Июль 2008 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Recherche: sept nouveaux instituts prochainement à Vladivostok
• Russia's toxic rivers running out of time
• Développement de la collaboration scientifique entre la Russie et la Norvège
• Planting Ideology
• International symposium on nanotechnology opens in Vladivostok
• Diagnostique des oléoducs depuis l'espace
• Arthur Chilingarov: Russia's Arctic Explorer
• Engaging Russian Scientists
• Early study reveals promising Alzheimer's disease treatment
• Les Russes découvrent tardivement l'écologie
• Un laser Pétawatts à la place du synchrotron
• Optics researcher elected to prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences
• The race to own the top of the world
• Russia's weaponry shows signs of age

В журнале Science опубликована статья руководителя Евразийских программ Американских Национальных академий Гленна Швейцера. По его мнению, власти США должны предпринять усилия для расширения научно-технического сотрудничества с Россией, уровень которого в последние годы заметно снизился. С ростом финансирования науки Россия больше не нуждается в помощи Запада, чтобы поддерживать свою научную и технологическую базу. Зато Запад нуждается в России - чтобы увеличить поставки энергии, защищать окружающую среду, противостоять терроризму и распространению ядерного оружия. К сожалению, США по-прежнему рассматривают помощь как единственное основание для сотрудничества.
Сотрудничество еще продолжается в сфере обеспечения безопасности российского ядерного арсенала, НАСА продолжает сотрудничать с Россией в поддержании работы на МКС и связанных с этим проектах, но в других сферах состояние двусторонних научно-технических связей оставляет желать лучшего.

Russia no longer needs assistance from the west to shore up its science and technology (S&T) base. Its gross domestic product is $1.4 trillion and increasing at an annual rate of almost 9%. Investment in nanotechnology is on track to reach $6 billion during the next several years. The research budget of the Russian Academy of Sciences is six times larger than in 2001, and research funds are on the rise throughout the ministries.
But the United States, and indeed the entire world, needs Russian assistance to address global challenges - to expand energy supplies and promote energy-efficient technologies, to protect public health and the environment, and to prevent nuclear proliferation and terrorism.
International partnerships can build on successes of the past, benefiting all participants. Also, engagement promotes transparency, while encouraging Russia to be a central S&T player for achieving common global goals.
Unfortunately, the U.S. government is still mired in the outmoded concept of foreign assistance as the basis for relations with Russia. During my visits in June 2008 to the Institute of Catalysis and the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk, directors and researchers bemoaned the atrophy of linkages with U.S. scientists. For them, money is not the primary motivation for cooperation, because they have well-endowed clients in Russia, China, and Europe. They simply want to work at the forefront of technology with U.S. counterparts. Subsequent visits to other leading institutes in Moscow that deal with epidemiology, nuclear contamination, and geological mapping underscored the growing Russian view that U.S. colleagues are losing interest just as Russian capabilities are growing.
The U.S. government still supports efforts to reduce Russia's nuclear arsenal and contain nuclear materials in secure locations, with the Department of Energy's (DOE's) commitment of about $600 million for 2008. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration continues its partnership with Russia to support the international space station and related activities. The U.S. Agency for International Development provides modest support to combat HIV/AIDS. And in the private sector, U.S. investment in Russia is increasing, although hardly at a level commensurate with market and technological opportunities.
Aside from these bright spots, the level of U.S. support for bilateral cooperation is not encouraging. In February, the Department of Commerce closed its Business Information Services for the Newly Independent States that had facilitated transactions of about $4.5 billion over 16 years, including many investments in technology-related activities. In March, the National Science Foundation terminated nearly 50 years of support for the National Academy of Sciences' scientist-exchange program with Russia and other states in the region. The agreement to expand civil nuclear power cooperation that was signed in May is in trouble in the U.S. Congress. The Civilian Research and Development Foundation has reduced its funding for Russia, although it has succeeded in encouraging increased Russian contributions to projects. The Departments of State and Defense are reducing support for biology-related nonproliferation activities as they increase programs in other countries. And the DOE's long-standing research cooperation with the Russian Academy of Sciences is almost dormant. Very disheartening is the limited U.S. effort to launch projects pursuant to the U.S.-Russian bilateral S&T agreement. The few current projects hardly represent a credible degree of cooperation between two leaders in S&T.
U.S. agencies and scientists often cite lack of funds as a reason for reduced scientific exchanges with Russia. Although this is true, an underlying cause is the failure to recognize how Russian science can become a more positive force on the world scene. This needs to change. One solution is to expand efforts under the S&T agreement in areas such as nanotechnology and biomedical science. Another step is to firmly embed scientific cooperation in deliberations of the G8 nations, rather than raise the issue on an ad hoc basis, as has been done so often in the past. Engagement with Russia will hopefully be a more prominent issue at the 2009 G8 Summit in Italy. Times change, but cooperation remains important.

