Saturday, September 20, 2014

Do Not Buy Your Aircraft Carrier From Russia


Don't Buy Your Aircraft Carrier From Russia -- Kyle Mizokami, Real Clear Defense/War Is Boring

India learned the hard way with INS Vikramaditya

Like a lot of countries, India wants the best weapons it can afford. But ideological and financial concerns mean there are a lot of things it won’t buy from the United States or Europe. That pretty much leaves, well, Russia.

India has been a big buyer of Russian weapons for 50 years. Those haven’t been easy years for New Delhi. India’s defense contracts with Russia have consistently suffered delays and cost overruns. And the resulting hardware doesn’t always work.

Of all India’s Russian procurement woes, none speak more to the dysfunctional relationship between the two countries than the saga of INS Vikramaditya. In the early 2000s, India went shopping for a new aircraft carrier. What followed was a military-industrial nightmare.

Read more ....

My Comment: What you pay is what you get .... and if you pay cheap expect something cheap in return. An aircraft carrier for under $1 billion .... who were they kidding. On a side note .... it is good to know that when it comes to military procurement .... the U.S. is not the only country that sometimes has problems.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Russia buys a carrier from France
India busy a carrier from Russia.

This is not making sense unless it is about dollars & cents.

...& count your fingers afterwards.

James said...

Besides a small steering problem what's the big deal! That must be one bad ass airplane that's peeking out behind the island, if it takes a whole carrier to pack it around.