Russian Air Force stalls tailspin

If the ability to perform airborne ballet were the only criterion, then its dramatic leaps and twirls might make Russia's experimental Su-37 "Berkut" jet fighter the industry standard. "This plane is designed to solve the contradictory problems of the air," the announcer at the Moscow Air Show last week told a gasping crowd of thousands.

Russia's beleaguered aviation industry also hopes to mimic such acrobatic feats on the ground, as it tries to pull its Air Force out of a tailspin even while selling off its best planes.

Reversing the downward spiral will not be easy, despite the spit and polish on display at the Moscow Air Show. Most planes there were well-known, freshly dusted Soviet models.

When he opened the show last week, President Vladimir Putin promised top-level attention to a military industry forced to rely solely on exports in the decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov is optimistic. Noting a combination of fresh sales abroad, diversification to civilian planes, and a new joint program with European firms to upgrade East European MIG jets to NATO standards, he says "military aviation is at last standing up off its knees."

Recent contracts with China and India have pushed Russian arms exports to a post-Soviet high of $3.2 billion this year. China agreed last month to buy 38 Su-30 ground attack aircraft for $2 billion, and, in June, India made a decade-long, $10 billion deal with a large air component.

But, with no other large foreign prospects on the horizon, the industry is looking anew at domestic sales. A revival could one day enable Russia to modernize its own air force, and create a new fighter to compete with the West.

High oil prices - Russia is one of Europe's main suppliers - now mean the ministry of defense has more money to spend. The new 2002 budget approved by the cabinet on Tuesday allots an extra $1.5 billion in defense spending.

Russia's 2001 defense budget is currently $7.3 billion, and Air Force chiefs want to earmark enough to modernize 80 percent of the fleet by 2005. Meanwhile, Russia's heaviest hitters, Sukhoi and MiG, are presenting competing designs for a fifth-generation fighter to begin production in 2010.

"The aircraft are aging before our very eyes," Russia's Air Force commander Anatoly Kornukov said last Friday. "For the past 10 years, not a single new aircraft has been added to our front-line air force." Only 5 percent of Russia's planes are the "most modern," he noted. There is no fuel at 49 of the nation's 115 military airports.

"They are taking graduates from air defense colleges and putting them in the infantry because they have no planes and no fuel," says Dale Herrspring, a former diplomat and Russian military expert at Kansas State University. Mr. Herrspring visited several military installations earlier this year. "These guys are in deep, deep hurt."

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