Российский антигистаминный препарат димебон способен улучшать состояние пациентов с болезнью Альцгеймера и замедлять ее развитие. Результаты исследования будут опубликованы в журнале The Lancet.

A drug once approved as an antihistamine in Russia improved thinking processes and ability to function in patients with Alzheimer's disease in a study conducted there, said an expert at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. The findings are published in the current issue of the journal The Lancet.
"More research is needed, but we are encouraged by the effect the drug Dimebon had on Alzheimer's patients" said Dr. Rachelle Doody, professor of neurology at BCM and lead author of the study.
In the study, the authors noted that Dimebon is the first drug for Alzheimer's disease that demonstrated continued improvement in patients over a 12 month period. Other approved drugs do not have this effect.
Half of the 183 patients in the Russian study received Dimebon; the other half were given a placebo or an inactive pill. Clinicians at the study sites then monitored the patients' progress over the next year on five different outcomes. All of those in the study had mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease.
"What we saw in the clinical trial is that people on the medication continued to improve over time," Doody said. "Those on placebo continued to decline."
Researchers believe the medication works by stabilizing mitochondria, the cellular components that produce energy, and possibly by inhibiting brain cell death. Researchers evaluated patients' thinking and memory ability, overall function, psychiatric and behavioral symptoms, and ability to perform daily activities.
"Usually at this point in a drug's development, we are happy to see improvement in one of the outcome measures," Doody said. "We saw improvement in all five."
Some participants complained of occasional dry mouth, but no one opted out of the study because of the side effects.
"As we continue research, we hope to replicate these results," Doody said. "My belief is that this drug will turn out to be useful for Alzheimer's disease, regardless of the stage of the disease."
Doody said this is only the first study looking into the effects of Dimebon on Alzheimer's disease. She also noted that it involved only a relatively small population from one specific region of the world. The ongoing Phase 3 study will include several international locations including the United States.

Other researchers who contributed to this study include: Dr. Svetlana I. Gavrilova, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Moscow, Russia; Dr. Mary Sano, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York City, NY; Dr. Ronald G. Thomas, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA; Dr. Paul S. Aisen, formerly with Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington, DC and now at the University of California, San Diego; Dr. Sergey O. Bachurin, Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Physiologically Active Compounds, Chernogolovka, Russia; Drs. Lynn Seely and David Hung, Medivation, Inc., San Francisco, CA.
Funding for this study came from Medivation, Inc., the company developing the drug worldwide. Doody is also a member of the Scientific and Clinical Advisory board for Medivation, Inc. After the embargo lifts, the full report can be found at www.thelancet.com

В России наблюдается всплеск интереса к проблемам экологии. Толчком послужила подготовка к Олимпийским играм 2014 года в Сочи, когда выяснилось, что строительство многих объектов намечено в природоохранной зоне.

