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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues,

Today, we will continue our discussions, review the preliminary results of work on state defence procurement orders over the course of this year, and decide on measures that will help to make cooperation between the Defence Ministry and the defence industry companies more effective. We therefore have industry representatives present today.

One of our top military development priorities is to create a modern army equipped with the latest arms and hardware, of course. This was always one of the top priorities. Our task now is to carry out all of our plans.

I have said before and say again that we have no intention of getting drawn into an arms race and no plans to try to catch up to or overtake anyone. Our objective is simply to make up for the time that was lost in the 1990s, when the Armed Forces and defence industry companies were chronically underfinanced and forced to scale back programmes for modernising the armed forces units and the defence enterprises themselves.

Today’s situation is different. Overall, money for carrying out the state defence procurement orders is allocated at the level set in the state arms procurement programme through to 2020. Let me say again that this is not urgent additional work, but a planned programme that was put together 10 years ago now. Ten years ago, we started talking about the need for a new state defence procurement programme through to 2020, and that was when we began drawing up these plans.

The results of work on state defence procurement orders for the first three quarters of this year show that the defence industry companies and the Defence Ministry have kept up the pace. The armed forces units received a quarter more new and modernised arms models than in 2014. What is important is that these new arms are being put to intensive use. The exercises and snap inspections we have carried out confirm the increase in effectiveness and level of combat preparedness. I hope that this will continue.

At the same time, there are a few points I want to bring to your attention. First, we must make sure that there are no interruptions and delays in carrying out the set objectives. This has not been the case so far. Of course, we do understand that there are objective reasons for such situations, related to production and organisational problems. Let’s look today at how we can resolve these problems.

Second, we must continue the work on import replacement of foreign components and parts used in arms and military equipment production. We have already noted that we have to replace ever more sophisticated parts and components today. But as I have said before, this will spur high-tech development in our own industrial sectors and I think that it will have a positive impact on civilian sectors too.

It has always been the case at all times and all around the world that high-tech developments that come out of the defence industry soon find applications in civilian production sectors too. We must make sure that the same thing happens here.

Let’s start work.

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