Free Republic

The Russian S-400 Triumph air and missile defense system was officially inducted into Russian army service – the first two systems have entered operational service with the air defense regiment stationed at the Military Space Defense joint command in Elektrostal, the Moscow Region with additional two scheduled to be deployed by the end of 2010. More systems will be delivered later, along with next generation S-500 currently in early development stage. The Russian Air-defense command is hopeful to achieving full operational capability protecting strategic sites throughout Russia with the new systems by 2015.The S-400 started its way in 1999 as...

The recent Bulava launch failure has implications for US-Russian arms control talks (EDM, December 17) and will determine whether the Russian defense industry is capable of delivering advanced weapons systems at qualitative levels competing with analogous systems produced abroad. The issue involves the quality of such systems, their relative costs, and the time for their research, development and deployment. This year the Russian defense ministry has selectively answered that question negatively and has bought advanced unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) from Israel and entered into discussions with France over the purchase of a Mistral-class amphibious assault ship, which so far has...