The patient is dead. The second death of the Ukrainian defense industry
When I see photographs of the “Facebook” Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Avakov, hugging a radio-controlled model of an airplane, which this ignoramus in matters of military equipment calls a “drone,” I feel sad and funny.
When I see incomprehensible “miracles” riveted together in factory workshops, under the heading “Nikolaev shipbuilders presented an armored car based on the “Loaf” to ATO participants,” I swallow valerian extract.
But when I hear that the Ukrainian army has nothing to fight with, from the lips of the President of Ukraine... I hear politicians from the Maidan begging for weapons from NATO, I understand that those in power in Ukraine are dangerous pests and usurpers who are ready to do anything to save their skins humiliation of a country that produced and produces the most complex machines and mechanisms, the best weapons in the world. Ukraine is a country of powerful, modern military industry. Recently. Just six months ago. Now the “military woman” is killed and pushed into a coffin. You didn't know? I will tell you!
People my age remember, give or take five years, how Ukrainian industry died for the first time. I’m 45. And a quarter of a century ago I worked as a radio installer at the Artem plant in Kyiv. This is the place where my father worked for almost 50 years. Most of the tenants in my building worked there. And my area. All my life I have lived in a house that Artem’s plant built for its employees. And he built the whole area.
The main profile of the plant “throughout Soviet power” was “military”. The design bureau where my father worked provided complex, electronic guidance systems for air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles. Perestroika first destroyed the plant’s usual profile. And it took a full decade and a half for the old Soviet partners to find each other again and restore their old ties. There is no politics here. It’s just that the vacuum cleaners and kitchen utensils that the plant began riveting under the conversion program (there was such a thing once) turned out to be of no use to anyone. In the 90s, the plant was a very sad sight, and former engineers from KB Luch, who designed the “brains” of rockets, became regulars at flea markets, selling old, used items. Fleeing poverty, my father went abroad, and the Ukrainian state sent him his final “sorry” in the form of a notice that he had been deprived of his pension. And this is after working for the state all my life!
At the beginning of the XNUMXst century, the clouds over the plant began to clear. The managers of the plant, departments, workshops, design bureaus and almost all sections found a way out by establishing connections with old partners and subcontractors. All of them were in Russia. And until our very “damned days”, those who survived and survived as factory workers are working, fulfilling orders from the Russian Ministry of Defense. There is no one else to work for: the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine does not order anything from the plant. And he can’t order. No money. And all the blocks and devices that the plant assembles are suitable only for the equipment that was in the USSR troops.
As far as I understand, Artyom’s plant is now facing a second death. But I don’t know the details yet. But I know that the other day I read a news headline that the ZAZ plant announced the shutdown and dismissal of employees. This was an expected event. Due to the political crisis, unrest, coup d'etat and civil war, sales of new cars in Ukraine (in general, and not specifically ZAZ products) fell by half. The first victims of the disaster were domestic assembly lines, where even Daewoo or Chevrolet are now assembled. But ZAZ fell the first victim. The reason is simple: they stopped buying his cars completely.
The closure of the ZAZ plant means 21 more unemployed. Plus 000 government officials whom Yatsenyuk is going to fire. Plus 250 social workers, whom the fascist state is also going to get rid of. The giants that are also focused on Russia are Turboatom and Motor Sich. Also – Yuzhmash. How many Soviet enterprises in Ukraine today have Russia as their customer?
I have very bad news for the typical, average maydaun, who today supports this disgusting fascist regime with his stupid, wooden head. In 1991, the Ukrainian military-industrial complex included 3594 enterprises employing about 3 people. In purely military production, 000 enterprises were involved, including 000 production associations and 700 research and production associations with a total employment of 205 people. Ukraine inherited almost a third of the space industry of the former USSR. The space industry included 139 enterprises and institutes, which provided jobs for 1 people. Ukrainian factories produced 450 aircraft annually.
Over the five years of independence, by 1997 the number of defense enterprises had decreased fivefold. And the share of defense production in Ukrainian industry fell from 35 to 6%. About 550 defense industry-related enterprises and design bureaus (like my father and my Luch design bureau at the Artem plant in Kyiv) self-liquidated, were closed, and repurposed. Specifically, the Luch design bureau survived only because the Artyom plant was declared a strategic enterprise not subject to privatization. Design bureau employees, who had been going to work for a couple of hours for years out of old habit, gradually found old subcontractors. And they earned them with orders to this day. However, not everyone lived to see this moment (in the literal sense). This happened throughout the former defense sector. The number of jobs in the industry has decreased sevenfold. In 2010, according to the Ministry of Industrial Policy of Ukraine, 143 enterprises operated in the country in the interests of defense. And in 2011, Ukraine fell out of the top ten global arms suppliers, taking 12th place.
