Russian Defense Ministry May Spend up to $4.7 Billion on New Weapons in 2015

Russia’s Defense Ministry may this year spend some 270-290 billion rubles ($4.4-4.7 billion) on research and design work to create promising weapons and hardware, Deputy Defense Minister Yury Borisov said Thursday.

"We annually spend on R&D some 15-16% of the state defense order's volume," Borisov said speaking at the all-army conference of inventors and rationalizers.

He said the 15% is the minimum to be used to evaluate the intellectual property created as part of the state defense order.

"There is no upper limit. If the product is successful and finds its use not only in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, but also on the external armaments market, or if the invention or innovations find their application on the civil market, the effect could be a few times as high as expenditures," the deputy minister stressed.

Earlier, the deputy minister said the state defense order in 2015 will total 1.8 trillion rubles (around $29.5 billion).

In 2014 the state defense order stood at about 1.7 trillion rubles. According to Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, it was expected to grow by 20% in 2015.