MOSCOW. Nov 22 (Interfax-AVN) - Foreign activity of the Almaz Research and Production Association will be centered around export of the armament designed by the association, Almaz Director General Igor Ashurbeili said on Thursday.
The association has for the first time implemented a contract on modernisation of an earlier exported system on its own, "without commercial mediators," Ashurbeili told Interfax-Military News Agency. Almaz was authorized to implement the contract by the Rosoboronexport state-owned arms trader.
"We have performed the entire technological chain by ourselves cooperating with industrial enterprises where necessary," the director went on. The foreign customer sent a letter to Rosoboronexport praising high quality of the equipment and works done without any claims, which is extremely rare especially in comparison with previous export supplies of the company's products that did not involve Almaz.
"Besides, we have completed modernization of S-125 surface-to-air missile systems that were designed by Almaz yet in the early 1960s and have entered the inventory of many countries since then. The modernized system named Pechora-2A will make it possible to bring their combat capabilities up to the level meeting present-day demands and guarantee extension of their service life by another 10 to 15 years. This was confirmed by the recent demonstrative live firing at a proving range that a potential foreign customer attended," Ashurbeili stressed.
Speaking about promising contracts, he said in 2001 Almaz and Rosoboronexport signed "a new unique export contract with a country that is untraditional from the point of view of Russian arms export."
"Many years of purposeful work have brought us this year an official request for another large-scale product. Demonstrative firing of our traditional S-300P product in the interests of another promising customer have been a great success recently. I cannot speak more on those programs due to obvious reasons," the director said.