Russia is about to usurp the US in the arms market?

With products equivalent to those of the US but with increasingly improved quality and prices, Russia is holding advantages over its number one competitor in the field of arms exports.

Figures recently released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) show that in 2013, Russia surpassed the US for the first time with arms exports worth more than 2 billion USD...

Usurpation

Business Insider cited data from SIPRI, which showed that in 2013, the US exported $26.9 billion worth of weapons to countries around the world, while Russia exported $29.7 billion worth of weapons. Previously, the US had always led the world in arms exports, with an average revenue of more than $7 billion per year. However, in reality, in 2013, US arms sales abroad decreased by more than 6%, while Russian arms manufacturing companies had strong revenue growth and entered the top 100 most profitable companies in the arms export market.

Russia's Su-35 aircraft attracted much attention at an exhibition in Paris. Photo: AFP

The International Business Times immediately asked the question: Has the US lost the international arms market and is Russia about to usurp the number one position of the Land of the Flag? There is no forecast about the US's position in the international arms market in the near future because the US still dominates the number of arms companies in the top 100 largest companies in the world. However, many figures and analyses show that low prices and improved quality have made Russian weapons increasingly competitive with American goods.

President V. Putin's Strategy

It is also worth mentioning that Russia under President V. Putin is focusing on two strategic cards: energy and military weapons. According to Russia's announcement, in the first 6 months of 2014, the value of Russia's arms exports reached 5.6 billion USD, a figure that President V. Putin considered very positive. The total list of arms export orders of this country has achieved a sharp increase in turnover from 35 billion USD at the beginning of the year to nearly 50 billion USD at the beginning of July. Many Russian arms products have seen a remarkable increase in revenue such as guns, missiles, fighter aircraft such as: Su-30, MiG-29, MiG-35... In the plan, Russia is expected to increase arms sales to 50 billion USD by 2020, ensuring to maintain its leading position among arms exporting countries in the world.

Over the past five years, Russia has also become a leading exporter of warships and submarines, accounting for 27% of the world market share in this field. At a recent meeting with the Military-Technical Cooperation Committee, President V. Putin stated that Russia should aim to become the world's leading supplier of naval vessels. He said that in the list of defense industry export orders, orders for purchasing naval vessels account for 15%, and the market potential of this product is huge, citing experts' assessments that "countries around the world plan to spend $100 billion to re-equip their fleets in the next few years."

Dangerous card

In the context of many countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East are in an arms race, increasing large defense spending, arms export is the dangerous card that Russia will use to deal with the US. One point that makes Russian weapons attractive to many countries is that the quality of their weapons is increasingly improved but the price is quite low, only 30-40% compared to similar American products.

According to Business Insider, while the US supplies weapons mainly to NATO and its allies in the Middle East such as Türkiye, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, Russia supplies them to the BRICS countries (Brazil, India, China, and South Africa), Iran, and most countries in Southeast Asia and North Africa. However, even with the EU, which is an ally of the US, Russia's arms trade is quite active. France's move to try to sell Russia two helicopter carriers at a time when the EU was discussing sanctions against Russia recently showed that many countries still want to cooperate with the Kremlin in this regard. It is estimated that the EU exports 300 million euros of weapons to Russia each year and imports about 3.2 billion euros of weapons from Russia in the opposite direction.

Recent times have also become difficult for the US as defense budgets in countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East have skyrocketed while countries in North America and Europe have reduced their spending on weapons imports. Figures from SIPRI show that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) tops the list of countries importing the largest number of weapons from the US with more than 3.7 billion USD. Meanwhile, India spent more than 13.6 billion USD on Russian weapons and was the country with the largest value of weapons imports from Moscow in 2013. Another interesting thing is that the US is actually among the countries importing weapons from Russia with an import value of about 16 million USD in the period 2012-2013. This figure comes from a 1 billion USD contract that Washington spent to buy Mi-17V5 helicopters from Russia to supply to the Afghan army.

Therefore, experts predict that in the coming time, the US position will likely continue to be threatened by the excitement in Russia's key arms export markets such as Africa, Asia and the Middle East, while sanctions against Moscow are increasingly showing their "negative side" to Western financial systems.

According to QĐND