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The meeting was part of a series of meetings on implementing the state armament programme.

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Colleagues,

We are having another meeting today on implementing the state armament programme. I would like to discuss our progress in equipping our Strategic Nuclear Forces and Aerospace Defence Troops: they hold a particular responsibility in ensuring Russia’s security. First and foremost, this concerns nuclear arms, which remain a truly important guarantee of Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and play a key role in supporting global and regional equilibrium and stability.

Our aerospace defence system is also highly significant. In order to carry out its main task – the reliable protection of military and government administration facilities – it must remain in a constant state of combat readiness, taking into account potential enemies’ plans for developing offensive measures, and ensuring precise and operational coordination with other arms of service.

Today, nearly all the nations that possess nuclear weapons and aerospace assault weapons are working to improve and develop them. They are actively developing control systems to make reconnaissance, surveillance, and information-gathering operations more efficient.

We are not going to engage in any arms race, as I have already said many times before, but there should be no doubt as to the reliability and efficacy of our nuclear potential, as well as our aerospace defence system.

In shaping the state armament programme through to 2020, we identified what groupings of the Strategic Nuclear Forces and Aerospace Defence Troops we need. We intend to allocate a significant part of financial resources within the state armament programme to their quantitative and qualitative equipment.

I would like to stress that all our plans must be fulfilled on time. As a result, by 2020 the share of modern weapons in our Strategic Nuclear Forces should be at 75- 80 percent, and for Aerospace Defence Troops this figure should be no less than 70 percent.

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