In the spirit of this thread I think it would be most useful to have a Russian Military Export News thread. It seems to me that, as well as having a thread devoted to Russian aviation news, it would be helpful to keep track of what the Russians are selling to whom and for how much etc. I’ll start a new thread.

In the past the Russian’s have tended to let the engineers get on with it and get the thing built. Besides, I reckon the PAK-FA will have been built with a strong degree of multi-role in mind from the beginning and won’t require the time-consuming ‘after-thought’ incorporation of systems.

A great deal of the work on ‘systems’ is already likely to have been completed or well on the way to completion and many of them may have already been tested on an alternative airframe (i.e. Berkut).

Slobo,

An-26 sightings are pretty rare these days… the hope here being that its flying north to go for its Russian refit.

More sad news… Crickey…

PERM, July 27 (RIA Novosti) – A MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter belonging to Russia’s aerobatics team crashed on takeoff in the Perm Territory in the Urals Thursday, a local emergency official said.

He said both pilots had ejected, and one has been hospitalized with a broken leg.

The team of six planes had landed at Bolshoye Savino Airport for refueling. The first two planes took off successfully. On takeoff, one of the second pair of planes veered off the runway at 1:10 p.m. Moscow time (9:10 a.m. GMT).

Air Force spokesman Alexander Drobyshevsky said the planes had been on a routine flight from Kubinka in the Moscow Region to Tyumen, east of the Urals, and attributed the accident to a technical failure.

A special commission is now traveling from the Moscow Region to the site to investigate the incident, Drobyshevsky said.

Thank god for Russian ejection seats.

Just to clear up something here: The figure of 2.4% of GDP (which is to be spent on defense) has been decided upon according to the advice of the World Bank (or was it the IMF?). Furthermore, NATO, the OSCE, the EU, the UN and other international organisations consider the modernisation and professionalisation of the Serbian Army as being of vital importance to the security of the region. The only people, it seems, who do not agree are the Serbian government and the Serbian MoD (and Kapedani 🙂 ).

In today’s Politika newspaper there was a small report about the Krusik factory:

The Valjevo factory, “Krusik”, has agreed the export of rocket armarments worth 18.1 million dollars… blah blah blah.

Now I’m pretty curious as to what specifically is selling that well but because I have a really slow internet connection I can’t really be bothered to search around for more info – I was hoping somebody else could work up the energy to do that instead.

More Russian Armed Forces news:

MOSCOW, May 29 (RIA Novosti) – Russia will spend almost 5 trillion rubles ($185 bln at current prices) on a state armaments program over the next nine years, the defense minister said Monday.

Sergei Ivanov, who is also a deputy prime minister, told a government meeting with President Vladimir Putin that a ministry committee would consider the program, which will run 2007-2015, at a meeting on June 2.

Ivanov said a draft of the program – which covers modernization and development of Russia’s military capability – had been coordinated with security agencies, the Finance Ministry and the Economic Development and Trade Ministry.

“During program development we proceeded from the bases of defense policy, plans to develop the Armed Forces approved by the president, and a complex program of military and technical cooperation,” he said.

The deputy prime minister said that unlike the current program, which focuses mainly on research and development, the new one would focus on serial armaments purchases, with 63% of all planned funds likely to be spent in this way.

Ivanov said the program would support the development of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces.

“We are switching to complex retooling on separate units, and the planned and complex retooling of the Armed Forces will start from 2007,” he said.