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Putin Backs Imports of Foreign Military Technology

03 July 2012 00:24 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Russian President Vladimir Putin supported on Monday the idea of purchasing certain types of military technology abroad to satisfy the specific and urgent needs of the military and defense industry, APA reports quoting Ria Novosti .

â€œWe must make full use of the mechanisms of military-technical cooperation for purchasing foreign technologies, certain samples of equipment, which are needed for the development of our defense industry and for accomplishing specific and urgent tasks for equipping the Russian Armed Forces," Putin said at a meeting of the Commission on Military-Technical Cooperation.

One of Russiaâ€™s rare deals to buy foreign military hardware was with France in June 2011.

The two countries signed a $1.7 billion contract on two French-built Mistral class amphibious assault ships for the Russian Navy, which includes the transfer of sensitive technology. Russia will build two more ships at its own shipyards.

Another recent arms imports deal was the purchase of 12 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) from Israel to study Israeli achievements in the development of spy drones in order to build reliable UAVs domestically.

The Russian military stressed the need to provide its Armed Forces with advanced means of battlefield reconnaissance in the wake of a brief military conflict with Georgia in 2008, when the effectiveness of Russian military operations was severely hampered by the lack of reliable intelligence.