The process for the 2015–17 budget adopted in November 2014 was accompanied by ‘fierce discussions’ on the size of defence expenditure in the face of cuts to other areas of public spending. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov reportedly asserted that the country simply could not afford its current defence programme and had to adjust its ambitions to the changed economic situation. In the event, although some observers expected a cut in defence spending of around 10 per cent in the revised budget for 2015, this was reduced by only 5 per cent, as were allocations to budget items affecting the population most, such as health, education, culture and the environment (Oxenstierna 2016: 68–9). In the same year, approval of the next armament programme to 2025 was delayed for three years as decision makers appeared to be ‘awaiting a more stable and predictable economic situation’, as Julian Cooper put it (2016: 45). As mentioned above, Putin declared in 2000 that military reform could not come at any cost. In Susanne Oxenstierna’s words, although the share of GDP allocated to the military remained high, in 2015 there was ‘still a trade-off between defense and other spending in the budget’ (2016: 68).
Defence industry and innovation
There are other factors limiting the Russian defence industry’s ability to deliver ‘modern’ equipment to match the country’s long-term military ambitions. After the Cold War, reforming the once-monolithic Soviet military-industrial complex was, in line with the reluctance to reform the military itself, not a priority of the Russian leadership. The Russian defence industry still, though, kept its position as one of the world’s largest arms exporters throughout the post-Soviet era and remained competitive in the production of certain niche products, such as combat aircraft and submarines. However, little was done to bring the sector into the twenty-first century, because insufficient funds were reinvested in R&D (Renz and Thornton 2012: 50). As a result, the technology gap between Russian and Western producers continued to grow. Much has been written about the Russian defence industry’s problems, which are said to include outdated management practices, a rapidly ageing workforce and an even older manufacturing base (Shlykov 2004; Cooper 2006; Blank 2012). These challenges did not escape the attention of the Russian leadership and modernization of the defence sector was made a priority when the military modernization programme was announced in 2008. It was recognized that the existing industry would not be able to fulfil the ambitious procurement targets of the State Armament Programme 2011–20, which was to modernize 30 per cent of the armed forces’ equipment by 2015, rising to 70 per cent by 2020. A range of measures, such as increases in money allocated to R&D, more government defence orders and the allocation of additional resources to increase production capacity, were implemented and have yielded considerable results (Westerlund 2012: 90). In spite of the economic downturn from 2009 and delays in the delivery of some weapons systems, increases in procurement volumes since 2011 have been significant. By 2015 the State Armament Programme’s accomplishments meant that the interim target of modernizing 30 per cent of military hardware was even exceeded in some areas (Cooper 2016: 51–2).
A closer look at the successes of Russian rearmament from 2011 until 2015 shows, however, that not everything was as rosy as it seemed. As Richard Connolly and Cecile Sendstad found in an in-depth study of the State Armament Programme, its performance by 2015 varied greatly across different sectors (2016). The industry performed best in areas where it had maintained production capabilities throughout the post-Soviet period. Targets were fulfilled mostly with the delivery of established equipment and systems based on upgraded legacy designs. At the same time, though, there was little progress made in the production of sophisticated high-tech weapons. As a result, the most successful implementation of the State Armament Programme has been in the strategic rocket forces (Cooper 2016: 47). This is not surprising, because in the area of strategic nuclear capabilities Russia had remained globally competitive even throughout the 1990s, when its other armed services were neglected. The modernization of the air force has also proceeded at a rapid pace, with more than 310 new aircraft delivered by 2015 out of 700 scheduled for 2020. However, as Connolly and Sendstad have found, this success was not unambiguous. The majority of new aircraft delivered to the air force by 2015 were front-line combat aircraft, such as the SU-34s, SU-35s and MiG-29K, and training aircraft, all upgraded legacy designs. The construction of entirely new models, such as the widely publicized PAK-FA fifthgeneration fighter, has not proceeded to plan. Only five prototypes of the aircraft had been delivered by 2015 and some Russian analysts predicted that as few as twelve of the initially scheduled seventy could be supplied by 2020. There have also been difficulties with the production and delivery of strategic bombers and transport aircraft in sufficient numbers (Connolly and Sendstad 2016).
When it comes to the navy, targets were achieved in the delivery of upgraded versions of existing models of submarines and smaller surface vessels. The production of new models, such as the Yasen-class submarine and especially large surface vessels, experienced serious delays. The loss of input from Ukrainian defence producers and the US and EU economic sanctions imposed in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea, including the cancelled delivery of French Mistral landing ships, seriously hindered the progress of naval modernization. The ground forces’ inventory was modernized with large numbers of new armoured vehicles based on older models. The production of combat systems for infantry soldiers and artillery systems also proceeded to plan. Several hundred updated and modernized battle tanks were delivered, but only twenty prototypes of the new T-40 Armata main battle tank out of 2,300 scheduled for 2020 were produced (Connolly and Sendstad 2016).
In absolute terms, Russian military hardware today is incomparably more modern and technologically advanced than it was during the 1990s and much of the 2000s. In relative terms, however, the Russian armed forces are still a long way off achieving parity with the technologically advanced militaries in the West and the United States in particular. Since the start of the 2008 modernization programme, Russian defence analysts have cautioned that discussions of the desirable or existing proportion of ‘modern’ equipment in the armed forces were misleading, because the meaning of ‘modern’ equipment was too ambiguous. As Dmitry Gorenburg highlighted in 2012:
when Russian officials discuss their goals for procuring modernized weaponry over the next 10 years, they never define their terms. They do not have a list of what types of armaments are considered modern. In some cases, systems that are based on 20–50-year-old designs are described as modern. This inevitably leads to the conclusion that the MoD is implicitly defining modern equipment as any equipment that was procured in the last few years, rather than actually based on new designs. (Gorenburg 2012)
As evidence of the State Armament Programme’s implementation until 2015 showed, the Russian defence industry still had not made the leap from ‘dumb-iron’ equipment to twenty-first-century sophistication.
Russia’s intervention in Syria is a case in point. As Ruslan Pukhov argued, the performance of the Russian air force in Syria was impressive if compared to the 2008 war with Georgia, where it lost seven aircraft in blue-on-blue incidents within a matter of four days. From an international perspective, however, its technological level now matches at best that of the US air force during the 1991 Gulf War a quarter of a century ago. Weaknesses have been visible in Syria, particularly in terms of the sophistication of precision-guided munitions, a shortage of targeting systems, deficiencies in aerial reconnaissance capabilities, and a lack of long-range UAVs and attack drones (Pukhov 2016). The loss of two aircraft in short succession in autumn 2016, not over the theatre of operations in Syria, but during attempts to land on Russia’s only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, demonstrated that technological problems persist. Russian Defence Minister Shoigu himself acknowledged that a series of shortcomings in military equipment came to light during the Syria operations, when ‘a number of design and manufacturing flaws were identified’ (The Moscow Times 2016).