from foreign defense industry manufacturers

Yesterday in Yekaterinburg, at a press conference, the General Director of the Russian Conventional Weapons Agency, Alexander Nozdrachev, officially announced that starting next year, the FSUE Ural Optical-Mechanical Plant will begin mass production of the first domestic thermal imagers, which Russia has so far purchased abroad. According to the developers, this will not only increase national security, but will also reduce the cost of thermal imagers by almost half.
The thermal imager is designed to determine the shape and location of an object in the dark or optically opaque environments using the thermal radiation of the object. Currently, only three countries produce thermal imagers for military equipment - South Africa, Sweden and France.

The development of a domestic thermal imager for Modul-Avia military equipment on the basis of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise PA Ural Optical-Mechanical Plant (UOMZ) began in 2000 as part of the state armament program for 2001-2010. Several companies supplying components also participated in the program. Including Moscow NPO "Orion", Kazan State Institute of Applied Optics, Siberian Research Institute of Optical-Electronic Systems. It is planned that subsequently the share of UOMP in the production of thermal imagers will increase significantly.

Last Monday in Yekaterinburg, at the UOMZ base, a meeting of Section No. 2 of the Scientific and Technical Council under the Commission on Military-Industrial Issues of Russia took place, in which the Director General of the Russian Conventional Weapons Agency Alexander Nozdrachev and the First Deputy Head of the Armaments Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation Vladimir Mikheev took part . The project participants presented them with prototypes of the first domestic second-generation thermal imager.

At yesterday's press conference, the leaders of the Ministry of Defense assessed the development of the "defense equipment". Thus, Alexander Nozdrachev was pleased with the demonstration. Stressing that the project was implemented in the shortest possible time, he said that with the help of a domestic thermal imager it is possible to detect the enemy at night at long distances: up to 18 kilometers for the navy, for aviation more than 20 kilometers, for ground forces - 10 kilometers. Vladimir Mikheev, assessing the device, noted: “Reconnaissance means should always be ahead of destructive weapons. In this particular case, we made an adequate reconnaissance tool. Moreover, we have already worked quite effectively with this device in the Chechen Republic. Moreover, the devices that UOMZ produced made it possible to defeat the enemy (after reconnaissance) within two minutes.”

It is expected that state testing of the device will be completed this year, and next year it will be put into mass production. They will be equipped with helicopters, attack aircraft, armored vehicles, and the navy. According to UOMZ General Director Eduard Yalamov, who was also present at the press conference, the production of domestic thermal imagers will halve their cost. “Now we buy them from France and Sweden. Each device costs $180-190 thousand. We assume that in 3-4 years the price of Russian devices will be almost 2 times less,” he noted.

But at the same time, Mr. Yalamov did not rule out that purchases of foreign thermal imagers will not stop. “We have received permission to continue purchasing imported ones. Moreover, they will be used for export deliveries of military equipment if the customer requires that it be equipped with foreign thermal imagers,” emphasized the general director of UOMZ. However, the developers believe that in the future Russian thermal imagers will also be exported.

ELLA BIDILEEVA

Kommersant (Ekaterinburg) No. 56 from 04/02/2003

Russia gained independence