This week, in a speech at an expanded meeting of the collegium of the Russian Defense Ministry, Vladimir Putin said, that Russia has significantly surpassed the USSR in terms of the number of modern weapons in the troops.
"By the middle of December 2020 year, the share of modern types of weapons and equipment in the Russian troops is already more than 70 percent, this is for general purposes, and in nuclear forces - 86 percent ", the president said.
About, How do these figures correspond to reality?, Rosbalt columnist spoke with a military expert Pavel Felgenhauer.
- Is it true, that today the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are technically better equipped, than in the days of the late USSR, or is it just Putin's self-promotion?
- Putin has been talking about the Russian wunderwaffe for a long time, least, from 2018 of the year.
- But still, those numbers correspond to reality, which he called in his speech?
- It's more like, what is called "creative accounting". How to count, What is meant by "modern"? Of course, in Soviet times, the speed of changing types of weapons was higher, than now. Purchases in 1970-80 the years were absolutely gigantic - three thousand tanks were made a year. Hundreds of missiles fired. Now single samples are made with difficulty..
figures, which Putin calls, very conditional ... In fact, there is nothing particularly modern in this area in Russia now. No, I do not speak, that our weapons are no good. It is not bad and in many cases it can even kill people very much.. But call it modern?
- Wait, but these same hypersonic missiles, with which the Russian leader periodically scares the world?
— Hypersonic missiles fly from 1944 of the year. The German Nazis were the first to use them in World War II.. Any ballistic missile flies at hypersonic speed - this is its property. Another Gagarin ship flew at hypersonic speed.
It all sounds beautiful, but little changes. Putin is simply not an expert in these matters., He's a lawyer, and the military hang all sorts of noodles on his ears. In the same way, they once led the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU by the nose, telling tales of enemy threats and knocking out crazy money for them, to build absolutely unnecessary, but a very expensive weapon.
- Tanks now in Russia are also made in single copies?
- Yes. Basically modernize the old Soviet. And it is quite expensive - about more than a million dollars apiece.. Old T-72s are taken to Uralvagonzavod and upgraded there to the level of T-72B3 or T-72B3M. Then they are listed, like a modern weapon. Basically, in the West, too, now few tanks are being produced. In England, eg, production is curtailed completely, something is made in Germany and the USA, but in small quantities. They also upgrade old cars there., left over from the Cold War. Although somewhere, eg, in Turkey and South Korea, going to start a new production.
If we return to modern Russia, then it is impossible to compare tank production with Soviet. Now in the Russian Federation they do not even one, and two orders of magnitude fewer tanks, than in the USSR. Update, naturally, also much slower. Therefore, what is considered a modern weapon, and what is old - the question, which depends on, who is talking about it.
— But what about the T-14 "Armata" tank?? is he, sort of, ultra-modern…
- "Armata" is such an experimental concept car. It is inconvenient for tankers to fight on it. First of all because, that his crew of three is there like herrings in a closed capsule. thence, in which case, you won't get out under fire. This is a mass grave. Such an idea, to make the tower uninhabited. It uses a notion from the 1960s with an automatic loader for carousel-type guns.. In this tank, shells and crew are in the same room.. In the event of a shell hit and detonation, the crew dies. In western tanks, where the automatic loader is not used, ammunition is in a separate armored compartment. Therefore, when shells detonate, the crew is likely to survive. A plus, if the automation in "Armata" fails, then the tankers cannot look out of it and look around. All on screen. If the system crashed, then the crew went blind. But in the war zone, tankers have to stay in a tank for weeks ...
The troops treat the Armata with great skepticism and instead predominantly modernize Soviet T-72s or buy T-90s in small quantities. But this is also a modernized T-72. Besides, if you make "Armata" with all the invented gadgets, then at a price it turns out to be more expensive than any Western tank, somewhere in the area 8 — 10 million dollars. Although several of these machines are our industry, I think, still hand over the army.
- And what about our "fifth generation" fighter Su-57? Or not so fifth?
- Yes, Not really. But they switched to its "serial" production. One of the four "serial" Su-57 crashed. Now they are urgently making another "serial". Planned to create 76 such fighters to 2030 year. Yes, it's not clear, will it work. And the Americans have already riveted several hundred fifth-generation aircraft ... We have completely lost the ability to mass-produce new weapons.
— Putin in the same speech, which we are discussing now, praised the Russian military for their actions in Syria…
- In Syria, the battle near Deir ez-Zor on February 7-8 became very problematic for the Russian armed forces 2018 of the year, when American special forces with air support, drones and artillery of the American coalition defeated the battalion group, consisting of five hundred Russian Wagnerites, Syrian military and approximately 30 tanks and other equipment. The then commander of the coalition forces was an American general, who well organized the coordination of different branches of the troops in this battle ...
The technological gap between the Russian armed forces and the best armies in the world is growing.
- But recently the same Putin during his big press conference, as is often the case with him, without naming, cited the words of the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley about the Russian army. He declared, that the Russians "have a very combat-ready and very professional army".
— Western military, especially Americans, they love to exaggerate the strength of the enemy. It's their tradition. It helps beat money in Congress. Besides, defeating a strong opponent is much more honorable, than weak. I remember, how in 1991 year, on the eve of Operation Desert Storm, they praised the "great" army of Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein, claiming, that she is the third most powerful in the world.
- Why does Putin need to exaggerate the power of the modern Russian army?
- He needs this public boasting in order to, for the West to make political concessions. At the same big press conference of his this December, he openly said this - it is necessary, they say, agree. FROM 2018 Putin scares the world, shows frightening live pictures of our weapons at presentations, but it doesn't work. Europeans do not make political concessions, sanctions intensify, how problems with the West in general are growing.
Such statements, which he made at an expanded meeting of the collegium of the Ministry of Defense, designed primarily not for internal, and to an external audience. Putin's two-move (we scare you, and you agree with us) does not work. It didn't work out with President Trump, will not work with President Biden. Sanctions will increase - up to the shutdown of SWIFT.
- And what is the ratio in the field of nuclear weapons?
- Russia really has more nuclear weapons now, than Americans, because they are in this area, in fact, unilaterally disarmed, and ours at that time were armed. But this, as the saying goes, can be acquired. The United States is now taking this into account and will close this gap..
Interviewed by Alexander Zhelenin
