Some Russian defense news from August 6, 7, and 8, 2012 . . .
Sukhorukov’s Press Conference (photo: Mil.ru)
Mil.ru provided a wrap on the First Deputy Defense Minister’s press-conference on GPV-2020.
Sukhorukov “particularly turned attention” to media reports that the program’s funding will be cut. He told journalists such a step isn’t foreseen, and the government is talking only about “optimizing” the budget load between years by using good old state-guaranteed credits for the OPK.
Sukhorukov claims 95 percent of GOZ-2012 has been contracted, and 82 percent of funds disbursed.
Arms-expo.ru also covered this story. It emphasized Sukhorukov’s statement that the rate of defective arms delivered by producers isn’t declining.
According to RIAN, Sukhorukov said Russia won’t buy more Israeli UAVs beyond its current contract. He reiterated the Defense Ministry believes the BMD-4M doesn’t meet its requirements, and won’t buy it.
Sukhoy reports it’s now testing the new Tikhomirov phased array radar on PAK FA, T-50-3 to be exact. See RIAN’s story.
Sukhoy also announced that its Su-35S is in “combat employment” testing within the process of state acceptance testing at GLITs. The company says it meets all established requirements, and has flown more than 650 times.
New Navy CINC, Vice-Admiral Chirkov made an interesting visit to the State Missile Center named for Academic V. P. Makeyev on Monday. The Makeyev design bureau is home, of course, to liquid-fueled SLBM development. Could not find the last time this happened. Might be prior to 2007.
Main Military Prosecutor Sergey Fridinskiy told the GenProk collegium yesterday that abuse or dedovshchina in the ranks is down a third this year. But, according to ITAR-TASS, Fridinskiy noted that general crimes exceed purely military offenses by a factor of two. Specifically, he said murders are up by half, bribery has almost doubled, and drug offenses have increased 27 percent.
Fridinskiy also said nearly 3,000 GOZ corruption cases and losses worth 400 million rubles were investigated in the first half of this year. He said, for example, Dagdizel received 3 billion rubles in defense orders, but hasn’t sent a single product to the military, and bought farm equipment and building materials with the money. He cited losses in purchasing apartments for military men at inflated prices as well as the problem of unfinished housing projects.
Izvestiya claims a large number of young pilots are leaving the Air Forces because the lion’s share of increased flight hours and promised higher pay are going to their commanders and older officers. Could this be a continuation of Igor Sulim’s travails at Lipetsk? The paper also reports a number of cleaning companies say the Defense Ministry owes them 5 billion rubles for housekeeping work outsourced over the last year.
Russian Defense Policy 