Les écologistes russes ont savouré la visite de Vladimir Poutine à Sochi, le 3 juillet. Ce jour-là, devant les caméras, le premier ministre a sèchement rappelé à l'ordre le chef d'Olimpstroï, l'organisation chargée de réaliser les projets olympiques pour les Jeux d'hiver de 2014. M. Poutine faisait mine de découvrir que plusieurs sites - dont la piste de bobsleigh - avaient été prévus en montagne dans une zone écologique protégée. Le Comité international olympique (CIO) et de nombreuses organisations s'en étaient émues ; le premier ministre a donc décidé de déplacer les installations contestées, malgré les frais supplémentaires occasionnés.
"Il n'avait pas le choix : c'était ça ou renoncer aux Jeux, assure Mikhaïl Kreindline, de Greenpeace Russie. Cette colère était de la communication pure, même s'il y a de quoi s'énerver contre les gens d'Olimpstroï. Cela fait un an qu'ils disent que nos réserves n'ont pas lieu d'être..." Alors, simple geste tactique de Vladimir Poutine pour éviter de nouvelles critiques au sujet de ces Jeux contestés ? Pas seulement.
Depuis quelques mois, le pouvoir russe s'efforce de donner des gages de bonne volonté sur la question écologique, après des années de mépris absolu. La qualité de vie des citoyens - à commencer par l'air qu'ils respirent et l'eau qu'ils boivent - n'a jamais eu droit à l'attention des gouvernants, soviétiques puis russes, trop accaparés par la croissance industrielle. Les Russes eux-mêmes n'ont guère de réflexes de protection de l'environnement, que ce soit pour le traitement des déchets, les modes de transport ou le chauffage (installations centralisées et souvent sans régulation).
Le 3 juin, le président Dmitri Medvedev a prononcé un discours sans précédent sur la question environnementale, appelant de ses voeux une nouvelle "efficience" de l'économie russe. "Pensez-y juste un instant : notre pays se trouve à la première place mondiale pour les gaspillages énergétiques. C'est un bilan déplorable. En ce qui concerne le niveau d'efficience énergétique, la majorité de nos industries sont entre dix et vingt fois moins efficaces que doit l'être l'industrie moderne", a dit le président, dénonçant l'existence de "technologies arriérées". Il a fixé comme objectif une réduction de 40 % de la quantité d'énergie utilisée en Russie d'ici à 2020.
Pour passer des paroles aux actes, le chemin risque d'être long et les obstacles nombreux, tant l'économie russe dépend aujourd'hui du gaz et du pétrole et n'envisage pas d'autres horizons. En septembre, la Douma (Chambre basse du Parlement) examinera un projet de loi sur l'écologie, fixant de nouveaux standards pour l'eau, l'air et le sol. Le pouvoir russe veut aussi favoriser les investissements dans les énergies alternatives et les équipements verts.
Lors de son discours du 3 juin, Dmitri Medvedev a révélé que, dans son pays, un million de personnes "sont forcées de vivre dans des zones avec des niveaux dangereux de pollution".
"D'après nos chiffres, ce n'est pas un, mais trois millions de personnes", assure Mikhaïl Kreindline, de Greenpeace.
SIGNAUX D'ALERTE INQUIÉTANTS
La télévision russe a immédiatement emboîté le pas au président. Le 8 juin, la première chaîne a ainsi diffusé un long reportage sur les problèmes écologiques dans le pays. Le journaliste y évoquait les conditions de vie dangereuses de 10 000 personnes résidant près d'une usine métallurgique à Tcheliabinsk, ou encore le cas tristement célèbre de Djerjinsk. Dans cet ancien centre industriel secret de l'armée furent fabriquées et stockées de grandes quantités de produits chimiques, qui ont causé d'irréparables dommages aux sols et aux nappes phréatiques. Outre les émanations des usines, la plus importante décharge de la région y fonctionne jour et nuit, à ciel ouvert, sans aucun traitement ni autorisation. On dit que l'espérance de vie n'y dépasse pas 45 ans.
Les exemples peuvent être multipliés à l'envi. Lors d'une réunion au Kremlin, Nikolaï Malakhov, le maire de Tchapaïevsk, dans la région de la Volga, a ainsi proposé, en avril, l'évacuation et la fermeture de sa ville, a rapporté la presse russe. Fondée en 1927 autour d'une autre usine secrète qui fabriquait des produits toxiques, Tchapaïevsk (autrefois Trotsk) a abrité quatre fabriques militaires, fermées dans les années 1990. La pollution y atteint de telles proportions que l'élu n'a rien trouvé d'autre que cette solution radicale.
Ces derniers mois, les chercheurs russes ont aussi émis des signaux d'alerte inquiétants sur les conséquences du réchauffement climatique. Selon l'organisation WWF, la demande d'eau en Asie centrale pourrait dépasser les réserves en 2010.
Un problème alimentaire grave pourrait aussi se poser dans les années à venir, dans le sud de la Russie, ont estimé WWF et l'organisation Oxfam dans une étude publiée le 9 juillet. Selon elle, la récolte de blé pourrait tomber de 11 % d'ici à 2015 en raison d'une plus grande aridité des sols, en particulier dans les régions de Stavropol et de Krasnodar. Le pays doit aussi se préparer à des vagues de chaleur et de froid, des inondations et des tempêtes en nombre plus important.

