soyuz1917Time will tell. It isnt exactly that difficult for one Russian state owned corporation to get a letter of intent signed by another Russian state owned corporation. The letter of intent game in Russia is more of a dog and pony show than it is elsewhere. A lot of these “deals” will probably never get to the contract signing phase if for no other reason than Russian airlines tend not to have a long life expectancy thanks to frequent mergers, and buyouts.
The most important aspect of the MS-21 program is the PD-14 engine. Unlike the SAM-146 on the SSJ, the PD-14 is a 100% domestic project with essentially no French or American input. If the PD-14 turns out to be a success Russia can again claim to be a top 5 engine maker with the ability to fully source domestically. If the PD-14 becomes another PS-90 Russian engine making in the 21st century is essentially dead and they will be fighting for work-share in European projects and little else.
soyuz1917The Tu-204SM program is a disaster with only a single domestic carrier signed up to receive the type and its very likely the contract will be canceled despite the recent agreement with Syria to take 2 of the type as well. Major problem is economies of scale. The Tu-204SM fly away price is actually higher than that of a shiny new 737. It could have been an okay seller had it arrived to market 5 years sooner and 15% cheaper.
soyuz1917The Su-30MK2’s are meant to be used as trainers for future Su-35BM pilots. Only 4 have been ordered so its a token acquisition at best.
soyuz1917The Soviet Union built the Smerch. Modern Russia cant even afford to keep the system up to date. The Chinese A-100 outranges the Smerch by 30km’s and the reload time is 8 minutes as opposed to 16-20 for the Russian system. Twice the rate of fire and 1/3 greater range, and the rockets are the same size, I would call that a serious improvement.
The A-100 isnt even the best Chinese MLRS, its just what they cobbled together after ripping apart the Smerch systems they bought from Russia in the 90’s.
soyuz1917Its a sign of deindustrialization that something as basic as a pair of skis cant be found domestically. The USSR did make skis and now Russia doesnt. Strategic or not has nothing to do with it. Skis are actually fairly high tech goods. Wax formulas are guarded like national security secrets. For a country that used to take the Olympics seriously its a crime to have fallen so far.
The Chechen conflict is 16 years old. In 16 years for them to still have not managed to produce an acceptable bolt action rifle that they dont need to import synthetic stocks for says it all. They’ve had 16 years to repair a gapping hole and they havent managed it despite at least 3 different attempts!!!
The Chinese have a version of Smerch you can reload in less than half the time with fewer crew too.
soyuz1917My list has holes because actually its worse than all that. To list all the areas where Russia has lost its position would take a week.
Yep, everyone buys some stuff abroad but Russia is heading to the point where its not buying a few stop gap systems abroad but entire classes of weapons that will make up a very large % of the procurement budget.
In many respects, the country is returning to where it was at the end of the 19th century when it imported and licensed foreign designs exclusively.
Even basic kit for infantry is now imported. As it stands right now Russia cant even make competitive optics for small arms. Watch videos from Dagestan and Chechnya, and count how many soldiers have put EOTech on their guns. You want to brag about the MiG’s IRST when there is not a single acceptable red dot sight made in Russia?
They dont even make goggles and knee pads domestically and have to import Swiss goggles for the mountain divisions, Swiss and German skis, and American pads. Russia, the land of snow and ice, has to import skies for its mountain units! Is the US importing basic infantry kit too? These are small things, but signs of a deeper disease.
soyuz1917Excuse me, but wasnt “innovation” the whole point of creating Russian Technologies and Rosnano. Russian Technologies is already deeply involved with defense contractors. Creating a new bureacracy wont solve anything. Plus, does anyone even understand what ROSPROM does anymore? Dont they manage defense “innovation?” There already is an Industry Ministry that does little more than deal with defense contractors and design bureus. This new agency will just step on their toes and the money promised it is a joke. Somebody is having doubts about Chemezov and this new agency is being created to undermine him. In Russia all bureaucracy is personal.
I do love all the posts about “when they do this” or “when x amount of time has passed.” It’s been 11 years since Putin became PM. At this rate none of us will be alive when all these things are “remedied.”
Fact is, its a diminished country with a diminished MIC and 50 billion in spending (40 billion domestic and 10 in exports) can only do so much. Unfortunately, too many projects are mismanaged and too much money just disappears so they are not even getitng 50 billion dollars worth of bang for the buck.
The biggest problem by far is small engine development. The chips they can import for cheap, but engines cost serious money. What makes new Russian platforms impossible is the absolute inability to design and build good engines for them.
And yes, defense exports are healthy to the likes of Cambodia (100 armored vehicles), Venezuela, Algeria and Syria, but only beause these countries cant afford better or are under sanctions.
