In a 29 December interview on Vesti’s Rossiya-24 program, Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Ivanov addressed modernization, development, arms sales, and defense industry. He said international demand for Russian air defense systems has led the government to take a decision to extend credit for Almaz-Antey to build two new factories.
As written in an earlier post about shortfalls in productive capacity in the OPK, this possibility has been under discussion since at least last February.
Military Parity picked up additional RIA Novosti coverage of Ivanov’s remarks:
“This year we decided on additional support to ‘Almaz-Antey’ and the allocation of credit for the construction of two more factories.”
Ivanov explained that most of Almaz-Antey’s production is going to satisfy the Russian Army’s requirements, and:
“Now they don’t have production capacity for large volume exports. But this good, if it’s possible to call it that, is in great demand on the international market.”
A bit from the video . . . Ivanov’s interviewer asks about the state of military-technical cooperation (i.e. arms sales), and aviation’s role in it. Ivanov says it got along “not badly” in 2010. Arms sales exceeded $10 billion for the first time. This, he says, attests to the competitiveness of, and demand for, Russian equipment, and so, in many areas, the defense sector isn’t doing badly. Aviation represents more than a third of arms sales, or more than $4 billion. He thinks military transport aviation sales have a good future, and, of course, buyers stand in line for Almaz-Antey’s PVO systems. Thus, with internal and external demand, the need for two completely new factories.
Of course, saying they’ve decided for two factories is not the same as actually building them and starting new production lines.
Russian Defense Policy 