Ученые Института прикладной физики РАН и Российского федерального ядерного центра создали лазерный комплекс, входящий в пять наиболее мощных лазерных систем в мире. Его пиковая мощность 0.56 петаватт (10¹⁵ Вт), длительность импульса 43 фемтосекунды (1 фс = 10 ^-15 с). Подобные установки открывают широкие возможности для исследования экстремальных состояний вещества, создания компактных лазерных ускорителей заряженных частиц, способных заменить огромные ускорители, и разработок новых эффективных методов диагностики.

Des physiciens russes de l'Institut de physique appliquée (IPA) de l'Académie des sciences russe (ASR) de Nijni-Novgorod, en coopération avec le Centre nucléaire fédéral russe (CNFR) de Sarov, ont créé un complexe laser Pétawatt faisant partie des cinq plus puissantes machines de ce type dans le monde.
Sa puissance maximale est de 0,56 Pétawatts (1 pW=10 puissance 15 W), et sa durée d'impulsion de 43 femtosecondes (1 fs = 10 puissance -15 s). Les machines de ce type ouvrent de vastes perspectives dans l'étude de la matière dans ses états extrêmes, la création d'accélérateurs "de poche" de particules chargées, susceptibles de remplacer les énormes et coûteux accélérateurs, et l'élaboration de nouvelles méthodes efficaces pour diagnostiquer les maladies. La physique des impulsions laser ultracourtes peut présenter des applications, comme la gestion des processus dans les systèmes physiques, chimiques et biologiques à l'état moléculaire, les technologies de communication avec une densité record de transmission de l'information, le micro-traitement de précision des matériaux, etc.
L'installation laser créée par les physiciens de Nijni Novgorod et de Sarov a pour particularité d'utiliser des amplificateurs paramétriques de lumière au lieu des amplificateurs laser habituels. En effet le principe traditionnel d'amplification des impulsions laser femtosecondes sur un verre néodyme présente des limites quand il s'agit d'augmenter la puissance. Afin de surmonter la barrière Pétawatt, les chercheurs russes ont proposé d'utiliser pour l'amplification paramétrique de la lumière un cristal non linéaire, le DKDP (KD₂PO₄ - un dideutérophosphate de potassium). Les concepteurs soulignent que l'architecture originale du laser permet d'envisager un complexe d'une puissance de 10 pW.
De plus les sources de puissantes impulsions femtosecondes sont capables de générer, lors de processus d'interaction non linéaire avec la matière, des flux de particules accélérées ayant une énergie comparable à celle obtenue dans des appareils d'accélération - les synchrotrons et les accélérateurs linéaires. Par ailleurs, la compacité et le faible coût des installations laser, comparativement aux accélérateurs traditionnels, et les perspectives d'augmenter ultérieurement la puissance du rayonnement optique femtoseconde permettent d'aborder aujourd'hui des projets, tels que le test du vide dans un flux de lumière focalisé ou l'obtention de mini-trous noirs dans un laboratoire laser. Les champs optiques extrêmes peuvent s'avérer aussi utiles en médecine : protonographie, tomographie par émission de positrons, thérapie hadronique.