Your points above are nonsense. The Mi-8 family is obsolete. Oboronprom readily admits that without a new product by 2015 they will be out of business! Read the stories out of the last few press conferences. They are doing a double time on the Mi-X and Mi-38 because time is running out. In 5 years even African dictators wont be buying Mi-8’s.
The Mi-26 is a highly specialized helicopter and does not sell well at all.
I’d dissect the rest of your points but its a waste of time. The Russian MoD doesnt even want the platforms its contractors are building today. Popovkin isnt lying in his press conferences and he is not exaggerating and he is also the man holding the purse strings today so take what he says seriously.
soyuz1917Russia has fallen drastically behind in a huge range of technologies where it used to have near parity. Part of it is lack of investment and part of it is also a lot of misspent money and failed projects.
1. Conventional submarines (the Lada program is a disaster)
2. Communication satellites (Yamal series sats are already basically more European than Russian).
3. Diesel engines, which in turn limits what they can do with tanks and IFV’s. Basically every Russian armor vehicle being offered is obsolete by the standards of at least the last decade.
4. Targeting pods and optics (they are already buying French)
5. They’ve essentially lost the ability to COST EFFECTIVELY make surface combatants over 8,000 tons. The purpose of the Mistral deal is to remedy this.
6. Engines for light helos. At present the first batch of Ansat and Ka-226’s are flying with foreign engines (French or American).
7. Piston engined or turboprop basic trainers. They are probably going to buy a Swiss basic trainer which will be built in Russia. Again, they have no engine for a domestic trainer.
8. Pistols, SMG’s, high accuracy sniper rifles. Russian special forces buy MP-5’s, Glocks and Accuracy International.
9. Artillery. Russia has failed to keep pace with improvements seen in Western and Chinese MLRS and tube based systems. China’s new MLRS systems outrange Russian systems, are cheaper, faster to load and even more accurate. Russian systems havent improved since the mid-90’s.
10. Helicopters in general. Urt Air signed a deal for 20 European helicopters today because Russia has nothing to offer but the Mi-8 family. They would buy Russian, but there is nothing Russian to buy.
It would be easier to just list the few areas where they still lead or have near parity.
1. Missiles
2. Manned jet fighters
3. Radars
That’s about it.
soyuz1917I dont know what you mean by “economic platform.” Popovkin is very serious about making sure Russian soldiers dont get splattered in Chechnya because they have inferior kit. If that means buying Italian MRAP’s and Israeli UAV’s, he will do it. And if all Russia gets is assembly rights for semi-knocked down kits, so be it. The IVECO deal for instances will only see Russia gluing together parts made elsewhere — no tech transfer and no “economic platform.”
The Kremlin is clearly seeking a middle path between supporting domestic manufacturers unconditionally and buying even the worst of their wares and going for the best bang for your buck option which would mean not buying Russian when it comes to at least half their systems.
These foreign purchases are also supposed to work to get lazy domestic manufacturers off their fat posteriors. Import substitution policies fail precisely because the welfare effects discourage innovation. Imports like this are supposed to scare away that welfare effect.
IAI signed a deal for a production center in Russia. They did not officially partner with a Luch or a Vega to develop new platforms in Russia or to transfer any technology. The dollars involved are very small both by Russian and Israeli standards so this “economic platform” thing makes no sense to me. If Russian industry doesnt offer a product to the MoD’s satisfaction, given the small sums involved, Russian industry will not be getting MoD orders here at all. Popovkin has said as much.
And you know, OSK lobbied really hard against the Mistral and it lost BAD. Popovkin has shown he can bend and break these domestic lobbies. The Mistral deal is like 10x the size of this UAV deal too.
This does not mean that big programs like the PAK-FA or the 22350 frigate are in danger, but less strategic toys are another matter. SSK submarines are the next thing to go if they cant sort out the Lada class.
soyuz1917What Russia can build and what Russia can build competitively and cost effectively are very different things. It’s not merely a question of having cash because if production in Russia was so attractive everyone would be racing to open plants there. UAV’s are cheap. The whole state UAV program is valued at 5 billion rubles a year or 170 million dollars. The Israeli buy is only 100 million. You think 300 million more spent domestically would bring you parity with Israel? Even if it does, it will take a decade, and you need a stop gap.
