Sechin Recommended USC to Reduce Prices for Borei Subs

17.04.2012 Being a governmental envoy in relations between defense ministry and United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC), vice premier Igor Sechin recommended the latter one to reduce prices for Project 955A Borei strategic nuclear submarines, since defense ministry have no time to conclude a contract under State Defense Order 2012, reports Interfax referring to Kommersant.

According to the newspaper, defense ministry was again unsatisfied with substantiation of price for batch production of modernized Borei-class submarines. Sechin took the defense ministry's position making USC understand that industry would have to yield to price terms of the military because further protraction of contracting issues was impossible.

In 2012, president Medvedev tasked defense ministry to sign a contract for 5 Borei-class submarines by Apr 15. However, the solution proposed by Sechin would unlikely help as price substantiation needs several weeks more, reports Kommersant.

As for the newspaper, USC wanted to get about RUR 130 bln from defense ministry this year for the Borei contract (somewhat RUR 26 bln for each sub). As the military said earlier, all contracts would be tied in time. For one, deputy defense minister Alexander Sukhorukov assured that "contract for Borei-class nuclear submarines will be signed in time, just as it was stipulated by the State Arms Program 2011-2020".

Late in Nov 2011, president Medvedev promised to fire all officials blamed for frustration of State Defense Order 2012.

Earlier on, defense ministry announced that Russian submarine force would receive two Project 955 Borei subs in 2012 – SSBN Yury Dolgoruky and SSBN Alexander Nevsky. In the nearest future, Sevmash shipyard will lay down another Borei-class submarine. Third sub of this project – SSBN Vladimir Monomakh – is currently under construction.