07.12.2009
The decision on procurement of French helicopter carrier Mistral has not been made yet, said Russian Premier Vladimir Putin answering the questions during online dialog with Russians.
"Before making the final decision we will think twice and estimate capabilities of our shipbuilders", underlined Putin having added that Russian arms industry should also realize "there are plenty of foreign competitors".
"Providing the country's defense sufficiency and defense capacity, the stake will be placed on domestic arms industry", stated the Prime Minister.
Russia ranks No. 2 in world's arms exporters and "does not need to import weapons to provide its defense capacity", said Vladimir Putin. Many exported systems are customized for NATO standards. That is why Russian defense ministry decided to turn regard abroad and find out weapon systems suitable for Russian Armed Forces, he explained.
Despite the fact that Russian military industrial complex demonstrated 3.7% of output growth during crisis 2009, it has "an array of problems related with technical retooling of our factories". "We can not produce the most state-of-the-art weaponry by obsolete equipment of 50-ies", underlined the premier.
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