More Arms Round Up - Strategic Bombers and Navy for Russia and United States

US Aircraft News

I have been following the development of the F-35 with interest for the past few years.  It represents a new way of building aircraft, but seems like it may be a model that is not sustainable, or feasible.  I didn't know the US was looking at creating a third generation strategic bomber, but that seems to be the case.  This article gives some details about the development and testing of this new aircraft.  It will be some time before it is ready for production - if it is chosen as an option.  LINK  LINK2

US most Advanced Fighters, the F-22 raptor, deployed (kind of) to Europe as a reassurance against more aggressive Russian maneuvers in Europe's airspace.  The problem with this power projection is the weakness that it represents because of the low numbers of aircraft in service. LINK

Russian Bombers and MiGs

Meanwhile, Russia's strategic bombers the TU-160 is being modernized.  LINK  With new avionics: LINK

Russia's new smart bombs to go on those updated bombers. LINK

Russian MiGs owned by Bulgaria to be repaired in Poland.  LINK

This is a fascinating look at dependence (my students will have read Kinsella (1998) and should know about dependence) and using an outside state to provide maintenance.  This can't be good for Russia's long-term arms sales.  I am wondering about the long-term implications for arms sales if the supplier is seen as being too pushy.  That's a take on things that I don't think I've seen in the literature before.

Russia's Defense Fraud is Larger than Most States' Defense Budges!

File this under horrifying comparisons.  A report today from Moscow (link to news story) about the amount of fraud in the defense industry is simply staggering.

The Russian Audit Chamber has identified waste and misappropriation totaling almost 117.5 billion rubles – just over $3.9 billion at today’s rate – in the area of national defense, the first deputy head of the State Duma's Defense Committee, Viktor Zavarzin, told reporters, after a closed-door committee meeting attended by officials from the Defense and Finance Ministries, the Prosecutor General’s Office and other agencies.

That is a lot of money.  In order to put this into context I put together a quick visual using 2011 defense spending data from SIPRI. I had to download the data in an excel file and clean it up a bit.

Russian corruption in the defense sector is more than the median military spending by most states in the international system.  Average military spending is highly skewed by the US and China, which are not included in the graph above because of the way they ruin the scale.

What does all of this mean?  It means that it can be very lucrative to be involved in the defense sector in Russia!

None of this information by itself is really surprising and I've alluded to problems of corruption in previous posts.  The sheer scale of that corruption when put into context is simply staggering.

*NOTE:
Click on this link to obtain a zip file that has the SIPRI data for 2011 in a CSV file along with the STATA .do file I used to create the graph.    -Replication Materials-