Иностранным членом РАН стал профессор Университета Клемсона (США), специалист в области оптических материалов Роджер Столен.

CLEMSON - The prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences has elected Roger Stolen, a distinguished visiting professor in materials science and engineering at Clemson University, as a foreign member.
Stolen is a pioneer in the field of optics, the science and technology of generating and harnessing light, and is a Center for Optical Materials Science and Engineering Technologies (COMSET) faculty member. He studies new materials that interact with light in ways that have critical commercial application in the fields of telecommunications, defense, sensing and displays.
"This is a very significant honor," said Chris Przirembel, vice president for research and economic development at Clemson. "This membership gives Roger Stolen, and therefore the Clemson optics community, the opportunity to collaborate with some of the most brilliant minds in the world in the field of optics."
Stolen worked for Bell Labs for 30 years and was part of the team that first observed optical solitons, which are ultra-short pulses that travel great distances without dispersion. Soliton properties of optical pulses play an important role in modern high-capacity optical communication systems. Since 1971, he has been involved in most aspects of fiber optics research, especially fiber nonlinear optics, fiber measurements, novel fibers and fiber components. He is a retired professor of electrical engineering at Virginia Tech and joined COMSET in April 2006.
Stolen received a bachelor of arts from St. Olaf College and a Ph.D. in solid state physics from the University of California at Berkley, followed by post-doctoral work at the University of Toronto. In 1990, he was awarded the Optical Society of America's (OSA) R.W. Wood Prize in recognition of pioneering studies in optical fibers, and in 2005 he received the Institute of Electrical Engineers/OSA John Tyndall Award for contributions that include the identification and understanding of the alteration in frequency and in the phase of light passing through a transparent optical fiber. The IEEE and OSA are two of the world's leading professional associations for the advancement of technology.
The Russian Academy of Sciences was established in 1724 and is recognized not only as the supreme scientific institution in Russia but as one of the most successful science academies in the world. Many of its members have made invaluable contributions to world science.

Из-за таяния ледяной шапки приполярные страны (в том числе и Канада) спешат заявить о своих претензиях на Арктику и те нефтегазовые богатства, которые скрываются на дне Северного Ледовитого океана.