None of those planes you listed turned into export successes or are even remotely successful domestically even with Western engines! Simply bringing in some Westerners does not guarantee success. There are scores of variables to consider. The Tu-204SM project is just dead with Atlant-Soyuz refusing to sign a hard contract for the 15 airframes they previously signed a LOI for. Atlant-Soyuz refuses to sign because they refuse to be the only buyer of the type. You cant blame them. The Russians are now begging the Syrians to sign for the type because without the Syrians the type will never see production. The Chinese had ordered 5 Tu-204SE’s , took delivery of 2 and refused the follow on 3 because of something like 200 defects in the delivered airframes. But I will submit that quality is no longer a problem for Russian aircraft builders, but price now is. There were pricing games going on with the Chinese order too because basically, the Tu-204 costs more than a Boeing 737 thanks to economies of scale and as a result nobody wants the type. They remedied the 200 defects but they couldnt agree on price for the next 3 airframes. The Il-96 is simply obsolete. They cant even get the Kremlin itself to buy more for Putin. Practically all the LOI they’ve signed are worthless. An-124 production is 5-6 years!!! away and the price will be absurd. Right now it takes them 1 full year just to upgrade a single An-124 for the MoD.
The Yak-130 is not a success story (not yet), its a story of desperation.
Russia isnt third world, but Russian airframe builders probably wish it was because Russian labor is too expensive and the ruble is too valuable to make their products competitive given the current supply chain situation.
The supply chain situation is that there is no supply chain. The little factories are all dead and gone and the assemblers are now in the business of making every bolt and this translates into some very expensive bolts, and a hell of a lot of foreign bolts being used. The country spent 15 years de-industrializing and it shows in everything. You cant fix these problems in a decade. It will take a full generation just to get back what was lost in terms of reliable part supply chains. Now Im not merely parroting Golts (he’s a worthless hack) here, this is just the way things are.
Things are even worse when you consider how deep and structural the problems really go. Cities like Khabarovsk probably shouldnt even exist. You have factories located 2500 miles from where it makes sense to have built them. You still have critical Ukrainian suppliers and design houses to contend with whose financial situation is usually even worse than what you have to contend with in Russia. It’s frankly a wonder Putin hasnt had a heart attack when you consider what the man has to deal with. He inherited a destroyed country in every sense of the word.
Whether the SSJ, MS-21 and An-148 will be different is still difficult to tell, but these planes are at best only 50% Russian made. The Sam146 is more French than Russian and they will try to make the PD-14 “more Russian” than the Sam146, but its too early to judge whether either engine will sell successfully. The verdict is not yet in on any of these programs. Atlant-Soyuz is being screwed on its An-148 buy and is currently looking to jump ship to Sukhoir, but who knows whether Sukhoi will be able to deliver on terms acceptable to both sides.
Take a look at the toy engines going into Lada’s today and tell me again how Russians are capable of designing a small competitive turboprop. Even if they do, the economies of scale arent there and it will cost more than its Western equivalent and it wont be delivered for 3 extra years. The long delivery times alone mean that by the time you take delivery there will almost certainly be a better product for sale elsewhere, and one that can be delivered sooner. And this is why nothing is happening — it doesnt make economic sense to make these things in Russia, and this is the problem with having a bad case of Dutch disease. The Kremlin has to make the conscious choice to overpay to support domestic manufacturers, knowing these same manufacturers will also deliver late, and people like Popovkin dont want to do this because they dont believe in import substitution policies.
If you hear Putin talk about this, he says the same thing, namely, that it would be cheaper to buy abroad, but that they have unemployment to consider. So, the only reason something like the AIST will ever get built is because Vlad cant have 10% unemployment and stay in office. This is the same reason you still have 2 factories building Mil helicopters, and 2 plants building Flankers and a third working on Su-34’s. The Kremlin is as worried or more worried about jobs as it is about actually taking delivery of killing machines. In many ways the way the Russian state defense order is handled is schizophrenic, but its managed schizophrenia and things are getting better slowly, but more slowly than many would like.
soyuz1917Russian engine makers dont make really “small” engines today and Russian turboprop and piston engine construction is virtually dead. The Dozor-600, the only true MALE UAV design we’ve seen out of Russia uses an American engine — the same engine as the Predator in fact, because there is no Russian equivalent.
The Russians had to choose what segments of the engine market to compete in because they couldnt afford to compete everywhere so they selected a handful of projects mostly in the jet segment and what little work is still done on turboprops in the CIS is mostly all coming out of Motor-Sich in Ukraine (which today is admittedly a more Russian company than it is Ukrainian). The TV3- 117VMA-SBM1V is basically the turboprop off the An-140 turned into a monster of a helicopter engine that drove the Mi-8 to a series of world climb records over the past year. It’s a fairly modern and impressive beast, so it’s too bad its too big to stick on a 1 ton payload UAV, which is what they really need. Domestic engines for the Ka-226 and the Ansat are still as much vapor as they are real.
So Russian UAV development is really seriously crippled by a lack of domestic engines.
