Rosvoorouzhenie Will Actively Market Arms on the World Market

Increased competition in the world arms market during the final years of the outgoing century, especially among its traditional customers in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, has prompted Russian arms exporter Rosvoorouzhenie to concentrate its efforts and to improve its methods of operation, Director General Aleksey Ogarev told Show News.
"Our major efforts were directed to increase effectiveness of our marketing activity and to make it more flexible and goal-oriented," he said. As a result, in 1999 Rosvoorouzhenie delivered $2.85 billion's worth of arms to 49 countries -- an increase of more than $800 million over its 1998 figures.

Rosvoorouzhenie accounts for more than 80% of Russia's exports of armaments and military hardware. Aircraft hardware and armaments have dominated its exports in recent years, accounting for 45-50%, with naval hardware following at 14-16%.

"That situation has started to change most recently," Ogarev said. "In 1999 aircraft accounted for 44% of the total volume of Russian arms exports and naval hardware 23%, with weapon systems for ground forces occupying the third position and air defense systems and radar electronic systems in fourth place. Today, Rosvoorouzhenie's order book amounts to $9 billion, and we are positive that in the next year or two this figure will grow to $10 billion or $12 billion."

In the near future, Ogarev disclosed, Rosvoorouzhenie will actively promote on the world market the full scope of Russian armaments, including aviation hardware and air defense systems. NATO action against Yugoslavia has triggered an increased interest in Russian air defense systems and their upgrading, he said.

R&D has been completed on modernization of the most popular short-range defense systems such as the ZSU-23-5 Shilka, ZU-23, Strela-10 surface-to-air missile system and Tunguska surface-to-air gun/missile system. Upgrades considerably increase the systems' combat effectiveness, and gave Strela-10 and Igla night combat capability. Work has begun on a major upgrade of the Pechora SAM's combat effectiveness against state-of-the-art air-delivered weapons under conditions of active ECM.

"As for aircraft," Ogarev said, "we intend to promote to overseas markets-including the Central and Eastern European countries-upgrade programs for the MiG-29, MiG-21 and Su-22 fighters, as well as the Mi-8 and Mi-24 helicopters which account for up to 10% of the world's fleet of combat and military transport helicopters.

A radically new line of Rosvoorouzhenie activity is services for launching spacecraft using Russian vehicles. "We have offered a diversity of countries services for earth remote sensing (ERS) from space," Ogarev said. They include development and launching of ERS satellites operating in optical and radar bands; creation of ground-based satellite image reception/processing stations; delivery of hardware/software systems to process satellite data; customer training in satellite data analysis techniques; creation of geo-informational systems, and updating of topographic and sea charts including digital images and three-dimensional terrain models.

By Nikolai Novichkov