While the Russian president is trying to create a “triangle of strategic
stability and security” comprising Russia, China and India, Russian arms
exporters are supplying superior equipment to India than to China, according
to an article in the Vremya MN newspaper. The article gives examples of the
type of equipment supplied to India that is denied to China. The Chinese are
already turning elsewhere for their military equipment and Russia may lose
their custom entirely if it does not supply them with more modern and better
quality arms, and this will then spoil the chance of establishing the
triangle of security and stability, the article concludes. The text of the
article, written by Viktor Litovkin and published on 3 December, follows:
President Putin’s visit to China and India has, aside from everything else
the state-run news media are talking about, spotlighted one striking
particular feature. According to Andrey Nikolayev, chairman of the Duma
Defence Committee, Russia is attempting, in order to counterbalance the
expanding NATO, to create in Asia a new system of international relations –
a kind of triangle of strategic stability, security, and the fight against
international terrorism, the sides of which are Moscow, Beijing, and Delhi.
True, one is struck by the fact that this is a far from equilateral
triangle.
And this can be seen primarily in the examples of military-technical
co-operation between Russia and China and Russia and India. Military-
technical co-operation, particularly with Beijing, has always been a very
delicate subject, although it is known from open sources that these two
biggest Asian countries account for up to 80 per cent of the deliveries of
our arms overseas, which in monetary terms is the equivalent of $3-3.5bn
annually.
But here’s what’s interesting. Whereas we supply China mainly with purely
defensive combat equipment – Su-27 interceptors (we have also sold the
license for their manufacture), the multipurpose Su- 30MKK fighter, the
S-300PMU and Tor-M1 surface-to-air missile systems, Sovremennyy 956E-design
destroyers, and 877EKM-design diesel-powered submarines, to India, aside
from similar aircraft and air-defence systems, we are also selling offensive
arms – 350 T-90S tanks, of which the Russian Army has only a few. One is
also struck by the appreciable difference in the operational properties of
this equipment.
The Indian Su-30MKI aircraft, the license for the manufacture of which we
sold to Delhi, has, for example, an ultramodern phased- array radar and a
front elevator unit, and on the engines, a thrust vector, which enables the
pilot to perform incredible somersaults in the air and to avoid being hit by
missiles, and also French and Israeli avionics. India has been sold the
license for the manufacture of the AL-31FP engine for this fighter. There is
nothing like this on the Chinese aircraft. Beijing is only just attempting
to reach agreement on a license for the engine. The situation is roughly the
same when it comes to ships for the navies of both parties also.
The Sovremennyy destroyer, which we are building for China, is already more
than 20 years old. And although relatively new anti- ship missile systems
will be installed on it, it is not right, to put it mildly, to compare it
with the 1135.6-design frigates that are being built at the Baltic Shipyard
for India. First, even the Russian Navy does not have such ships as yet.
Second, the more powerful Klab anti-ship missile system with a range of 280
km (on the Chinese destroyer, 120 km) has been installed on them. Third, the
frigate’s design provides for the use of Stealth technology, that of the
Sovremennyy does not.
We are prepared to sell to India, while extensively modernising it, the
heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser Admiral Gorshkov and 60 MiG- 29K deck-based
fighters and to build for Delhi, if it so desires, nuclear-powered
submarines (Indian seamen leased such a submarine from Russia several years
ago, incidentally). We are proposing the development, together with the
Sukhoi Aircraft Military and Industrial Complex, of the fifth-generation
fighter. Such proposals are not being put to China.
Russia and India already have joint ventures of the military- industrial
complex, incidentally, specifically, the BraMos, which makes a supersonic
anti-ship cruise missile for the Indian Navy based on our Yakhont. There are
no such ventures with China. Why not?
Evidently because, some military experts believe, Moscow still believes
that, despite President Vladimir Putin’s statement that “not a single
irritant remains” in our relations with China, Beijing in the long term, as
distinct from Delhi, could, for all that, be our potential rival, in the
military sphere included. And, despite all the assurances, it is not greatly
trusted.
Such a situation cannot, understandably, fail to alarm the Chinese. They are
saying openly at meetings with our defence industry personnel that their
military orders are helping keep Russia’s military industry afloat. Some
components of the Russian Federation, Khabarovsk Territory in particular,
are altogether living off the fact that the military plants of Komsomolsk-
na-Amure and Arsenyev are making fighters and missiles for them. On what
would you live were we to reorient ourselves towards other states, they
reasonably ask. Our military equipment manufacturers have no answer.
Nor is Beijing, taught by the bitter experience of 1956-1969, putting all
its eggs in one basket, so to speak. Its defence enterprises are
co-operating with France, Sweden, Germany, Italy, and other countries.
Unless we resolve to rectify this geopolitical anomaly and to begin to
manufacture for Beijing more modern and higher quality arms than currently,
it is conceivable that our arms market beyond the Great Wall of China could
soon dry up. And the hope of creating a triangle of strategic stability and
security might not be realised. Particularly since a new pragmatic
leadership, which is absolutely not bound to Russia either by a common past
or common ideas, has come to power in the Celestial Kingdom (China).
Source: BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union – Political (6th December, 2002)
—
Steve Rush Touchdown-News
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December 6, 2002 at 2:28 pm