Translated material
There is money, you don't need a mind
In uniform
There is money, you don't need a mind
June 29, 2006 Alexander Golts
Yesterday, presenting the new head of the Federal Republic of Defense of Sergei Maev, the Minister of Defense said that next year more than 300 billion rubles would have been spent on the purchase of weapons. Now the former head of the armored department of the Ministry of Defense, which for many years insisted that the preservation of thousands of tanks would ensure the military power of Russia, will, as Sergei Ivanov believes, “control the effectiveness of the use of huge funds, pricing, contracts”.If you take seriously what has recently been said by the highest leaders of the country, it turns out that just a 64-year-old colonel general turns into a key figure in the Russian economy. Judge for yourself. Speaking at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, Sergei Ivanov argued that the defense and industrial complex (OPC) should become the locomotive of the Russian economy: “Our OPC is able to become at the forefront of its innovative development.” It was argued that more than 70 percent of the total scientific products produced in Russia and more than 50 percent of the number of all researchers in Russia account for. Ivanov insists that the defense industry "has truly enormous opportunities for the development of domestic high -tech and high -tech production."
The fact that it is the terribly difficult task of the modernization breakthrough of our industry that is assigned to the defense complex that the materials of the recent meeting of the Security Council are also convinced. Putin, Fradkov and Ivanov vied with each other proved to each other that Russia simply desperately needed a technological breakthrough, which would provide her with a worthy place among advanced states. At the same time, a breakthrough can occur on the basis of military technologies.
In theory, this is a completely correct approach. Just military orders are the most “soft” form of state incentive of economics. These investments are stretched over time, tightly controlled and therefore are hardly able to provoke inflation growth. At the same time, the country receives not only the required number of modern tanks, submarines, aircraft and ballistic missiles. The main thing is that investments in the defense sector suddenly turn into breakthrough technologies that provide the country with sustainable economic growth. It happened, for example, with the Reagan Star Wars program. The idea of the placement of weapons in space capable of destroying ballistic missiles of a potential enemy could not be realized. However, several hundred breakthrough technologies became the by -product of the Star Wars. And the main one is the Internet. Just information technologies, according to some experts, provided the United States with rapid economic growth in the 90s.
Will Sergey Ivanov, who is now responsible not only for the army, but also for the defense industry, along with freshly known Sergey Maev, to ensure the economic growth of Russia? I suspect not. The fact is that the transformation of military production into a locomotive of the economy requires a decisive reorganization of the entire system of our defense industry. Indeed, in Soviet and in post -Soviet times, attempts have been repeatedly made to use military technologies in civilian proceedings. However, nothing good came of this. It all ended with the release of shovels and pots of titanium.
The fact is that the so -called civilian products both tried and continue to try to produce in military production. The paradox is that for the successful use of advanced technologies, the production of civil and military products should be strictly divided. Only in this case, there will be no temptation to reduce everything to the creation of certain united components, from which you can collect both weapons and civilian goods (remember the worker from the joke that tried to assemble the sewing machine, and he got a machine gun every time?).
In order to use high technologies in the civilian sector, you really need to “come up with” inexpensive (compared to military products) and the product in demand each time. It is clear that this is easiest to achieve this within the framework of a single corporation. But the next step suggests that all the “know -how” without bureaucratic delays should be transferred from the department that is engaged in military production to “civilian units”. Experience shows that the most effective military technologies are used within the framework of a single corporation, but only in the case of a strict separation of military and civilian production.
However, the Russian leadership went the exact opposite path. It is by hook or by crook drives more or less effective defense industry enterprises into some vertically built holdings. Within the framework of these structures controlled by government officials, no effective use of breakthrough technologies is possible in principle. Not only are they all inevitably slammed by a dusty bag of secrecy. Creating specialized holdings for the production of certain types of military equipment, the government essentially breeds monopolists. In the presence of sustainable financing by the state, these holdings will not have any incentives not only for the use of advanced technologies in the production of civilian products, but also to create such technologies. Why, if, under the guise of the “latest weapons”, the Kremlin chiefs can slip the warheads developed 20 years ago, and the fighter, who rose for the first time in the air 10 years ago?
As a result, no modernization jerk will occur, everything will turn into only the rapid rise in the cost of military products. And neither Colonel Maev General Maev, nor his boss Sergei Ivanov will be able to explain where the giant funds pumped into the “defense industry” disappear. Alexander Golts
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