WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 (UPI) -- There is another very obvious and sobering reason why so many countries, including longtime U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, and a new important partner like India, are turning to Russian weapons systems or continuing to buy them: Many of them, as well as being very cheap, are very good.
As UPI columnist Loren B. Thompson has pointed out, U.S.-made cruise missiles fly at less than Mach 1 -- less than the speed of sound. But Russia has cruise missiles that can fly at Mach 2.2, or around 1,500 miles per hour to 1,700 miles per hour. No U.S. defense contractor can deploy or manufacture anti-ship weapons as formidable as the 3M-80E SS-N-22 Moskit or the SS-N-27 Sizzler, explicitly designed to be capable of killing U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. China and Iran have eagerly bought as many of them as they could.
In the field of combat aviation, while Russia has nothing to equal America's remarkable B-1B Stealth bomber, its combat fighters and fighter bombers such as the Sukhoi Su-35 Flanker and the latest MiG-29 are almost as formidable as U.S. ones and a lot cheaper to build and buy.
That is because Russians designers and procurement chiefs have not followed the current U.S. and Western European military fashion of trying to force a single airframe or aircraft design to carry out too many roles. Russian fighters and fighter-bombers are explicitly designed for these roles, as such classic Western aircraft as the McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom, the McDonnell-Douglas F-15 Eagle and the French Mirage were.
Similarly, as defense analyst David Isenberg noted recently in a UPI article, the Russian Kilo-class submarines have very clear performance advantages over their European-produced rivals.
"The diesel-powered Kilo boats are among the quietest conventionally powered submarines in service anywhere and capable of being equipped with advanced weaponry, including anti-ship and land-attack cruise missiles with a range of up to 275 kilometers -- 165 miles. They would be the most advanced conventional submarines in Southeast Asia," he wrote.
No U.S. defense contractor produces any weapon comparable to the 300mm Smerch -- Tornado -- multiple rocket launch system, or MRLS, because the U.S. Army and Marines do not want them. The Russian BTR-80 armored personnel carrier and BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicle are certainly better than the long-troubled U.S. Bradley armored fighting vehicles, which is why the Department of Defense is seeking to replace the Bradleys in Iraq as fast as possible with the far superior Mine-Resistant Armored Protection vehicles, or MRAPs.
It is also striking that despite the flourishing U.S.-India strategic relationship, Russian arms industry executives remain confident that India will soon place a massive order for no less than 300 T-90S Main Battle Tanks.
The great weakness in Russia's arms export industry for many years has been unreliability in meeting orders on time and in delivering spare parts. Russian companies' maintenance programs have been vastly inferior to those of major U.S. contractors, especially in the area of aircraft, where they do not begin to match Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
The need to tackle this systematic problem is a major reason for Russian President Vladimir Putin's ongoing enormous reorganization of the Russian military industrial sector.
In Stealth technology, electronics, precision missiles and anti-ballistic missile systems to defend against intercontinental ballistic missiles, Russia remains far behind the United States. Russia has nothing to compare with America's aircraft carriers. But in many key areas of conventional weapons systems, what the Russian industrial complex produces is formidable and cost effective, as its huge global export earnings attest.
