BY JOSEPH TREVITHICK
ussia is reportedly moving ahead with aggressive plans to revitalize its military as the country adopts an increasingly revanchist foreign policy. However, some items are noticeably absent from the Kremlin’s latest rearmament program, specifically two all-new surface warships, suggesting earlier proposals may have been, not surprisingly, too ambitious for the Russian defense industry.
Earlier in May 2017, Russian media revealed details about a new tranche of modernization projects, which are slated to run through 2025. Though we don’t know much the Kremlin has set aside for these new purchases, it set aside approximately 19 trillion rubles – around $336.3 billion at the existing rate of exchange – for the previous build up, which started in 2011 and will wrap up in 2020. The amount of overlap between the two is unclear.“The 2025 program is a black box right now,” Pavel Luzin, a Russian defense industry analyst at Perm State University, said according to Defense News. “It has a lot of overlap with the 2020 program, which suggests it is aimed only to hide the failures of the current program. That isn’t to say the 2020 program failed, just that it has strayed far from its original financing and procurement goals.”
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/10738/russias-plans-for-new-nuclear-carriers-and-destroyers-on-indefinite-hold
