Alexander Khramchikhin. Where's the money?

Where's the money?
Alexander Khramchikhin

Publication date: April 20, 2004

In December 1976, the CPSU Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers decided to develop a new attack helicopter to replace the Mi-24. The new helicopter was supposed to be a response to the helicopter being created in parallel in the United States, designed to replace the AN-1 Cobra.

The American YAN-64 "Apache" of the Hughes company won the competition against the YAN-63 of the Bell company and went into production in 1984. In the USSR, the Mi-28 of the Mil Design Bureau and the B-80 of the Kamov Design Bureau became participants in the competition. In December 1987, it was decided that the B-80 had won and that it would enter service under the name Ka-50. In May 1991, the first production car saw the light. By this time, the country was already experiencing well-known economic problems. Nevertheless, the first Ka-50 successfully passed state tests, and in August 1995, by decree of the President of the Russian Federation, the helicopter was put into service. The matter, however, was limited to the production of 5 vehicles that arrived at the 344th Center for Combat Use and Retraining of Army Aviation Flight Personnel in the city of Torzhok, Tver Region. Two of them fought a little in Chechnya in 2001, where they received high praise from experts. And a few weeks ago, the Russian public was solemnly informed that... the Mi-28 would enter service with the Russian Armed Forces .

It must be said that this will no longer be the Mi-28A, which lost the competition 17 years ago, but the Mi-28N, for the first time in domestic practice capable of fighting at night (Apache was capable of this 20 years ago). Nevertheless, I still wonder if anyone canceled the results of the 1987 competition and the 1995 presidential decree? Does this mean that the Ka-50 was buried forever, and if so, why? And in general, does it make sense to now adopt an obsolete machine, and isn’t it worth starting to develop a next-generation helicopter instead?

In the early 80s, the US Air Force began developing requirements for a 5th generation fighter designed to replace the F-15. In 1986, it was announced that the Lockheed - Boeing - General Dynamics group with the YF-22 fighter and Northrop - McDonell Douglas with the YF-23 would take part in the competition for the construction of this aircraft. It was these machines that best met the developed requirements. After extensive testing, the YF-22, which recently began entering service with the US Air Force, won.

It is still not very clear whether Russia has developed clear requirements for a 5th generation fighter. aircraft The S-37 "Berkut" with a forward-swept wing made its first flight in Zhukovsky on September 25, 1997, just 18 days after the first flight of the F-22 (in the American aircraft naming system, the letter "Y", meaning that the aircraft is experimental, is removed if adopted). True, the American plane was already the first production aircraft, and the Russian one was only a prototype, so the real lag behind the United States was not 2.5 weeks, but 7 years.

The further history of the S-37 and its Mikoyan rival “1-42” is dark, strange and unpleasant. The struggle between them, which took place not so much in the air as “under the carpet,” was accompanied by numerous public scandals. In the end, it was announced that the S-37, later renamed the Su-47, had won. After this, it became clear that the aircraft is by no means a pre-production aircraft, like the YF-22 and YF-23 were a decade and a half ago; it is in fact only an experimental aircraft for testing new technologies. What kind of competition and what kind of victory in it can we talk about in this case? When will Russia wait for a real 5th generation fighter and will it wait at all? These are no less interesting questions than about the Mi-28 and Ka-50. And just as unrequited.

On July 27, 1997, at the Yantar plant in Kaliningrad, the lead patrol ship (according to the Western classification - frigate) Project 1244 "Novik" was laid down - the first large surface ship of the new project after the collapse of the USSR. In terms of its performance characteristics, it was the best ship in the world in its class, armed with the fundamentally new Onyx anti-ship missiles, Poliment missiles, and Medvedka anti-ship missiles. However, its construction has not yet been completed, and information about its future fate is extremely contradictory. Most likely, if it is completed, it will be as a training ship, since the above-mentioned missiles for it are at best in the testing stage. And we can certainly say that other similar ships will not follow it.

