Defense Focus: Why buy Russian?- Part 1(Russia Displaces USA as #1 Arms Exporter)

Space War ^ | December 10, 2007 | Martin Sieff

[america4vr]

Russia has displaced the United States as the world's No. 1 arms exporter not just because its weapons are cheaper, but because many of them are very good.

According to Russian military commentator Nikita Petrov writing for RIA Novosti, in 2007 Russia earned more than $5.5 billion in weapons exports and has a backlog of orders worth more than $20 billion.

Different institutions have different measuring yardsticks for weapons exports and definitions on what they are. However, the U.S. Congressional Research Service estimated Russian arms sales as worth $7.1 billion in its report "Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1998-2005."

The CRS, surprisingly to American eyes, ranked France, not the United States, as the second-largest arms exporter with 2005 sales worth more than $6.3 billion, just ahead of the United States with $6.3 billion.

As we have noted in previous articles, Russia has a number of advantages over the United States in its arms export business:

First, the record global prices for oil and gas, of which Russia is the world's largest combined producer and exporter, have filled the Russian treasury to bursting point, enabling the Kremlin to offer exceptionally favorable payment terms for arms export contracts.

Second, major nations with vastly ambitious armament programs like China, Iran and Venezuela will never buy their weapons from the United States and only reluctantly from U.S. allies, even if they were willing to sell: As all three have huge foreign currency reserves from export earnings, they offer a bonanza to Russian weapons producers.

Third, the volatility of U.S. politics and the well-understood record of successive U.S. congresses in imposing sanctions on previously concluded arms deals makes many countries wary of relying on the United States for their major armaments systems when export of these and their spare parts

[america4vr]

The Bear seems to have emerged from hibernation, a re-emergence, if not resurgence, manifested by a more confident if not militant style, pose engineered by Putin and his ilk, engendered by high oil prices, geo-political tension in its backyard.

[massgopguy]

With the exception of the AK-47, Ivan makes crap.

[saganite]

Yep, those Russian weapons are good alrighty. Just ask the Syrians how well that brand spanking new state of the art air defense system worked against the Israelis.

[colonialhk]

The list of people we wont sell to is increasing and Sarkozy is on side.

[america4vr]

Weapons purchases are not the time to buy cheap.

[SolidWood]

Sarko has no problem pumping up Ghaddafi with planes, arms and nuclear plants...

[SolidWood]

Exactly. Russian stuff sucks. The Syrians and Iraqis can attest to that.

[in hoc signo vinces]

Bingo...look at who is buying. Those that are buying are mainly Russian, regimes of a dubious nature who fear that buying American now, may have consequences in the future such as...no spare parts, no technical assistance, or a stop sell order due to that regime going rogue...

[TexanToTheCore]

Most armies are in place to control civilian populations not to engage other armies. Cheapo Russian systems work quite well for this purpose.

[Hazwaste]

Put the Israelis in P-26's and they probably still could have gotten the job done.

[massgopguy]

There was a “Soviet Space” exhibit at the Museum of Science. The quality of their hardware mused me to come up with the quip that the first page of the Cosmonaut Handbook read; “Thank you for dying for your country”.

[Cicero]

The First Gulf War was like a turkey shoot.

I had always heard that Russian tanks were the best, ever since the days of Hitler, when it was widely said that Russian and German armor was better than ours, although we had some geniuses like Patton on our side who made up for it.

During the Cold War, it was always said that if Russian armor came through the Fulda gap, only tactical nukes could stop them. Then came Iraq, and war between US and Iraqi armor was so one-sided it must have run something like 100 to 1.

The interesting question is, was Soviet armor that bad, or was it just badly maintained, poorly supplied, badly led, and incompetently used by the Iraqis? Not to mention our air supremacy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a comprehensive answer to that question.

[nuke rocketeer]

Compared to the M1 and Challenger 2, the Russian tanks are crap. OTOH, they probably could have gone head-to-head with a M60 and won sometimes. The Iraqis also used lousy tactics.

[america4vr]

You can thank good old Yankee ingenuity for the Soviet Panzer busters and the credit it deserves as instrument of victory for the Soviets. The ancestry of the T-34 derives from prototype fast tanks built by American tank designer J. Walter Christie, which were sold to the Soviet Union after the American military declined to buy them. In particular the T-34 incorporates the Christie suspension.

T34 Soviet Russian Tank

[in hoc signo vinces]

“The interesting question is, was Soviet armor that bad, or was it just badly maintained, poorly supplied, badly led, and incompetently used by the Iraqis? Not to mention our air supremacy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a comprehensive answer to that question.”

the answer to your question is YES...and if they’d have been Russians instead of Iraqis...the outcome wouldnt have been much different.

[Zhang Fei]

First, the record global prices for oil and gas, of which Russia is the world's largest combined producer and exporter, have filled the Russian treasury to bursting point, enabling the Kremlin to offer exceptionally favorable payment terms for arms export contracts.

The bolded part is key. If you allow the buyer to spread out the payments over twenty years but take delivery today, you will find a lot of eager and willing customers. And how much of this is try before you buy? In finance, we call that cooking the books. The real question is whether the Russians will ever see the money from the contracts they've been trumpeting.

[Cicero]

Interesting. I hadn’t heard that detail, although I knew that FDR’s Lend Lease had largely armed the Soviets.

[null and void]

Weapons purchases are not the time to buy cheap.

That depends entirely on the value you assign your soldiers.

[VeniVidiVici]

Russian hardware. Where coming in 2d place is always the first loser:

[The Pack Knight]

While I'd add some of their other small arms to that list, I tend to agree. While reliability trumps performance in combat, most Russian gear is good for neither.

Maybe they've finally started putting some quality back into their weapons, but I'll believe it when I see it.