On the other hand, experts expressed the opinion that interest in such events on the part of foreign companies is falling, and the technology developed abroad and exhibited at such exhibitions is not of high quality and reliability.
Dmitry Rogozin expressed similar thoughts, stating that the exhibition demonstrated a systematic increase in the quality of domestic products from the defense industry, which should be paid attention to when purchasing equipment for various formations of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia. At the same time, the Deputy Prime Minister reprimanded the Russian generals for the fact that they too often began to travel to foreign analogues of the Espoo and bring from there ideas about the massive purchases of foreign equipment, although instead of generals, in his opinion, Russian designers should go abroad, who are able to better assess the quality. foreign samples. And it is difficult to argue with these words of Rogozin. Although many are sure that there is nothing reprehensible in buying foreign copies of military equipment.
At the same time, the majority of Russians who are interested in the state of affairs in the sphere of the domestic military-industrial complex have remembered the words of federal officials that only single technical samples will be purchased for the needs of the Russian army, and the samples are advanced in their class. However, this bureaucratic promise is still far from its actual embodiment in reality.
If you pay attention to those samples of military equipment that have either already been purchased from foreign companies, or may be purchased in the near future, then questions arise about many samples.
The first question concerns Israeli drones, for the supply of which the Ministry of Defense has managed to conclude a contract. As soon as this contract was signed, some representatives of the Israeli side immediately announced that they did not intend to transfer new technologies to Russia. In particular, Amos Gilad, director of the Israeli military-political service under the Ministry of Defense, said this at one time. In particular, Gilad said that Russia is receiving from Israel Aerospace Industries an unmanned aerial vehicle called Sercher-2, which is produced using technologies developed in the early 1980s. Therefore, it is impossible to say that Israel is transferring new technologies to Russia. Well, if the Israelis themselves say so, then the situation with the purchase of technology from this particular country looks rather strange … In total, the Ministry of Defense acquired 12 BirdEye-400, Searcher II UAVs, as well as I-View Mk150 on the Israeli side. Then, agreements were signed to purchase 36 more drones from Israel. But the Russian Ministry of Defense did not stop there either: it was decided to increase the UAV fleet by another 15 vehicles.
The contract cost the Russian Ministry of Defense $ 400 million, but this is an amount that went only to pay the Israeli side. Due to the fact that specialists from the Kazan Helicopter Plant will be working on the platform for bringing, let's say, the Israeli unmanned "oldies" Searcher II to mind, this amount can be safely increased n times, since the Ministry of Defense intends to obtain exclusively its own drone using Israeli technologies … Recall that the technology is far from advanced, because the Searcher II was commissioned in Israel itself back in 1998.
The second question concerns the purchase of "single" samples of foreign armored vehicles. Here we are talking about the purchase, and then about the production of Italian armored vehicles Iveco LMV M65 Lynx in Russia, which we have already received the name "Lynx". True, here it should be noted right away that even initially, there was no question of single purchases and production on the basis of these purchases of a domestic product. Initially, the Ministry of Defense decided to produce 727 vehicles, and now they are talking about the need to increase the production of Italian "Rysy" to 3 thousand units. It would seem, well, what's wrong with that if the armored car is reliable … Why reinvent the wheel if it can simply be produced under a foreign license? But the fact is that the armored car "Lynx" does not differ in great reliability. The Lynx began to show its awkwardness immediately from the moment it first appeared in Russia. It turned out that the snow-covered terrain is a serious obstacle for her, and there is no need to talk about the rugged terrain. So at the recently held in the city of Zhukovsky forum "Technologies in mechanical engineering-2012" "Lynx" was driven exclusively on level platforms so as not to damage the crankcase … Such a demonstration clearly did not impress the audience, and therefore about the expediency of using this particular armored car, and such serious quantities (3000 pieces), clearly skeptical opinions began to be expressed.
It is this mediocre quality of the purchased samples of weapons and military technologies of foreign production that made Rogozin shoot several critical arrows at the domestic Ministry of Defense. Many have already christened the words of the Deputy Prime Minister that it is high time to start paying attention to the development of the domestic military-industrial complex, as opposed to the purchases of frankly low-quality foreign equipment, a serious attack on Anatoly Serdyukov. However, it should be recalled here that the main initiator of the purchase of military equipment from foreign manufacturers was Dmitry Medvedev, who at that time held the presidency. But only Medvedev then spoke about purchases quality military equipment and, as he put it, at transparent prices. Anatoly Serdyukov, in his usual manner, decided to partially fulfill Medvedev's requirements: indeed, they bought foreign equipment, but legends can be made about its quality, as they say … And with the transparency of the pricing policy somehow not everything goes well. Hundreds of millions of dollars for Israeli ideas of 30 years ago can hardly be called an adequate price.
In general, the issue of equipping the park with new military equipment for the army and navy remains at the stage of debate. If this debate drags on too long, then the Ministry of Defense will continue to spend millions on foreign samples of dubious quality. True, today, unfortunately, it is also impossible to say that absolutely all domestic military equipment has a phenomenal quality. Where is she, this golden mean?..
