SAP 2018-2027 - Arms Procurement

Ministry of Finance proposes to reduce spending on the state armaments program by 5%

The Ministry of Finance proposes to reduce appropriations for the state armaments program (GPP) by 5% in 2021-2023 amid the pandemic. This follows from the methodology for the distribution of budgetary appropriations, which was reviewed by the RBC edition .

Acording to RBC, the monetary volume of the reduction of the state armaments program is not indicated in the methodology of the Ministry of Finance. The total decrease in unscheduled expenses, which includes the reduction of GPV, is 258.2 billion rubles in 2021, 192 billion rubles in 2022 and 198.2 billion rubles in 2023.

https://tass.ru/ekonomika/9010845

That ain't gonna happen.

Anyway, they will claim victory as the state program will not be 1000% fulfilled anyway. It's always closer to 90% so they will later say "we saved 10% of it!" To make themselves look good. But reducing spending will hurt economy even further.

I think it is sensible to reduce spending in most areas when there is the sort of disruption like this pandemic... when the economy recovers and is back up and running normally they can boost spending in the areas they cut to further boost those areas to compensate.

In reality what it means that for a couple of years a few programmes that were going to be fully funded will be partially funded so a few things will take a bit longer to get done.

As long as those things are not critical it should not be a serious problem.

Getting things back into production and up and running again should be the focus in the long term but minimising the damage and preventing too much damage should also be a focus.

GarryB wrote:I think it is sensible to reduce spending in most areas when there is the sort of disruption like this pandemic... when the economy recovers and is back up and running normally they can boost spending in the areas they cut to further boost those areas to compensate.

In reality what it means that for a couple of years a few programmes that were going to be fully funded will be partially funded so a few things will take a bit longer to get done.

As long as those things are not critical it should not be a serious problem.

Getting things back into production and up and running again should be the focus in the long term but minimising the damage and preventing too much damage should also be a focus.

Problem is that 2020 is the last year of current long term acquisition program: lot of production batches are nearing completion, so no sense to stop them now with all components already acquired and needing only to be assembled.
Same with the programs that are near to be started: most of them, like Su-57, Tu-160m2, Armata, Kurganets, Boomerang and so on would mark an astounding advancement in operative capabilities of Russian armed forces, having (and this time for real, not just as a catchphrase for better selling) no analogues in the world.
Maybe the most radical solution would be to retire the older equipment in a single block, leaving just the ones needed for keep crews with a minimum of training and kept the new produced ones in storage for a pair of years (also there except for the ones needed for a minimum of training) and introduce them in service all together.

another solution which i mentioned in another thread involving reserve vehicles/vehicle in storage, its obvious due to slump in oil sales and covid effecting the economy that there is going to be a shortfall in funds. But Russia could gain funds from elsewhere as i mentioned in my post. too long to post here but just one simple aspect of a way of earning extra funds during this time as well as sort an issue of storage equipment.

post number Post n°71
https://www.russiadefence.net/t5846p50-soviet-era-reserve-vehicles

They are not talking about a blind everything gets 5% cut from its budget action here... there are a lot of programmes and projects that are not urgent or critical that may not have even started yet that they could put on hold for a year or two so rather than actually cutting funding they are just delaying it for a couple of years.

Things like property rents and insurance obviously cannot be cut, and programmes to deliver armoured vehicles or aircraft that are being build can't really be ways to save money... not delivering them now means you need to store them which also costs money and also holding a production chain in limbo is not free either so you would end up wasting more money than you saved.

Things they could do to save money might be delaying signing contracts for things not urgently needed, so instead of signing now and having to pay part of the fees now to get the process started they can defer it to two years time which means the whole process does not start for a couple of years... they can do more planning for it to happen later.

They could delay a few exercises planned this year and do them next year or the year after...

A summary of the contracts signed at ARMY 2020:

https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/9316927