Head of KB Arsenal appointed

A general director has been appointed to the FSUE "Arsenal Design Bureau" (design bureau, subordinate to Roscosmos) - the chief designer of the enterprise, Andrei Romanov. Mr. Romanov beat out five competitors because, according to Roscosmos, he presented the best development program for the design bureau. Experts believe that Mr. Romanov’s experience will allow him to effectively manage the enterprise, although they recall cases when the appointment of a chief designer as the general director of a large defense enterprise was unsuccessful.

The criminal prosecution of the former head of KB Arsenal, Mikhail Sapego, created a “certain atmosphere” around the bureau, which, however, as analysts assure, no longer affects the organization’s financial results
Photo: Alexander Koryakov, Kommersant

At the end of March, Andrei Romanov, the chief designer of the rocket and space technology department of the enterprise, was appointed general director of the Arsenal design bureau. Mr. Romanov has been working at the design bureau since 1993, where he came immediately after graduating from BSTU Voenmekh.

Andrey Romanov calls the priority areas of activity of the enterprise the carrying out of research and development work (R&D) to create space systems, complexes and information support devices, work to create samples of naval artillery weapons and launchers.

The enterprise will also continue to implement innovative projects at its own production base, which is engaged in the manufacture of technological and testing equipment necessary for conducting ground-based experimental testing of products designed by the design bureau.

Mr. Romanov refused to name the amounts of the current contracts of CB Arsenal. “Currently, the portfolio of orders for 2013-2015 has been formed, the work that we carried out as part of the state order in 2012 was completed on time and in full. The financial and economic condition of the enterprise is stable and sustainable,” the new one told Kommersant. head of the enterprise.

Anatoly Shilov, deputy head of the Federal Space Agency, said that both the leadership of Roscosmos and the Russian Ministry of Defense (as the main customer) “generally consider the activities of the Arsenal design bureau and its team to be effective.” “But this does not exclude criticism of the company’s management. The new director has time to improve the efficiency and quality of his team’s work,” says Mr. Shilov.

The post of general director of KB Arsenal has been empty since mid-January, when Mikhail Sapego left it. The official reason for Mr. Sapego’s departure was the desire to concentrate on work at OJSC Machine-Building Plant Arsenal (MZ, administered by Roscosmos), where he was and still is the chairman of the board of directors.

However, there were other reasons for the resignation of Mikhail Sapego. Last fall, a Roscosmos commission was sent to the design bureau to conduct an unscheduled inspection, which revealed that Mr. Sapego headed the design bureau, representing the interests of the Arsenal Ministry of Health. The plant carries out the technical tasks that are created in the bureau, so the commission did not rule out the involvement of the former head of the design bureau.

In addition to the Arsenal MZ, the design bureau's projects are being implemented by the FSUE SNPRKTs TsSKB-Progress, the FSUE TsNIRTI named after Academician A.I. Berg, OJSC NIITP, OJSC OKB MPEI.

Temporarily, the duties of the head of the design bureau were performed by Deputy General Director Evgeniy Lyannay, who before the appointment of Mr. Sapego as head of the design bureau in 2009 was the director of the Arsenal MZ.

In addition to Andrei Romanov, five more people applied for the position of general director of the design bureau. According to a source close to the situation, two of them are former employees of the design bureau - department head Olga Kurkova and Viktor Belov, former deputy general director of the Arsenal Design Bureau, fired in the summer of 2012 for ineffective work. The third contender was Sergei Korolev, ex-director of the Arsenal Ministry of Health. Two more participants in the competition were from Moscow: one of them is associated with military space, the other works at the Central Research Institute of Mechanical Engineering.

As Andrei Romanov himself explains, the competition commission recognized him as the winner, “as having presented the best program for the enterprise’s activities.”

Mikhail Sapego, in a conversation with Kommersant, noted that Roscosmos was guided in choosing the winner by the recommendation of the design bureau. “This is the best option: as the chief designer, Andrei Romanov knows the work of the enterprise well, and he will not need time to get up to speed. Back in 2009, when I came to the design bureau, I predicted that he would become the general director,” says Mr. Sapego . According to his assessment, the Arsenal Design Bureau is fully supplied with orders.

In September 2012, the criminal case against Mikhail Sapego was dropped in St. Petersburg. Then he was charged with two counts of fraud related to the alleged seizure of the Arsenal MZ. Subsequently, law enforcement agencies decided that there was no crime in the actions of the Arsenal top manager.

According to Mikhail Sapego, this story no longer has any echoes that affect the position of the Arsenal KB and MZ. Andrey Romanov evaluates the interaction between the design bureau and the Ministry of Health as “one of the few examples of effective public-private partnership in the field of high technologies,” and therefore believes that “the events that have recently taken place around the management of the plant and the design bureau have not had a negative impact on the results of the scientific- production complex".

Anatoly Shilov does not deny that the events that happened with Mr. Sapego “create a certain atmosphere around both Arsenals.” “However, the historically established union of these enterprises will, in our opinion, allow us to continue to solve complex problems both within the framework of the State Defense Order and the Federal Space Program,” hopes the deputy head of Roscosmos.

The head of the analytical department of IC LMS, Dmitry Kumanovsky, believes that the scandals associated with Mikhail Sapego significantly reduced the volume of government orders for the design bureau, but now stability has been restored at the enterprise.

Denis Demin, head of the analytical department of the investment company BFA, sees no obstacles to Mr. Romanov becoming an effective head of KB Arsenal. “The chief designer at such an enterprise is not just a technical position. The designer, in fact, is the right hand of the general director,” the analyst believes.

However, speaking about the appointment of Andrei Romanov, Mr. Kumanovsky recalls another high-profile appointment to the position of general director of a former designer. We are talking about Yuri Solomonov, general director of the Moscow Institute of Thermal Engineering, who was fired from this position in 2009 after the failed launch of the Bulava ICBM. “The reason for what happened was the lack of control over component suppliers. It was the general director who should have achieved stable quality, but, apparently, the general designer Solomonov did not have enough managerial experience,” says Mr. Kumanovsky. However, the expert believes that Mr. Romanov will be able to bring his know-how to the work of the design bureau in his new position.

Vlada Gasnikova

Chief designer became director