Russian Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

pugachev_diver said:

French weapons and communication systems are not natively NATO, I think even they have to add on a few things and do a few twitches to be compatible with NATO systems. I think this Reuters report is stupid, the reporter got new brains. There is no way that the French will give out those things to the Russians. Even if equipment are French standard, they'll still be modified.

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Flight Global said:

Russia details plan to buy 1,000 military helicopters
By Vladimir Karnozov

Russia's defence ministry will buy more than 1,000 new military rotorcraft by the end of this decade, according to Dmitry Petrov, general director of the Russian Helicopters industry group.

While he declined to give an exact number, Petrov says a production plan for the "immediate future" has been accepted by the customer in accordance with Moscow's State Armament Programme 2020.

The agreement calls for "a little over" 100 military helicopter deliveries this year, with the rate to proceed at between 120 and 160 aircraft annually in the coming years, Petrov says. While not all of the expected sales have been turned into firm contracts yet, the defence ministry is expected to finalise several more "quasi-firm" orders later this year.

Following calls from its suppliers, the ministry has moved away from its standard practice of awarding one-year contracts. Instead, it will make long-term agreements with five final assembly plants, in Arseniev, Kazan, Kumertau, Rostov-on-Don and Ulan-Ude. The first such deal, made with the Rostvertol plant in Rostov-on-Don, was recently signed linked to the Mi-26, Mi-28N and Mi-35M.

According to Petrov, a new helicopter will be available for the Russian navy in 2017-18, with Kamov having already received the required specifications. The same design house will produce "navalised" versions of its Ka-52 reconnaissance and attack and Ka-226 utility helicopters for the service as an interim measure.

Moscow has also allocated funding to develop a Mi-171A2 transport, which Petrov says should obtain certification in 2014. It will also support the use of the Mi-34S1 to support the development of technologies for unmanned helicopters.

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Russia signed a contract Friday worth more than $1 billion to buy two French warships _ the largest military deal between a NATO country and Moscow.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev oversaw the signing ceremony in the country's second-largest city, St. Petersburg.

The sale of Mistral-class assault warships took months to negotiate. Under a preliminary agreement in December, the first two such ships will be built by the French company DCNS and two others will be constructed jointly by French and Russian shipbuilders.

The U.S. has expressed concerns that a sale would send the wrong message to American allies in central and eastern Europe, Russian neighbors who are alarmed by the plan.

French Trade Minister Pierre Lellouche told reporters the deal was worth euro1.12 billion ($1.6 billion), but Anatoly Isaikin, chief of the Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport, put it at $1.2 billion ( euro850 million). The discrepancy couldn't be immediately explained.

The talks on the deal have dragged on for months amid disputes about how many ships would be built and where, and how much sensitive technology France would share.

Roman Trotsenko, spokesman for Russia's state-controlled United Shipbuilding Corporation, told Russian Rossiya 24 television that Russian industries will produce about 40 percent of the components for the first two ships.

Trotsenko said France also has agreed to provide Russia with the proprietary state-of-the art command and control system for the ships, which are more advanced than the technology the Russian navy has.

"The French side has agreed to an unprecedented level of cooperation in the technology transfer," he said.

The Mistral, which could carry as many as 16 helicopters and dozens of armored vehicles, would allow Russia to land hundreds of troops quickly on foreign soil.

The prospect has alarmed human rights activists and Georgia, which fought a brief war against Russia in 2008, as well as the ex-Soviet Baltic nations in NATO who are worried about Russia's increasing sway over its neighbors.

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