KOLOMNA, February 07, 7:30 /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s Kolomna Machine-Building Design Bureau is ready to export Iskander tactical systems, its Director-General and chief designer Valery Kashin told ITAR-TASS.
The bureau conducted intensive marketing research in the previous years and even prepared a contract with a foreign customer, but it was never signed for political reasons, he said.
“Then we stopped advancing the Iskander to foreign markets after we had been awarded a long-term contract from the Defence Ministry to supply the system to the Russian army, and we had to increase our output four to five times to fulfill the obligations,” Kashin said.
Foreign customers were advised not to file any requests for purchase until 2015. “Now that we have reached the required level of production to fulfill the contract with the Defence Ministry, we and Rosoboronexport have resumed our efforts to advance the system to foreign markets. And we have already received some requests,” he said.
The Iskander is a tactical ballistic missile system manufactured by the Federal State Unitary Enterprise, Design Bureau of Machine Building, for the Russian ground forces. Iskander missiles were first test fired in 1996. The Russian army acquired the Iskander-M extended-range ballistic missile system in 2006.
The Iskander mobile missile system can engage ground targets such as command posts and communications nodes, troops in concentration areas, air and missile defence facilities and fixed and rotary-wing aircraft at airfields.
The Iskander was developed in the 1990s.