Russia's security - it's time to wake up
Director of NPF-VT LLC, Candidate of Technical Sciences Yuri Brygin sent a letter to Deputy Chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission of the Russian Federation Yuri Borisov.
I am writing to you with a proposal to bring up for discussion by the members of the board the issue of the critical state of such a branch of the military-industrial complex as special chemistry. If the situation with the production of explosives, gunpowder and solid rocket fuels can still be considered tolerable, then the situation with the provision of domestic high-quality chemical products to enterprises producing pyrotechnics for military purposes has been catastrophic and continues to worsen.
For a number of basic chemical materials such as yellow (white) and red phosphorus, barium and strontium nitric acid salts, potassium chlorate (bertolet salt) and perchlorate (cadelin), ammonium chloride, certain organic chemicals, powders of some metals, the country is in dangerous strategic dependence on supplies from near and far abroad (in mostly from China). While potential sources of mining raw materials for their production in Russia are available in sufficient volumes.
"In Russia, there is no national control and coordination of work to provide defense industry enterprises with raw materials of the required nomenclature, in the required volumes and with the specified indicators for the formation of mobilization reserves in peacetime”
In more detail, the issues of providing chemical materials for domestic production of pyrotechnic products for military purposes are described in our article with O.V. Falichev in the weekly "Military-Industrial Courier" entitled "No smoke, no fire" (issue No. 36 for September 20, 2017). In fact, it was a gesture of desperation - to bare before
opponents have their own problems - in the hope that our departments and, above all, the Department of the Industry of Conventional Weapons, Ammunition and Special Chemicals of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation will finally react and begin to act. Five years have passed, they have not reacted...
It seems that in our country there is no national control and coordination of work to provide defense industry enterprises with raw materials of the required nomenclature, in the required volumes and with the specified indicators for the formation of mobilization stocks in peacetime. There are no plans for the operational deployment of their production in wartime, and it has almost already come.
It seems to me that taking into account Vladimir Putin's statement at the end of 2017 about the need for all organizations and enterprises, regardless of their forms of ownership, to be ready to switch to work in wartime conditions, it is advisable at the government level:
1) oblige the real owners of enterprises that produced strategically important chemical materials to resume their low-tonnage production as soon as possible and create an annual mobilization reserve, taking into account the possible needs of defense industries;
2) to propose to the beneficiaries of the mining industry enterprises, as a mobilization task, to organize low-tonnage import-substituting production of strategically important chemical products at the relevant plants and workshops;
3) prohibit the suspension of production and the liquidation of production facilities that produce special chemicals and chemical raw materials for defense industries without the approval of the board of the Military-Industrial Commission;
4) in the current situation, special attention should be paid to the issues of modernization of the Anozit FCP, which would allow eliminating the seasonal nature of its work and already now, in a short time, on existing production facilities, without significant costs, to organize low-tonnage production of some highly demanded chemical products.
The newspaper "Military-industrial courier",