Russian military complex is up and running

The Russian government is going to consider the investment program of the technical reequipment and development of the defense complex. The program is to be considered on Thursday; however, it is not expected that there will be relevant documents approved at the session, because officials do not have anything.

The program for the reform of the defense industry , which was passed last October, has had a lot of time and energy spent on. It was decided to turn the enterprises of the defense and industrial complex into joint-stock companies and only keep strategically important enterprises (i.e., the most successful ones) in state property. Old and new joint-stock companies will be united into 35 holdings, which will take their places on the market. These places are supposed to be distrbuted in a centralized way, since there should not be any competition between the holdings: they are supposed to compete with Western manufacturers of similar productions.

Who is going to say how they should compete and with what and where the money will come fron? The answer is simple: do as you can. Some of those enterprises do their best, and some of them are succeeding.

The press-service of the company Uralvagonzavod (the factory that produces railway cars in the Ural region) reported that the enterprise had performed a successful test of a so-called waterdrome, a unique concrete construction 75X100 meters in size and five meters deep. A T-90C tank passed under the water (five meters) twice. These tests took place on the testing ground of the Nizhni Tagyl Metal Test Institute; they were preceded with preparatory training of underwater driving and with the work of a special committee. The major test will take place on July 8.

Hundreds of special devices control the work of the novelty. They fix 170 parameters, and detectors control the movement of a shell in a barrel channel, on the flight trajectory, and near a target. This information is priceless, which is why it is secret.

The Nizhni Tagyl Metal Test Institute of the Sverdlovsk region was considered to be one of most secret enterprises of the Russian military and defense complex, not to mention the fact that the Sverdlovsk region was opened to foreigners only 12 years ago.

The international Russian Expo Arms-2002 exhibition of arms and defense technology is to open on July 9. It is planned to show how amphibians shoot from the surface of surface, how tanks come out of water, how pontoon bridges are constructed, and how water obstacles are overpassed.

Dmitry Chirkin PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov