"Much of Venezuela's Russian arms said to be faulty" Topic

Much of Venezuela's Russian arms said to be faulty
by Staff Writers
Caracas, Venezuela (UPI) Nov 26, 2013

"Russians arms inventories in Venezuela are blighted by widespread malfunction, breakdown and an endemic lack of operational readiness, opposition critics said.

Amid data indicating Venezuela is now Russia's largest weapons customer in Latin America, thanks largely to deals reached before former President Hugo Chavez died of cancer in March, the Venezuelan military is having to cope with useless military hardware on a large scale, El Universal reported, citing opposition critics.

There was no immediate official comment from the administration of President Nicolas Maduro. independent verification of opposition claims on the parlous state of Venezuelan military is hard to come by.

"Shadiness is the key word when referring to the information on the weapons sold to Venezuela by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's government," El Universal said."
link

Gotta love that communist quality control.

The answer is more vodka, comrades. Everything seems better with more vodka, even if it isn't.

I doubt it was the AK-103s. The AK platform is so easy to understand and repair a monkey could do it with a single day of training.

Well, considering the 'communists' haven't been in power for quite some time, I guess your remark, Mako, shows a stunning lack of knowledge….

That said… While Russian (note: NOT communist) engineering is generally sound and on par with the west, the same can't be said for their production quality control. And, in this case, some of the readiness problems may be with the maintainers as much as the producers.

Latin American militaries are notorious for extremely poor readiness and maintenance standards and Venezuela has since 1990 been in the same boat.

Russian military gear does require more depot level maintenance more often and I doubt the Venezuelans ever signed an ongoing maintenance agreement (and the Russians are poor at these as well).

The Africans are the same for the most part as are the Indonesians and Filipinos – they can't even keep UH-1H Hueys airborne let alone anything else.

As for obsolescence, those 24 Su-30s are the most advanced jets on the continent alongside Chilean F-16s.

Even Brazil is relying on ancient F-5s and AMXs for the mainstay of it's air force (and they are retiring their 6 remaining Mirage 2000s this year).

Colombia and Ecuador use Kfirs/Cheetahs (revamped Mirage III), Argentina uses A-4s and Mirage III/V and Peru has a combo of non-upgraded Mirage 2000 and MiG-29 and Su-25.

Honduras has 11 F-5E/F and Mexico 9 F-5E/F. Cuba has some ancient junk of dubious airworthiness.

Oh actually nearly all these airforces have dubious airworthiness with most aircraft in non-operable storage.

And the same with their navies and armies – lots of old junk and some new stuff and all operational capability.

Only exception is the Chilean military which is both relatively modern and maintains good readiness.

To be fair, Brazil is doing some hefty upgrades to their F-5 fleet: link

Damon.

It's still an F-5 though in terms of speed, range, payload and maneouvrability.

The Chilean F-5 Tiger IIIs and Ecuadorian and Colombian Kfirs and Cheetahs are all heavily upgraded too but that doesn't improve their basic limitations (especially compared to a Su-30MK series jet).

The other thing is serviceability which for air forces like Ecuador, Peru and Argentina is really low.

I'd hate to be driving a Tiger II against some dude in a Flanker!

But when a country can't keep Russian gear working, well, the mind boggles. Russian hardware is built to be maintained by barely-educated types!

Problem with Russians is spares and other technical support (e.g. software upgrades) is poor.

The Malaysians and Indian both discovered this. However since then India has refocused on in house and apparently the Malaysians have plugged into Indian efforts.

The other problem as stated is countries not signing up for maintenance.

South Africa for example no longer has a contract for servicing it's Swedish Gripens (again designed to be maintained by conscripts) and half of the 26 strong fleet is grounded.

I wonder how the Venezuelan AK-103s would match up with the ones they originally bought from Russia? Robert

You have to be careful when politics is involved…I remember a lot of fuss on indian tank tender, where at certain period each one of the partricipants claimed that his competitors were "rejected" by indian government. In the end, tender was won by indian own design, but….several months ago it was discovered that tender was rigged, and now indians are again discussing T-90 contract.
After war in Ossetia, opposition was blaiming Saakashvili for his purchases of ukrainian tanks, as some were destroyed from single RPG shot. However, Pakistan recently ordered quite a number of them….

South Africa for example no longer has a contract for servicing it's Swedish Gripens (again designed to be maintained by conscripts) and half of the 26 strong fleet is grounded.

It should be noted that the conscripts serving as techs were selected from those that had completed a four year long full time votech engineer training with good grades and that they did the work together with professional technical officers as well as reservists who in peacetime were employees of SAAB.

Did they get a receipt ?

From a country that couldn't even maintain a supply of toilet paper, are you that surprised?

Worth noting that the sources for this information are two opposition politicians. Political discourse in Venezuela is hardly known for it's restraint or scrupulous adherence to the truth, not dissimilar to many other countries for that matter. Would you expect them to comment to the effect that the equipment was working as planned? The opposition in Venezuela seem bemused by the fact that one coup attempt and several democratic elections later, they still can't muster sufficient support to regain the reins of power.

Interestingly there seems to be a misbegotten notion that Latin American militaries are unable to maintain their equipment. I think you'll find that has more to do with rather antediluvian notions of the innate inferiority of developing nations and perhaps in this case a common desire amongst many North American commentators to paint Venezuela in the light of some form of neo-Soviet bogeyman. Actually in light of the age of much of the materiel, serviceability rates are remarkable.

Chile is oft cited as one of the best equipped armies on the continent, yet most of it's major equipment is second hand left overs from the NATO peace dividend. Much of Brazil's equipment is even older, dating from the 1970s and beyond.

By the by, the Mi-35 helicopters in the Venezuelan fleet are almost identical to those in the FAB. No complaints in Brazil. Brazil has also been purchasing Russian arms, AT and AA missiles. Again no real complaints. I'm currently in Colombia at the moment and snazzy pixelated uniforms aside most of the gear is quite ancient. Even an updated Galil, with nice polymer furniture is still a Galil and those EE-11s are at least thirty years old.

The story might just be true but given the source I wouldn't want to bet my shirt on it.

Interestingly there seems to be a misbegotten notion that Latin American militaries are unable to maintain their equipment.
I think you'll find that has more to do with rather antediluvian notions of the innate inferiority of developing nations

Actually from an aerospace perspective I've been basing it on news reports – e.g. only 4 Peruvian Su-25s out of 18 are currently airworthy and the 12 strong Mirage fleet was also mainly non-operational (being overhauled and brought back to service this year).

The Argies were doing even more poorly due to extremely low funding and general neglect of their military (plus economic problems).

Even a lot of European militaties don't really maintain their equipment and have low readiness as a result.

They are also often just as old – the average C-130 in Europe is 1970s vintage, Alouettes are still in service as are older Alpha Jets, SF260M/Ds and various models of Huey (e.g. German UH-1D, Italian AB205 (in service with numerous countries), SA33O Puma (Spain, Frace, UK), SA-342 Gazelle, Bo-105 etc etc.

Fighters are also generally old – Panavia Tornado, Mirage 2000C, F-16A/B and F-16C/D Blk 30, Su-22, MiG-29, F/A-18A/B as well as even older F-4s (Greece, Turkey and up to June 2013 Germany), A-7s (Greece), F-5s (Switzerland), MiG-21 (Croatia, Romania and Serbia), , J-22 (Serbia), Mirage F1 (France and up to June 2013 Spain) and Super Etendard (France).

A lot have been upgraded but are still reaching the ends of their lives and are certainly not top of the line.

In fact Chile's air force is far more potent than a lot of European ones and actually offers a full spectrum of capabilities. It's also seeing regular deliveries of replacement aircraft unlike many European air forces.

This kind of relates to the Russians bring out a new series of AFVs … we discussed before on TMP … What is the Russian Quality Assurance procedures ? Do they even have QA ? And if so … how many can they actually produce regardless, being a developing economy ? But on the other hand, many, many 3rd World Insurgent Armies have no shortage of AKs, RPGs, PKs, DshKs, etc., etc. …

Whatever the reason, GREAT NEWS about two governments that deserve it.

Tom

Legion 4, I'm working for a Russian subsidiary of US corp, and I can tell you that we have plenty of quality problems with both "original" stuff we make in States and Europe and the stuff we subcontract in Russia. What I know for sure, is that no amount of ISO9000 certificates on the wall of the factory guarantees the quality. Granted, one of the problems we have is that in Soviet times QA could send stuff for recycling as many times as they thought was necessary, and now a lot of companies simply don't want to "waste" resources on perfect QA…However, it is even worse when you pay premium to your western subcontractors and get the same crap, but with the difference that it can't be fixed so easily thousands miles deep in Russian territory…

Interesting Barin, and good to know. Thanks for letting us know some of the inside story … And no doubt QA can be a tricky thing. And it sometimes gets worse with subcontracters. It is all part of the way things are done sometimes in modern business. Consumer goods or military sales, you have to keep the buyers happy … or they may go somewhere else …