The problems facing Russia’s defense industry

A couple of weeks ago, Ilya Kramnik had Viktor Murakhovsky on his show on the radio station Govorit Moskva. Murakhovsky and Kramnik are both relatively well known experts on the Russian military and the discussion turned out to be highly informative. The whole 45 minute conversation is available here in audio form, while a Russian [...]

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The fate of the last state armaments program

Today’s NVO includes a reminder of the fate of procurement plans included in the last State Armaments Program (for 2006-2015) as the program has passed its halfway mark. 7 Borei SSBNs: none in service to date (though two have been built), because of problems with the Bulava missile 6 multi-purpose attack submarines: none built to [...]

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The Russian Navy’s shipbuilding constraints

Last week, the press in the U.S. briefly got excited about the Russian state armaments program. Fred Weir’s article in particular talked about the bear sharpening its claws, etc. There was no mention of the failure of all previous such programs, and no discussion of the overall likelihood that the program would actually be carried out [...]

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What will the navy do with its ships?

Surprisingly, developments in the Russian military have continued apace over the last two months while I’ve been more or less away from writing new material. Now I’m back and at some point will write about some of the things I learned about Caspian security. But first, I came across a very interesting analysis of likely [...]

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Russia’s State Armaments Program 2020: Is the Third Time the Charm for Military Modernization?

The following post is being published as a PONARS Eurasia policy memo and will be presented at its annual policy conference, which will be held in Washington D.C. on Friday, October 22. For more information, click here. ——— For the first two years of the Russian military reform program that began in October 2008, the [...]

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