Polishing the vertical

I always knew that Sergei Ivanov was not very highly of opinion about the moral qualities of subordinates. But, honestly, I could not imagine that he was thinking about the military so badly. Explaining the need to create a federal agency for arms deliveries, military, special equipment and material resources, he stated that it will be guaranteed from corruption. On the only basis that the agency will not be military, and it itself will not enter the Ministry of Defense. According to the plan, a new agency, which will dispose of hundreds of billions, at the request of the Ministry of Defense and other law enforcement agencies will order new weapons. Moreover, the fight against corruption is not the most important thing here.

Creating a new federal structure, the Kremlin is trying to solve the problem that Ivanov has been beaten unsuccessfully for several years. We are talking about the effectiveness of funds spent on the production of weapons. Every year, the amount of defense order is growing by about a third, and now has reached a completely serious amount of 300 billion rubles ($ 11.3 billion). At the same time, the return is not too great, if not to say - insignificant. During this year, the Russian army will receive a dozen strategic missiles, as well as an indefinite number of aircraft, tanks and armored vehicles. The leaders of the Ministry of Defense say only about the plans to “equip with new and modernized samples one long -range squadron, 6 aviation and helicopter squadrons, 7 tank and 13 motorized rifle battalions.” At the same time, no one specifies how many units of military equipment will be “new”, and how many “modernized”. And it is no coincidence. After all, when last year the military department announced the intention to purchase, spent billions, as many as thirty tanks, he was simply raised to laugh.

The Ministry of Defense cannot understand why contracts are performed so slowly, and the production of weapons is so rapidly more expensive. Sergei Ivanov recently complained that with the prices “not all are in order” and that they were in the Russian defense and industrial complex “conditional”. The Minister of Defense seems to be firmly convinced that the guilt of everything, in addition to the thieving of the military, is the desire of directors of military factories to get maximum profit. And if so, then the whole thing is in properly established control. The new Federal Service, according to Ivanov, will place state contracts, finance them in the interests of all power structures, and control the implementation of military orders.

Everything would be nothing, but the need to ensure such control over the military-industrial complex earlier a year and a half ago explained the appointment of Ivanov by the Deputy Prime Minister and the chairman of the military-industrial commission. And before that, they tried to establish the work of the military -industrial complex by creating a federal military order service. And even earlier, the Federal Agency for Industry tried to do it. And also - Deputy Minister of Defense for weapons, General Alexei Moscow with his apparatus and assistant Putin for military -technical issues, Alexander Burutin. I note that each of the listed services was endowed at the time of creation by maximum powers. So the problem, obviously, is not at all in the absence of coordination, leadership and proper control.

The problem is much more serious. It consists in the fact that the military department stubbornly does not want to live in a market economy. In the 90s, the Ministry of Defense and enterprises of the military-industrial complex competed in mutual deception. The military department pretended to be about to receive funds to order new weapons. And enterprises, which have long lost suppliers and lost technology, carefully gave the impression that it was worth receiving this money, they will immediately fill up the army with the most modern weapons.

The myth that there really is a defense-industrial complex in Russia was refuted at the very moment when the Ministry of Defense had money, which seemed to have been enough to purchase missiles, tanks and aircraft. Immediately it turned out that these weapons have nothing to collect from. The components remaining from the Soviet era was enough only to collect single specimens of military equipment. But as soon as it came to small parties, it immediately became clear that there was no element base for serial production. Those who produced components in Soviet times have long been reoriented to other products. So now all the details must be made almost manually. And this is why contracts are more slowly than planned. That is why prices for military products are growing rapidly. Indeed, in this sector of the economy there is no market or competition.

And the Ministry of Defense does not want to determine clear priorities in the field of weapons, trying to simultaneously produce their entire spectrum - from pistols to strategic missiles. As a result, even with a steady growth of the military budget, there is not enough money all the time.

Of course, the appearance of another agency, in addition to existing departments, can not make expenses on service effective in any way. After all, it will only lengthen the approval chain and slightly increase the number of officials receiving bribes. The problem can only be solved by introducing defense enterprises into the system of market relations. This is not a simple matter: on this subject they are written foreign, in particular by American, researchers of Tom. But experts are sure: the responsibility for the order should be held by the one who makes it - namely the Ministry of Defense. But this should be another ministry. Not in the new agency, but in the military department itself, primarily in the Commander -in -Chief should hundreds of civilian officials engaged in an exclusively defense order should serve. In fact, the presence or absence of shoulder straps with the customer does not affect the level of corruption. And the degree of openness of how budget money is spent affects it. Representatives of the Ministry of Defense must prove parliamentarians the need to create a particular weapons system, and then the Duma must control the implementation of these projects at all stages. But this is another system of power, directly opposite to the power vertical built in our country. In the meantime, the Kremlin is trying to bring it to the ideal, adding all new meaningless institutions to it.