Russian aircraft crashes due to third party upgrades: Rosoboronexport

Russian arms exporter Rosoboronexport has warned against third party upgrades of Russian origin military aircraft, which it says is responsible for post-upgrade systems malfunction leading to crashes. An unusually strongly worded press release issued at the Paris Air show 2009 said, “Rosoboronexport attaches much importance to repairing and upgrading arms and materiel exported earlier, including Soviet-vintage weapon systems, and will offer corresponding repair and modernisation programmes. The urgency of the issue results from the attempts of a number of foreign operators to upgrade such arms and materiel without the participation of Russian experts. The Russian side is totally against this approach both from the commercial and the legal viewpoint, not to mention the technical aspect. In this light Russia intends to pursue a strict policy of changing the situation at hand. The problem cannot be solved in any other way, which is unfortunately proved by severe accidents and crashes, involving “independently modified” aircraft. Rosoboronexport said it was keen to cooperate with international companies in the dissemination of Russian military hardware. “Key lines of defence cooperation include establishing licensed-production and assembly facilities, building arms and materiel service centres, and cooperating in remote probing and space exploration. For instance, Rosoboronexport has established cooperation in research and development and space exploration with such European states as France, Italy, Germany and Spain. Corresponding bilateral contracts have been signed and are being fulfilled. Foreign partners have expressed their interest in Rosoboronexport’s proposal, envisioning payments for arms exports in the form of counter purchases of corresponding national products or resource development quotas. At the present time Rosoboronexport’s short-term contract portfolio exceeds US $25 billion. The corporation actively promotes the entire range of defence-related and dual-purpose products, technologies, and services in the international arms market, but special efforts are focused on aviation (in 2008 aircraft accounted for 56% of the overall arms exports, and air defence system exports amounted to 17%). “The demand for Russian aircraft and helicopters grows despite the ongoing global financial crunch. It makes us feel special obligations and responsibility both as a supplier, and as a reliable time-tested partner,” head of the Rosoboronexport delegation Alexander Mikheev emphasised. “We take every necessary measure and constantly revise every line of defence cooperation, which nowadays actively expands, among other things due to developing relations with NATO member-states.”