Russia can not rearm its fleet

In Sochi, a large-scale meeting of Vladimir Putin with military and production workers took place.
17.05.2018
Kommersant
Origin source
On Wednesday, in the presence of President Vladimir Putin, military and industry representatives discussed the problems of cooperation between the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC), because of which the deadlines for the execution of the state defense order are broken. The military has repeatedly raised this issue at internal meetings, but the situation has not changed much. The president's intervention is designed to prevent similar problems in the implementation of the new state armament program until 2027, in which trillions of rubles are allocated for the development of the Navy.

Opening the meeting, Vladimir Putin recalled that the Navy is "the most important factor in the country's military, economic security, maintaining strategic parity" and "in general, a significant tool for ensuring our national interests." The latter included, in particular, the actions of ships and submarines that struck during the military operation in Syria strikes on positions of the militants with cruise missiles of the "Caliber" type from the waters of the Mediterranean and Caspian seas. "We will continue to equip the Navy with the latest systems of weapons, communications, reconnaissance and target designation." As before, the quality requirements, the deadlines for fulfilling the tasks of the state defense order should remain the most stringent, "the president said, recognizing" problematic issues "with both the creation of new equipment and the repair of the already delivered equipment. Then the meeting continued in a closed mode for the press: its results, neither the military nor representatives of USC on Wednesday formally commented.

The main topic of the meeting was the execution of the state defense order by enterprises that are part of the USC cooperation, two sources of Kommersant in the shipbuilding industry and an official close to the leadership of the Defense Ministry say. The military is concerned about the negative statistics of the failure of the terms of contracts for the supply of ships and submarines, provided timely advance and payment, one of the interlocutors of Kommersant admits.

For this reason, not only high-ranking military officers (acting Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Deputy Minister for Armaments Yuri Borisov, Navy Commander Vladimir Korolyov, etc.) were summoned to Sochi and the industry leadership (OSK President Alexei Rakhmanov and acting Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov), but the managers of the enterprises of the shipbuilding industry - Sevmash, Severnaya Verf, Zvezda and TsKB of marine engineering Rubin.

Re-equipment of the Navy was one of the priorities of the previous state program of armaments: in 2011-2020, the fleet planned to allocate about 4.7 trillion rubles, of which almost half were to go for serial purchases of new weapons and equipment. However, by early 2018, only three of the eight strategic nuclear submarines of Project 955 Borei (the standard carrier of the Bulava ICBM) and one of the seven multi-purpose submarines of Project 885 Yasen (carrier of cruise missiles) were introduced into the Navy. The situation was no better with combat surface ships: according to the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, the Navy received only four frigates and eleven corvettes (of 15 and 35 ordered accordingly) during this time. According to the interlocutor of "Kommersant" in the industry, in part, the problems are objective: they include the termination of the supply of gas turbine plants from Ukraine (the production of serial engines will be deployed at the Rybinsk "Saturn" by 2020) or the unavailability of cooperation with large orders (Kaluga Turbine Plant tightened the deadlines for the delivery of the first steam-turbine units for strategic boats).

In February, March and May, during the conference calls, Sergei Shoigu criticized USC enterprises, accusing them of disrupting the terms of their obligations under contracts, but, according to the Kommersant source, the situation did not improve, so the discussion reached the presidential level. Meanwhile, in the new state armament program up to 2027 (about 4 trillion rubles in the part of the Navy) there are extremely important projects that can not be "shifted to the right" under any circumstances, the source of Kommersant in the department continues, - the construction of strategic nuclear submarines " Borey B, multi-purpose submarines of the fifth generation of the Husky type (carrier of hypersonic missiles Zirkon), non-nuclear submarines Kalina. Under special control, according to Kommersant, there are projects of underwater drones such as "Cephalopod" and "Status-6" capable of carrying conventional and nuclear charges, respectively, and which Vladimir Putin mentioned in the last message.

According to the expert of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies Konstantin Makienko, USC has a number of old problems, which it is unlikely to solve in the existing model of the industry management. But you can try to focus on projects that are of key importance for the country's defense capability (strategic and multi-purpose nuclear submarines) or are already launched in the series, the expert believes.

Officials

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