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November 20, 2011Azerbaijan Buys Chinese Planes, Russia Disses Own Tanks
Azerbaijan recently announced that it is purchasing Chinese-made JF-17 Thunder fighter jets. This is a bold move by China into what was, up until recently, a Russian-dominated military sales market, and the geopolitical space that Moscow considers its own and which Washington considers as vital to its interests both in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Given how sales of military equipment can solidify alliances between nations - such as between the U.S. and Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Israel and many other states - this purchase has the potential to alter security dynamics in the Caucasus and beyond. On its own, Azerbaijan demonstrated that it can reject a wide variety of military aircraft - such as American F-16 and F/A18, EU's Eurofighter, French Rafael, Swedish Gripen, Russian Mig-29 and Su-27 - in favor of a plane that is untried and untested in military combat.
This purchase binds Baku to Beijing's military industry, since supply parts, service, maintenance and training would have to be done by China, at least initially. At this point, only Pakistan operates JF-17, which is close to combat performance than Russian-made Mig-29 or American F/A-18 fighter planes. However, Azerbaijan may have simply been buying smart - the cost of a each Chinese fighter jets is only $20 million.
Further to the north, there is official evidence as to why Russian military equipment is continuing to lose out to international competition. General Nikolai Makarov, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, recently stated that certain examples of Russian military equipment are lagging behind their Western analogues. In particular, General Makarov cited T-90 main battle tank's much weaker performance compared to the Israeli-made Merkava MBT, while Russian rocket-launching system "Smerch" can fire only half as far as the American-made HIMARS system. The General lamented the fact that modern Russian equipment is not fully capable of defending the operating crews from enemy fire. Makarov also stated that Western space-based intel satellites can stay in orbit for up to 15 years, while Russian system can operate for no more than 5 years.
This is not the first time that Russian military leadership delivered a sharp critique of their country's military products. In March of this year, General Aleksander Postnikov, commander of Russian Land Forces, said that modern Russian military equipment lags far behind NATO and even China. He noted that the Russian T-90 battle tank is actually the 17th modification of a much older T-72 tank, developed in the 1970s, and costs 118 million rubles each. "At this point," said Postnikov, "it would be easier for us to purchase three German-made Leopard tanks."
Add this to current plans by Russia to purchase Israeli-made UAVs, French-made landing ships, Italian IVECO armored vehicles and even German Rhine Metal armor, and the picture for the Russian indigenous military industry begins to look more and more clouded.
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