Why and how could this happen? From the very declaration of independence, the domestic military-industrial complex was sacrificed to politics. The dominant factor was the need to rid the defense industry of Russian customers. Particular damage, if not a fatal blow, was dealt by the decisions of Kuchma and Yushchenko to integrate with NATO, with the aim of further joining this military alliance. Therefore, with unprecedented generosity and frivolity, Ukrainian leaders began to trample on Ukrainian-Russian projects. In 2008, during the Russian-Georgian eight-day war, President Yushchenko banned Russia from using the Crimean NITKA training ground. And in 2009, Moscow decided to build a similar training ground in Yeisk, which will be ready this year. However, now Crimea has become Russian territory. Previously, the Kremlin refused to use radar stations in Sevastopol and Mukachevo.
Instead of military-technical cooperation with traditional partners, the Ukrainian side rushed to build castles in the air of joint projects with NATO and Western countries. One of the sad examples of such cooperation is the Ukrainian corvette, developed by the shipbuilding experimental design center in Nikolaev. Construction of the corvette was supposed to start back in 2010, and it was planned to put it into service this year. But the first ship was laid down only on May 17, 2011. But construction is not actually going on. To save the project, Azarov’s government planned to revise it and abandon cooperation with Western firms, since Russian weapons and equipment would be cheaper.
But the “ideologists” got involved. In particular, the director of the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Research, Badrak, said: “We must make a corvette with Western partners, a helicopter with French partners... Russia cannot be a donor in matters of modernization of the military-industrial complex.”
The situation is no better with the attempt of cooperation between the Antonov State Enterprise and the European Airbus office on the production of the A400M transport aircraft. It all ended with the fact that the Europeans, having received the technical documentation of the aircraft from the Antonov State Enterprise, after some time produced their own prototype, suspiciously similar to the Ukrainian one. Naturally, without the participation of the Ukrainian side.
The reasons were revealed by the Prime Minister, Mykola Azarov. “Grandfather” spoke funny Ukrainian. Everyone laughed. But few people listened to what exactly he said. And this is what he said. He revealed that Airbus had quite openly announced plans to impede the promotion of the Ukrainian An-70 aircraft on the market: “I had a meeting with the French management and the management of the Airbus aviation company, and they told me that your plane is better than ours, but we will do it everything to prevent your aircraft from finding a market.”
Really, this was news to you? Is it true that you were on the drugs that the Ukrainian media sold you? Everything is fine with them - la-la-la-la, right? According to their version, NATO is almost ready to accept Ukraine into its ranks right now. And yesterday I read that Ukrainian goods have already arrived on European markets! I don’t know which ones exactly (the article only talked about regulations), but I think it’s a canard. The crisis has not gone away; it is shaking the world economy and the flagships of the EU and the USA. Not a single country has the money to subsidize the Ukrainian economy, in a war-torn country.
Meanwhile, in Russia, without the participation of the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau, production of the new Topol-M ballistic missile and its naval analogue, the Bulava, began. When creating the new Ka-60 helicopter, Russia abandoned helicopter engines produced by Motor Sich (however, the company’s products are still sold to Russia to this day!). The Dneprovsky Machine-Building Plant, which once took part in the creation and production of the S-400, was not involved in the project to create the latest Russian air defense system S-300. Russia also no longer needs the SS-24 Skalpel railway-based intercontinental ballistic missile, created by the designers of the Dnepropetrovsk Yuzhmash. The development of a new combat railway missile system is being carried out by the Moscow Institute of Thermal Engineering, which previously participated in the creation of the Bulava, Topol and Yars missiles. Russia also acquired from Ukraine the rights to a military transport version of the An-140 aircraft, which is assembled by the Samara Aviakor plant. As part of the program for the development of the military-industrial complex of the Russian Federation for 2007-2010 and until 2015, a decision was made to master the serial production of helicopter engines in Russia. We are talking, among other things, about the TV3-117 and VK-2500 engines, which are produced by Motor Sich. Production is planned to be organized on the basis of the St. Petersburg JSC Klimov, which should reach a design capacity of 450 engines per year by 2015.
The participation of Ukrainian enterprises in the technical equipment of Russian combat aircraft and air defense systems has also decreased. "Information Satellite Systems" (Zheleznogorsk, Krasnoyarsk Territory), PA "Polet" (Omsk) and KB "Progress" (Samara) actually refused further cooperation with "Kievpribor" and began placing orders exclusively among compatriot companies.
The plant where I once worked, where my father worked all his life, faced a similar situation. HC "Artem" Until recently, despite its disappointing external and internal appearance, my plant occupied a significant place in the Russian market for air-to-air missiles for fighter aircraft. But now Russian companies have begun manufacturing more modern modifications of this R-77 class missile launcher with a complete closed production cycle.
Even before the revolution, economic analysts wrote that if Kyiv does not make progress in military-technical cooperation with Russia, Russian enterprises will be able to independently produce the majority of Ukrainian components in two to three years, and the most complex ones in 8-10 years. But now everything is much worse. A coup took place, and politicians absolutely hostile to Russia came to power in Kyiv through criminal means. They declare that they are waging war against “Russian aggression,” although they do not officially declare it. This means the death of the domestic defense industry, unemployment and poverty for workers of defense enterprises.
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