Russia Says It May Buy Remotely Piloted Spy Planes From Israel

[rock45]

I knew right off the bat from the fighting in Georgia that intelligence-gathering failures by the Russian military was a weak point and an area they needed improving.

December 17, 2008
Russia Says It May Buy Remotely Piloted Spy Planes From Israel

By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
MOSCOW — Russia is considering buying an unspecified number of remotely piloted reconnaissance aircraft from Israel, the head of the Russian military said Tuesday, in what may be an attempt by the Kremlin to strengthen its intelligence-gathering capacity after the August war with Georgia.
A Russian purchase of such aircraft from Israel would be a significant expansion of military business between the countries.
“We are working on this issue,” Gen. Nikolai Makarov, the chief of the Russian General Staff, told the Interfax news agency. “We are talking about a test batch of Israeli drone planes."
In recent months, the Russian Defense Ministry has unveiled changes aimed at streamlining the armed forces. The changes include thinning the officer corps, improving training and living standards for troops, and buying modern weapons systems.
Talk of the purchase was probably prompted by intelligence-gathering failures by the Russian military during the war with Georgia, a country that already has Israeli-made spy aircraft, said Aleksandr Golts, an independent Russian military analyst. “The war in Georgia showed us that we are frightfully lagging behind in terms of technical reconnaissance,” he said. “There were many failures of intelligence.”
Russia has been unable to develop its own remotely piloted spy plane, though it had clear military dominance in the conflict, which lasted five days.
The negotiations on the spy planes are taking place against a backdrop of strong Israeli objections to a possible sale by Moscow of advanced antiaircraft systems to Iran and Syria, two vocal adversaries of Israel.

Link
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/17/world/europe/17russia.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

 

[Lunatik]

Russia is considering IMPORTING weapons. Wow! :smil:

 

[factanonverba]

Russia is considering IMPORTING weapons. Wow! :smil:

yes but russian army are old now alot of the russian equipement are from 1960 or before. I think only aircraft and missiles are modern...for an exemple since resently russian army have socks for all soldiers, before they using old military tradition from 18th century called "portyanki"

Imagine for the rest of the russian equipement...during the war in gorgia they loose alot of aircraft, due of the bad communication and information on the battlefield. They need urgent modernization, theyre the world strongest army at this day but with alot of old equipement who can't defeat modern warfare.

 

[rock45]

Weapons

From Israel too but I'm not surprise nobody makes every kind of weapon. Some of the important sub-systems in Russia's best selling fighter the Su-30 Flanker are from Israel, BAE, South Africa, France

Isn't there an IR device in Greece's future BMP-3 from France?
The laser designators on the Russia's Flankers and I think Algeria's batch to will be French made.

In modern warfare in 2008 you have to admit Russia's battle field intelligence-gathering was weak. They couldn't hide the fact that so many important targets including Georgia messily (11) Su-25s couldnt be taken out in advance. Not to mention more important targets like SAM's, radar's, and Command & Control?

Some of these targets could have been found on Google so to me a bigger part of this is a Russian intelligence breakdown starting on a very high level.

For example a Seal Team leader can count the fense posts on a base or a camp from the intelligence they can their hands on, for a mission lets say. Russia couldn't find SAM's that I could find on Google and take them out, what's wrong with that? And they made most of them and know what to look for. To top it off they started building up their forces too and they couldn't do better then they did? Doesn't seem right.