MINSK. April 18 (Interfax-AVN) - The Minsk-based Minotor- Servis JSC accounts for over 50 percent of orders placed with Belarus by the Russian Defense Ministry, Minotor-Servis Director General Valery Grebenshchikov said on Friday.
The enterprise repairs and modernizes the Shilka air defense system, Tunguska air defense missile system and Stalker combat reconnaissance vehicle for Russia, Grebenshchikov told Interfax- Military News Agency.
According to him, modernization and repairs of Russian-made assets in the Russian Defense Ministry's interests account for a large share of the enterprise's contracts because Belarussian proposals are more suitable for Russian customers than the proposals of Russian plants.
Nevertheless, supply by far exceeds demand on this market, and competitors "are very active," Grebenshchikov said. "But we have been able to hold the orders in Belarus for 12 years, and we like it a lot," he stressed.
Speaking about the upgrade of Russia's Shilka system, the director general explained that this is the world's first asset capable of hitting moving aerial targets while on the move. The system was commissioned by the Soviet army in 1964.
As years passed, elemental base of the system became obsolete and modernization proposals of Minotor-Servis primarily envisage replacement of analog fire control systems with digital ones. This will improve the system's accuracy. "Kill probability per one target pass increases more than five times," Grebenshchikov stressed.
Moreover, substantial improvements are suggested to the system's chassis. The driving speed increases considerably after the modernization, and the system becomes capable of escorting up- to-date tanks on the march and in battle, which the baseline variant could not do.
Tunguska's modernization mostly provides for improving its reliability, Grebenshchikov said.
He explained that statistics on the system's failures related to both maintenance and design has been collected over years of its operation. Changes improving the system's reliability are made to its design during the modernization.