On top of this, there are BIG problems with payload miniturization. A simple google search will reveal that the sensor payload being installed on the Vega (AIST), ZALA, and various Luch models are coming in about 2x the weight of what’s installed on comparable Israeli models. On the Dozor-600 you see a nice French payload installed because going Russian would have meant a crippled project from the start, especially given the limited funding available. The Dozor-600 project is currently gathering dust on a shelf because the MoD hasnt funded it in the 2010 budget, and this is really the most modern and impressive UAV out of Russia so far (the MiG SKAT is a fiberglass/wood shell and doesnt count since the MoD apparently rejected it outright).
The end result is you have Russian UAV’s flying with Western engines today and with serious range problems because their payloads are heavier than they should be. Now this past week or two there has been some press about Russian UAV’s improving, and their having solved the miniaturization problem, but that remains to be seen. Apparently the AIST and maybe several Luch models have actually passed state acceptance trials after failing them last year and needing a year of extra work to sort out the problems, but all the Vega (Aist), Luch and Zala models we’ve seen to date are really kid stuff. They are too small to really meet the MoD’s needs. Luch will unveil a new Drozd model in 2011, but nobody is expecting anything jaw dropping from these three companies, and now all sorts of strange entrants are competing for the MoD’s limited UAV dollar. Arzamas the maker of the BTR-80/90 is now getting into the UAV business, they cant make a good 20 ton IFV, but they think they can make a UAV. The whole UAV sector is just a big mess in Russia. On the bright side, if you are really one of those believers in some guy in his basement creating innovation, that’s basically what you have now in Russian UAV development. These operations are so poorly funded, its basically some guy in his basement tinkering with half domestic and half foreign parts. If desperation is the mother of all invention….
soyuz1917Sukhoi’s chief designer, Mikhail Simonov is in the hospital. They havent disclosed what’s wrong with him.
soyuz1917Since most of you have no idea wtf you are talking about I will enlighten you as to the fact that without a RAM coating the F-22, F-35 and Y/F-23 are going to look basically the same as the T-50 in terms of rivets as even Lockheed and Boeing use the same machines Sukhoi uses to do the riveting. You have no idea what the hell you are talking about in terms of “build quality.” The T-50 prototype is simply missing its RAM.
The rivet job on the T-50 is as perfect as it gets. There are some minor defects with the paneling, but on the first F-35 prototype you see the same sort of paneling defects. They dont care about that sort of thing on the 1st test platform.
http://www.aereo.jor.br/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/PAK-FA-T50-4.jpg
Su-34’s even in the current “serial’ production batch of which there are currently 5 example (01 through 05) are all hand riveted. There is a 500 million dollar retooling of the Chkalov plant in Novosibirsk currently going on, but it isnt finished which is why production is still going on at the rate of 4-6 aircraft a year. The last 2 serial machines 04 and 05 do look better than the previous 3 serials and the prior 13 testbeds, but you can still see flaws.
soyuz1917So much BS in this thread its startling. For one thing as of right now there is no jammer for the JSF, only a paper project, the NGJ, to develop one out of the current radar and and some small pod for the frequencies the radar cant cover. In short, the JSF will be giving up 20-25% of its radar performance so it can use its radar as a jammer. The Russians studied this approach with the Zhuk-AE and quickly abandoned it in favor of large dedicated pods because of the resulting decrease in radar range. Given the penchant in the US to waste money on stuff that is later deemed *stupid* the current NGJ program is likely to go the way of the dodo when they realize they will never get around the duty cycle problem in using the radar as a jammer. The laws of physics are sort of immutable. Around 2004 the Russians were still a good 5 years behind the times when it came to jammers. Their first DIRCM was a generation behind what was selling in the West when in premiered at MAKS-2003. It was twice the weight of its Western peers and had memory limitations. Since then that gap has disappeared and with the US going all insane about using the fighters main radar as a jammer there is a very good chance the US will find itself playing catchup soon.
soyuz1917The 22380’s are 2400 tons in the series produced version. I think even the lead ship was actually over 2200. It’s not a < 2000 ton boat.
The Turkish Milgem corvettes will also get a medium range AAW capability with ESSM so the Russians are not unique here in kitting out their corvette with medium ranged AAW. And in the BS they will have to contend with Milgems in the future.
They have lighter corvettes in the pipe too. They just ordered 5 Project 22631 patrol ships. An upgraded version of the Project 22630 artillery ship, the 22631’s will carry Uran-E ASM’s and at 946 tons its the sort of cheap and light corvette you are talking about. Air defense on this class will be compromised of a single Gibka launcher.
http://arms-tass.su/?page=article&aid=87728&cid=25
And the FSB has those 22640 patrol boats that come in at 630 tons and can have Urans installed on them too. Air defense on those is just a single AK-630 mount and they seem to be building a large number of these though without any ASM’s installed.
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