Russian Navy to use NATO warships in distant future?

24.02.2011 by pravda.ru

Russian warships will be equipped with foreign arms soon. Admiral Vysotky, the commander of the Russian navy, considers an opportunity to install artillery systems of foreign production on board Russian frigates, or anti-boat vessels. According to Vysotsky, it goes about the French-made 100-millimeter Creusot-Loire Compact artillery system and the Italian 127-millimeter OTO-Melara 127/64LW. Moreover, the admiral said that Russian vessels could be equipped with diesel engines and air conditioning systems - all made outside Russia. The surprising statement from the admiral coincided with the testing of Russian state-of-the-art anti-boat guns, particularly A-192M Armat artillery system. The tests were supposed to end in 2012. Needless to say that the performance of Russian systems is not worse than that of foreign complexes. Nikolai Novichkov, chief editor of ARMS-TASS news agency, told Pravda.Ru that Russia had started paying more attention to foreign defense technologies during the recent years. "At first they said that they would be willing to purchase unmanned aircraft from Israel. Then they said that Russia could launch the production of Italian armored vehicles. Some time later, they announced the intention to purchase Mistral helicopter carriers from France. It seems that the military have every reason to believe that the Russian defense industry has lost the technologies for making high-quality arms. The situation in the national military and industrial complex has been aggravating steadily for years already," the expert said.