MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti defense commentator...
planes and spy satellites, since 1986. Now they are to be replaced by the more precise SS-27s.Another dramatic chapter in the story of the nation"s top missile designer came immediately after the demise of the Soviet Union as MITT"s Ukrainian- and Kazakh-based Topol contractors became independent, leaving Votkinsky Zavod in the Urals as the only production base. The loss was recoverable but needed political will, which was there in abundance, and money, which was in extremely short supply. Lagutin"s successor Yury Solomonov, backed by the top military, was begging for money around the Kremlin and parliament, warning that a strategic gap was looming between the end of service life of old missiles and planned commissioning of new ones. They did not get a single "no" in response - yet not a single transfer to MITT"s bank account.
The problem became worse with the beginning of the Wild-West-style privatization of the defense industry, in which producers of strategic
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