On December 21, 2001, the keel of the lead patrol ship (according to the Western classification - a corvette) pr. 20380 "Guarding" was laid down at the Northern Shipyard in St. Petersburg. In the media, it was he who was named the first surface ship of the new project, laid down in Russia after the collapse of the USSR. This was an outright lie, but it fit into the new ideological concept - life in Russia began under Putin. It is interesting that the Steregushchy corvette is almost as large as the Novik frigate in size and displacement, but is much weaker armed. The Uran anti-ship missile system, the Kashtan air defense missile system, and the Vodopad anti-ship missile system have been in service with the Navy for a long time. Thus, the new ship is built for old weapon systems, while Novik was built for promising systems. Wouldn’t it be easier to spend the money that would be spent on the construction of ships of Project 20380 on fine-tuning the missiles for Novik and completing the construction of this ship? Another unanswered question.

One of the main tenets of today’s agitprop is that under Putin, the revival of the Russian army began. What exactly it consists of is quite difficult to understand. What is clear is that the Soviet principle of the complete lack of control over the armed forces by society is being revived. For some reason, it does not occur to anyone that the taxpayer, who supports the army and navy with his own money, in order for them to protect him, has every right to know where HIS money is going and whether he will actually be protected in the event of war.

Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Lyubov Kudelina is an absolutely non-corrupt person, not biased by any intra-army groups and is highly qualified. However, judging by the information coming from the depths of the Ministry of Defense, for three years she has not been able to really understand where and how the very considerable money allocated for the RF Armed Forces is flowing.

Russia's military budget (about $14 billion) is one of the largest in the world, so it is very difficult to explain the reasons for the almost complete lack of new military equipment entering the troops. India's military budget is not much higher than Russia's (just over 16 billion dollars), while the number of armed forces is also slightly higher than ours (1.3 million for India, 1.1 million for Russia). At the same time, India is actively developing strategic nuclear forces, purchasing hundreds of the latest tanks (T-90S and Arjun), and dozens of the latest combat aircraft (Su-30MK, MiG-29, Mirage-2000). India acquired an aircraft carrier and the world's best frigates, Project 1135.6, from Russia (Novik would have been the best if it had been completed), and is building 4 very good destroyers at its shipyards. Russia is purchasing fourteen T-90s, upgrading five Su-27s and building the aforementioned Steregushchiy. Why is there such a colossal difference in the volume of purchases with almost the same money? Give an answer! Doesn't give an answer.

The political authorities have not yet decided who Russia’s potential opponents are and what kind of war the country will have to fight. Accordingly, it is impossible to decide on military-technical policy. The authorities are concerned exclusively with their own ratings and the ostentatious side of the army and navy. The military is forced to decide for itself. As a result, such exciting works are born as “Current tasks of the development of the RF Armed Forces,” which received wide resonance in October last year. It is obvious that it was written by at least three different teams of authors, each of which has its own views on military development. The views are completely different, yet they are surprisingly mechanically combined into one document.

In such a situation, military-technical policy is determined by various circumstances that are far from the interests of the Armed Forces, especially if everyone understands these interests in their own way. Due to a number of circumstances, the Sukhoi company has almost monopolized the Russian export of combat aircraft, and the Russian Air Force is now mainly equipped with various Su. As a result, she has many times more money than the Mikoyanites. Apparently, it is precisely this fact that explains the above-described “victory” of the non-existent 5th generation fighter of the Sukhoi Design Bureau over the equally non-existent aircraft of the Mikoyan Design Bureau in that strange “competition”. And the Mil company in recent years has become very close to the Sukhoi company, while the Kamovites recklessly chose the Mikoyanites as friends. It is possible that this is why the Mi-28 so unexpectedly outperformed the Ka-50. As for “Novik” and “Guardian”, the People’s Chosen One and his friendly team could not allow their native St. Petersburg to lose to some Kaliningrad! Therefore, Novik was not only strangled, but actually declared non-existent at all.

The massive failure to pay taxes by the Russian population is usually explained by the fact that our taxes are too high. This is partly true, of course, but in some Western countries they are even higher, and yet local citizens pay them regularly. Perhaps the fact is that Russians are by no means such a stupid, dumb herd as the Kremlin and its immediate environs believe. Our people simply do not understand why they should pay for housing and communal services, which does not provide any services, but at the same time raises prices. Why should they support law enforcement agencies that, at best, do not protect them, and at worst, pose a greater threat than bandits. And why, finally, should they give money to the army, if even top-class specialist Kudelina still doesn’t understand where this money goes?