The failure of the deal to sell Russian IL-78 fuel tankers to India once again raised the issue of the competitive ability decrease of Russian arms and military technique on the world market. Russia’s "Îboronka" (the defense industry) is facing yet harder problems in handling export contracts and servicing clients of earlier transactions. “It is impossible to improve the situation”, our expert concludes.
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| IL-78 tanker aircraft. Photo by pilot.strizhi.info |
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According to Russian and foreign media sources, India refused to buy Russian Il-78 fuel tanker aircraft. Indian officials motivated this decision with the non-conformity of planes to the customer’s requisitions. The spare parts supply and the after-sales service were also mentioned.
“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia alternated its approach to the handling of the defense business. Nowadays we are facing problems with spare parts, the support of manufacturers and the delays conditioned by the centralized structure of their defense corporations”, Fali Homi Major, the Commander-in-Chief of Indian Air Force told RIA Novosti. Instead of Russian planes India is likely to buy Airbus A330 MRTT manufactured by the European company EADS.
This is not the first juicy scandal connected with Russia’s defense exports. “The most well-known case is the scandal with Algeria when they refused to take the already procured MiG aircraft and sent them back to us. There are plenty of scandals with India in relation to various types of arms. It concerns naval weapons in the first place”, said Mr. Alexander Khramchihin of the Institute of Political and Defense Analysis in an interview to Bigness.ru.
Recollecting the year 2007 with the outbreak of scandal with 15 MiG-29CMT fighters shipped to Algeria . It appeared that the jet fighters, which were sold as brand new, contained “second-hand” parts. According to some information, the units from the planes with several hundreds of flight hours were used when assembling those aircraft.
One can recollect habitual claims from India which is one of our key partners in the field of defense cooperation. We remind the endless complaints with The Gorshkov aircraft carrier which was designed for India. The budget for its refurbishment was mounting endlessly which enormously irritated our client. Perplexity was also connected with the problems in the modernization of the ship.
Technical problems haunted Russia in the transfer of frigates, which India ordered from Russia . Air defense missile systems stubbornly failed to hit air targets. In many scandal situations (e.g. in the case of airplanes returned by Algeria) some observers incriminate the international backroom deal.
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