MOSCOW, December 02. /ITAR-TASS World Service /. Monday’s newspapers discuss results of a series of Vladimir Putin’s meetings in Sochi on re-equipment of the Russian Armed Forces.
At the meetings, the president announced ambitious programs to re-equip the Armed Forces to 2020, which will require over 20 trillion rubles, Novye Izvestia writes. The conclusions were mostly optimistic - the pace of the Armed Forces’ modernization will return the country to the level of leading states.
The government will allocate huge money for the programs. In 2003, the defense ministry’s budget was 600 billion rubles. In 2013 it is 2.3 trillion, Rossiiskaya Gazeta says.
Over a series of meetings it was announced that the strategic forces will receive next year 22 land-based ballistic missiles. Following year, Russia will take into orbit “six new space apparatuses” and will begin tests of the Angara rocket. A separate topic was development of the GLONASS system. Presently, its fleet is 28 space apparatuses in the orbit. This means four satellites in addition to the planned level. The Armed Forces’ antiaircraft units have been receiving S-400 systems, and complex tests of S-500 are due next year. Pilots are also receiving new equipment. Over 2013, they received 86 new aircrafts and over 100 helicopters. In 2014, new 120 planes and 90 helicopters will be produced, Novye Izvestia writes.
“The president is first of all interested in strategic issues: improvement of the nuclear triad, protection from all possible means of an enemy delivery and the neighboring spheres: the military space and high-tech non-strategic non-nuclear weapons,” Moskovsky Komsomolets reports.
From what Putin said, clearly the Strategic Missile Forces will remain “a major component of the strategic nuclear forces” and will be developed as priority. In future, the development will be focused not only on hard-fuel, but also on liquid-fuel rockets, which would be capable to overcome the US anti-missile defense, Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes.
Another priority is the submarine fleet. Russia will be using not only nuclear submarines, but also the five-generation submarines with the air-independent propulsion systems. This would be a breakthrough technology for the Navy, as thus non-nuclear submarines would be able to act underwater, without going up to the surface.
The meetings in Sochi dwelt not only upon the re-equipment, but also development of the defense infrastructures, which is of a major geopolitical importance for Russia.
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