Production of licensed "Lynx" under threat of failure
The decision of the Ministry of Defense of Russia on the production on the basis of domestic enterprises of the Italian armored vehicles LMV M65, which must come to the troops under the brand name “Lynx”, is under threat of disruption. By the end of 2020 of the year, according to the state defense program sounded by the Ministry of Defense, 2 should be purchased by thousands of such machines, which the military department preferred to the Russian analogue "Tiger".
Carmaker KamAZ, which actually was supposed to produce license armored cars, refused to further participate in the project. Experts believe that the adoption of such a decision is connected with foreign component parts for which the Russian plant does not have and, obviously, will not have a license.
This is what media representatives were told at the KamAZ plant: “We carried out a pilot installation of the 10 IVECO exclusively from Italian vehicle sets, conducted factory tests of them and handed them over to the Ministry of Defense. Further participation of the KamAZ enterprise in this program is not provided. ”
The main components of the armored car IVECO LMV M65, not belonging to the Italian production.
Ceramic armor - made in Germany.
The basis of armor - materials made in Holland.
Engine - designed in the USA.
“Obviously, IVECO is not able to transfer the rights to manufacture these units, given the fact that they simply do not belong to it, and Russia has no agreement on military-technical close cooperation with the United States,” said a source in the military-industrial complex of Russia.
Ruslan Pukhov, head of the AST Center, believes that if unlicensed production of armored vehicles began, the US State Department could block the sale of KamAZ trucks in Western Europe and North America. In addition, the Russian armed forces would be completely dependent on the supply of spare parts by American enterprises. “The buyer of imported weapons must always be ready for the fact that he will be prepared to play the role of a player dependent on the political situation. Venezuelans, Pakistanis, Indians, Thai people are well acquainted with this situation, ”Pukhov recalled during his interview.
Today, SKD licensed "Lynx" trying to run on one of the military repair plants in the city of Bryansk. Recall that in October 2010, Vladimir Popovkin, First Deputy Minister of Defense of Russia, arriving at the Euronaval-2010 exhibition in Paris, announced that a joint venture had been established in the territory of our state to manufacture armored vehicles of the Italian company IVECO. By the end of 2011, the first car was supposed to be released.
Anatoly Serdyukov himself, the head of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, stressed that in Russia it is extremely necessary to establish not only joint production of armored vehicles, but also to adapt armored cars to Russian conditions. Thus, the Ministry of Defense once again emphasized the choice of Italian technology instead of the Russian armored car "Tiger".
IVECO machines are planned in the future to provide the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB. At the machine-building plant in Arzamas, where they produce the domestic analogue of the Italian armored vehicle “Tiger”, they are perplexed about this decision, since they do not see any significant advantages in the Italian IVECO LMV M65. According to an official source from a Russian company, "Tigers" significantly outperform IVECO in terms of basic protection indicators for crew members and maneuverability, and their cost is three times less.
The cost of the LMV M65 can be judged by the customs declaration, according to which one US-made vehicle kit cost the KamAZ automobile plant 12 million rubles. For comparison, the Russian "Tiger" costs about 5 million rubles. Experts also argue that for the funds spent on the purchase of Italian armored vehicles, it would be possible to modernize domestic armored vehicles and to support the domestic defense industry in a similar way.
Experts put forward their own version of the choice of foreign technology and the rejection of the production of domestic samples. Some are confident that in this way Russia wants to attract Western partners. Others suggest that the whole thing is in cost, since for imported LMV in 300 thousand euros will give a significant pullback. But at the same time, all experts are confident that with a similar attitude to the production of domestic types of military equipment, the Russian defense industry will be on the verge of survival and the Ministry of Defense will be able to dictate its conditions to manufacturers and not only for the quality of the products produced, but also for their cost.
Representatives of IVECO, in order to prove the high quality of their car, argue that over ten years of operation in combat conditions, the enemy had only undermined ten of these machines. It is also noted that the only case when soldiers were killed was recorded on 26 of June of this year, when an armored car from the Spanish army, which was in front of a convoy that was conducting a routine inspection of the area in close proximity to the Spanish military base in the Afghan province of Badghis action movies. Despite the fact that the power of the side explosion was equal to 120 kilograms in TNT equivalent, only 2 people died. Still 3 received injuries of varying severity, but remained alive.
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