Aug 24 2007
Russian Aviation: What’s New is Old
[Cross-posted at Dictatorship of the Air]
On Tuesday the Russian Federation’s eighth International Aviation and Space Salon (widely known by its Russian acronym MAKS) opened to great fanfare in the city of Zhukovsky outside Moscow. Held bi-annually since 1993, the Salon has become one of the world’s most important aerospace gatherings. According to state organizers this year’s celebration, MAKS-2007, is the largest in history. 583 Russian companies and 243 foreign firms representing 110 countries are taking part. Before the closing ceremonies on Sunday, the Salon is expected to attract in excess of 650,000 visitors who will be treated to typical air show fare including exhibition halls and displays, simulators, and numerous acrobatic demonstrations headlined by the “Russian Knights” flying team.
Despite its recent origins (the first Salon was held in 1992), MAKS is steeped in history. As President Vladimir Putin proudly noted in his welcoming address, MAKS “continues the longstanding tradition of aviation parades and air show holidays that has always existed in Russia.” His statement was no boast. Tsarist Russia opened its first “International Week of Aviation” in April 1910, just three months after Los Angeles-area aviation patrons hosted the first such meet in the United States. Dozens more events were held in Russia during the years leading up to 1917. In the Soviet period, public air shows, exhibitions, and spectacles were commonplace as Communist Party leaders exploited aviation to generate public faith in (and foreign fear of) their country’s military might.
MAKS is, by definition, an international event. However, its primary purpose has always been to showcase and promote the accomplishments of the Russian aerospace industry. President Putin’s opening day assertion that his government’s main task “is maintaining our leadership in the production of military aviation technology,” [emphasis added] should be understood in this light. It’s a classic example of “compensatory symbolism:” the historic propensity of Russian officials to exaggerate technological accomplishments and military standing in order to mask weakness and deficiencies vis-à-vis foreign rivals. That President Putin should sense a need to embellish the truth doubtless stems from the precipitous decline in Russian air power that followed the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and from continuing doubts about the current status of the post-Soviet air weapon.
Recent innovations on display at MAKS-2007 such as the S-400 air defense system, the 3M25 “Meteorit” cruise missile, and the latest models of Su-35 and MiG-29 aircraft notwithstanding, the Russian military’s current aviation inventory hardly garners the full respect of aerospace observers. Moscow-based defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer dismissed the Sukhoi and MiG aircraft appearing at the Salon as “flying toys that have not been launched for production.” Commenting on Moscow’s decision last week to resume long-range bomber patrols, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack brushed off the development stating that “If Russia feels as though they want to take some of these old aircraft out of mothballs and get them flying again, that’s their decision.” Meanwhile, in separate editorials published Wednesday in The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph, Max Hastings and David Blair dismissed out of hand Russia’s pretensions at once again becoming a major military power citing, among other things, the country’s underlying poverty, economic inequality, and industrial backwardness.
While Hastings may be correct that Russians “cannot make toasters or microwaves, washing-machines or cookers that could find an export market anywhere outside Cuba,” he and other Western observers would be well advised not to underestimate the abilities of Russian aerospace engineers. Likewise, they should not underestimate the value that the Russian state places on air power. It is not happenstance that Putin has presided over the opening ceremony at every MAKS event held during his presidency. He is keenly interested in aviation. And he has repeatedly expressed his goal of re-establishing Russia as a key player in the international market. His administration has undertaken concrete steps to realize that goal. Chief among these has been the formation of the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), an umbrella organization that has brought previously independent Russian aircraft firms like Suhkoi, MiG, and Tupolev under a single administrative entity controlled by the state. This, too, has clear parallels in Russia’s Soviet and Imperial pasts. Throughout the course of the twentieth century it was the state, not private enterprise, that controlled, promoted, and sustained domestic aviation. It appears that the same may be set to happen in the twenty-first century.
Having survived very difficult times in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian aviation is currently experiencing a renaissance. And once again, the Russian state is serving as mid-wife. Flush with cash thanks to the revenues generated from the sale of oil, gas, and other natural resources, the Putin administration is sinking billions into the refurbishment of aviation infrastructure, the design and construction of new aircraft, and the creation of international partnerships with companies like Boeing and Airbus. These partnerships will provide Russia access to the advanced technology it needs later to compete independently against American and European manufacturers.
In mid-August UAC President Aleksei Fyodorov proclaimed that the Russian Federation will surpass Soviet-era production levels by building 4,500 civilian aircraft over the next 18 years. If the government is to make good on this audacious target, it will have to find buyers for these new planes. Recent announcements regarding the pending sale of advanced Sukhoi fighters to Iran and Venezuela suggest still further ties to past precedent. While many in the West view these new deals as efforts designed to score geopolitical points at the expense of the US, such contracts are far more important as inroads to negotiating sales of the new civilian airliners expected to roll out of Russian factories beginning in 2015. It’s a strategy that hearkens back to the 1950s and 1960s when, unable to find buyers for their civilian aircraft in the West, the Soviet Union secured passenger aircraft contracts with Third World governments by sweetening deals for Ilyushin and Tupolev carriers with offers of MiG and Sukhoi fighters.
When analysts like Felgenhauer and Hastings characterize Putin’s agenda as a Cold-War throwback destined to fail owing to economic weakness and industrial backwardness they are mistaken. Putin’s approach, in fact, is a well-tested model that has very deep roots in Russian history. At the turn of the eighteenth century Imperial Russia’s “Westernizing” tsar Peter the Great borrowed heavily from Europe, importing technology, expertise, and equipment while using state authority and finances to spur development at home. In very short order he transformed Russia from a backward, impoverished, and peripheral also-ran into one of Europe’s leading military powers. The Soviet Union accomplished much the same thing in the 1930s through the state-directed industrialization campaign launch by Josef Stalin. Although the modernization programs under both Peter and Stalin came at a steep price for the country’s ordinary citizens and ultimately proved only qualified successes, they radically altered Europe’s military and political landscapes by quickly vaulting Russia into the ranks of the major powers. The events surrounding MAKS-2007 suggest that Russian officials are hoping to alter radically the aerospace landscape in the years to come. They also suggest that Russia’s approach to rebuilding its air arm will follow tried and true patterns derived from its history.
Peter the Great is alleged to have quipped: “We need Europe for a few decades, and then we must show her our ass.”
It is not difficult to imagine that Vladimir Putin is thinking the same thing.
ScP
At the risk of posting twice in one week… I’m curious: what kind of connection do you make between this and the return of long-range, high-visibility reconnaissance flights. Are the flights for internal consumption? Perhaps it is a sort of “proof of product” for foreign buyers who may have doubted the power of Russian aviation recently? Or, is it an acute reaction to the polonium assassination and subsequent diplomatic falling out between the UK and Russia? Maybe all of the above?
I don’t think that the long-range flights have anything to do with wooing foreign buyers as their really isn’t a market for the types of aircraft involved (Tu-95 MSs). I see the flights more as staged spectacles intended primarily for domestic consumption. The flights pose no serious threat to the U.S. or NATO countries, but they serve President Putin’s purposes insofar as they play to Russians’ sense of national pride (and its obverse: anti-Western sentiment).
Right, I suppose I was thinking more that it might serve to put Russian aviation back in the news at a time when they are trying to sell aircraft… Not that model, obviously, but having the “brand name” of Russian aviation (so to speak) back out on the market might not be a bad thing. However, I tend to agree with you that the flights are mostly for internal purposes.
The European press has had some interesting coverage flights. The UK press framed it mostly as a reaction to the diplomatic problems recently while the Norwegians reacted overly positive at first and then seemed to become fairly pessimistic.