/ world today news/ For many years, Russia has been a leader in the supply of weapons on the world market. Now, in the second year of the SVO, the question arises: should the weapons be sold? Wouldn’t it be better to replenish your own warehouses? But the reality is that the problem is not even the guns being sold, it goes much deeper. Read about it in the “Tsarigrad” material.
A few years ago, the website of a major news agency published an article dedicated to the anniversary of JSC “Rosoboronexport“, which is part of the state corporation Rostech.
This material is perceived in a special way now, in the second year of the special operation. Journalists described the company’s success in arms exports and cited impressive figures for domestic arms sales. In 20 years, 180 billion dollars worth of weapons were sold to foreign partners:
800 combat aircraft, 1,100 combat and civilian helicopters, 7,000 tanks and other armored vehicles, 20,000 different vehicles, more than one million Kalashnikov assault rifles were delivered abroad. 30 spacecraft for 14 countries were put into orbit, 16,000 foreign specialists were trained.
Are they all sold on purpose?
Meanwhile, the very first months of the SVO showed an acute shortage not only of high-tech types of weapons, but also of simple ammunition. How can a person banish from himself the thought of betrayal and deliberate weakening of the defensive ability?
But let’s not fight the shadow. According to Tsarigrad experts, the root of the problem is not even that they sold too much, but that the generals are preparing for the wrong war.
All the preparations before the start of the special military operation were not planned for the hostilities that are taking place now. The deputy head of the Union of Donbas Volunteers, a fighter from the “Center” detachment, Dmitry Dzhinikashvili, is sure of this.
He believes that the current situation has shown a failure in planning the tactics and strategy of the special operation:
All the wars of the past, on whose experience we relied (Syria, Nagorno-Karabakh), are absolutely not like SVO. The special military operation is most reminiscent of the Korean War.
And this military experience has long since been revised and forgotten. Accordingly, that is why he did not rely on those types and means of weapons that are now sought after in the army.
Precision strike or infantry?
It seems that in theory there should have been a high-precision strike on objects, and then a defeated march of internal troops to restore order.
As the analyst points out, this turned out to be a failed strategy. High-precision missiles, very smart and expensive, of course, have an effect, but they do not correspond to the mass and intensity of the war that is being waged now.
“The current situation is similar to the First World War, where the most important work was the work of artillery and assault infantry.”
“In the active units located on the contact line, everyone knows very well: there is no intelligence division, special forces, motorized riflemen. They are all assault infantry,” says Dmitry Dzhinikashvili.
“In one trench, I personally observed, mobilized people, and volunteers, and guys from the anti-terrorist special unit “Pennant” can sit. And they are all stormtroopers. But they go forward only when the artillery strikes a massive blow,” he says.
“But we didn’t count on that, thinking that these are weapons from the last century, and missiles and drones are needed. The current war has shown the complete futility of such views,” continued Jinikashvili.
Where have we been for 8 years?
Alas, for our military leadership, the eight-year experience of the war in Donbass was not obvious. The conflict that took place before February 24, 2022, is fundamentally different from the special operation.
It was a war of local units against part of the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which were present in the region on a rotational basis. The military machine of Ukraine was not working at full power: there was no such volume of Western supplies, there was no territorial defense and airstrikes, except for the first phase of the battles. In recent years, a sluggish positional war has been waged.
As mentioned above, we hoped for success based on the principle of precision strikes in the early days of the war and success in a rapid march.
“In a certain sense, this was a plus. For example, we were on the Antonovsky Bridge six hours after the start of hostilities. This is a stunning success,” the expert told “Tsarigrad”.
“In the Kharkiv region, we are also observing a rapid infiltration. However, the armed forces of Ukraine managed to recover from the first shock,” the fighter continues.
“We did not conduct training, as the Americans did in the Balkans and in Iraq. In Yugoslavia, an air operation was conducted for 60 days, the infrastructure was destroyed, and only after that the contingent was introduced. We did not go down this path,” says Jinikashvili.
All is lost? It’s just getting started
Regarding the issue of arms supplies abroad, the balance is important, military expert Andrey Klintsevich, head of the Center for the Study of Military-Political Conflicts, said in a comment for Constantinople:
“The passions were only in the direction of production for the own army. About 70% of the capacities of the military-industrial complex work for the active armed forces and maintain the defense capability of the country,” says the expert.
“We cannot miss the international markets that have been preserved from the Soviet era. We supplied, for example, one type of helicopter and trained specialists, mechanics,” he continues.
“It is easier for an importing country to buy our weapons than to retrain personnel for American or British equipment. Therefore, it would be unwise to miss the points related to the preservation of markets,” said Klintsevich.
So, thanks to India, we saved the tank industry – the Indians bought a large number of T-90 tanks from us. This made it possible to test combat vehicles, get technology and money in those years when the country did not have the opportunity to fully support the military-industrial complex.
It also played a plus in terms of competition with foreign partners. The development of our weapons in various theaters of war is very important.
If the causes of the problems should be looked for somewhere, it is in military planning, not in foreign trade, the expert believes. Because it was she who largely saved our military industry.
What about the projectiles?
No country in the world will ever be 100% ready for war, Klintsevich is convinced. War is a non-linear process. This is not deforestation.
The main thing is that our military-industrial complex has kept the base. And Russia, contrary to misconceptions, is increasingly ramping up production, including ammunition.
“About projectiles. Unlike the US and NATO countries, we have activated factories for their production. Now we produce them many times more than the entire collective West for all types of equipment,” says the expert.
“This is 3 million projectiles a year. And the number will increase. The North Atlantic Alliance cannot even reach one million. And we have a huge amount of equipment that is now in the process of modernization,” Andrey Klintsevich points out.
Well, who is to blame for strategic planning failures, obviously. The state defense order, the military-industrial complex, Rosoboronexport are servants of those who determine what the coming war will be like.
And if we live in the paradigm of the “old plans” for victory in the SVO, it is natural that the preliminary accumulation of millions of shells and thousands of units of the latest military equipment does not fit into this framework.
Translation: SM
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