The Russian government has allocated over Rb60 billion ($2.2 billion) for the development and production of air-launched weapons in its State Armaments Programme until 2015, says Vladislav Putilin, first deputy chairman of Moscow's Military-Industrial Commission.
"Funding for research has been more than doubled," he says, while claiming that allocations for weapons maintenance activities have been increased by nine times. Putilin's comments follow criticism by defence minister Sergei Ivanov over the way new air-launched weapons are developed and deployed. "The current development of aircraft weapon systems is unsatisfactory. It lags behind schedule considerably," Ivanov says.
The government's new spending plans follow a period of major consolidation within Russia's air-launched weapons sector. In January 2002 a tactical missile corporation, Aviatsionnoye Vooruzheniye, was created around Russia's Zvezda-Strela enterprise, with additional concerns including Avtomatika, MKB Iskra, MKB Soyuz, PKB Detal, Raduga, Region NPP and Vympel.
The group held a board meeting last month to discuss weapon development plans up to 2015.
Source: Flight International