MOSCOW - "We were there first and we can claim the entire Arctic, but if our neighbours like Canada want some part of it, then maybe we can negotiate with them," says Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the flamboyant Russian ultranationalist, who happily hands out pictures of a Russian flag sitting on the seabed at the North Pole.
Mr. Zhirinovsky, the populist leader of Russia's misnamed Liberal Democratic Party, is often derided in the West as an extremist xenophobe, but a clash over who controls the top of the world and the oil and gas beneath the Arctic seabed seems inevitable.
The Russians staked the North Pole as theirs and last summer dropped a flag on the seabed to prove it, much to the mocking outrage of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government.
"This isn't the 15th century. You can't go around the world and plant flags and say, "We're claiming this territory," fumed former foreign minister Peter Mackay, who failed to mention that his predecessor had tromped ashore tiny and disputed Hans Island, claimed by both Canada and Denmark, and planted the Maple Leaf.
Supposedly cooler heads prevailed in Greenland this spring at a meeting of the five circumpolar countries: Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States. They agreed "to the orderly settlement of any possible overlapping claims" in a joint communiqué called the Ilulissat Declaration.
But the race to claim the top of the world and, more importantly, reap the vast bonanza of oil and gas believed to lie beneath the Arctic seabed is only just getting under way.
Since last summer's brouhaha, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has repeatedly tried to chill the passions, suggesting that the flag planting wasn't really staking a territorial claim. He often notes that U.S. astronauts left flags on the moon without claiming it.
But global warming hasn't made the moon's riches easier to plunder.
Modern man's burning of fossil fuels may be melting the Arctic icecap, making it technically and economically feasible - especially in an era of red-hot energy prices - to pry open the globe's last great untapped reservoirs of oil and gas.
That prospect has set off a scramble among countries with Arctic coastlines to try to bolster their claims under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The "rapid melting of the polar icecaps," says a European Union report, will allow the "accessibility of the enormous hydrocarbon resources in the Arctic region," and is "changing the geo-strategic dynamics of the region."
No surprise, then, that Russia is conducting naval exercises in the Arctic. Canada had soldiers stamping about in the North this spring, and some analysts fear power projection, not talks at the UN, will decide who controls the Arctic.
Under the Convention on the Law of the Sea, countries can extend their zones beyond 200 nautical miles (about 370 kilometres) from their coasts if they can prove the outer edge of the continental shelf extends beyond that distance. Hence, the contentious Russian claim to the Lomonosov Ridge.
The prize may be huge. One study estimates 400 billion barrels of oil lie beneath the Arctic seabed, beyond the existing 200-nautical-mile economic zones where countries can regulate and control drilling. That's a little less than the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia and Iran combined.
Russia's still-to-be-formalized claim to the 2,000-kilometre-long Lomonosov Ridge, which rises more than 3,000 metres off the Arctic Ocean floor and extends from Russia all the way to North America, could be just the beginning of a new squabble.
Canada and Denmark have disputed Russia's claim. All three countries may wind up bolstering each other's claim as they attempt to divvy up the Arctic with the pole as the midpoint.
Even if Artur Chilingarov, the 2007 Russian expedition leader, was indulging in a bit of swashbuckling bravado when he claimed "the Arctic is Russian," the scramble is on to find geological evidence to push territorial claims into the centre of the Arctic Ocean.
Suggestions for politicians to cease firing salvos of accusatory, claim-staking rhetoric across the pole can be heard in Canada as well. "Nationalist arguments that feature alarmism and more than a little paranoia only conceal the facts about Canada and the Arctic," Whitney Lackenbauer, a history professor, said in a paper on Arctic sovereignty released yesterday by the Canadian International Council.
While the five circumpolar countries say they can divvy up and run the Arctic among themselves once their claims are sorted out, others warn of dire environmental consequences.
As the ice recedes, new rules are needed to prevent "a rush to exploit all the available resources of the Arctic - another Klondike - and avoiding the destabilizing effects of massive infrastructure developments," said Jacqueline McGlade, executive director of the European Environment Agency.
Northwest Passage
Canada is boosting its presence in the Far North to solidify its claim to the passage
Lomonosov Ridge
Russia claims the ridge is an undersea extension of its land mass.
Shrinking rink
Median minimum extent of sea ice cover over the years
KEY DISPUTES

5. Even the maritime boundary line separating Alaska from Russia and running from the Bering Sea north to the Arctic Ocean, supposedly fixed in a 1990 pact between the former Soviet Union and the United States, may be coming unravelled. The Russian Duma has never ratified the pact and while Russia was supposed to inherit all of the international treaties agreed to by the Soviet Union, some Russian parliamentarians want the deal reopened.
Energy giants forging ahead
Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, ordered two huge, semi-submersible, offshore drilling platforms this month. These are massive units tough enough to drill in the iceberg-strewn Barents Sea, where one of the world's largest untapped gas fields lies deep beneath frigid waters.
While environmentalists fret and scientists frantically revise ever-shortening predictions of when global warming will melt the Arctic's ice, oil and gas giants are spending billions to drill deeper and farther offshore.
Most of the drilling - including Russia's huge new Shtokman field in the Barents Sea - is on the continental shelf, but even richer fields may lie far offshore in the High Arctic.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates a quarter of the world's undiscovered oil and gas lies in the Arctic. Many of the potentially richest basins are yet to be drilled or explored. The Amundsen and Makarov basins, lying on either side of the long, underwater Lomonosov Ridge, claimed by Russia, may hold rich reserves, said Viktor Posyolov, deputy director of the Russian Institute of Ocean Geology in St. Petersburg. He says bottom-sampling work conducted by Russian, Canadian and Danish scientists may be needed to sort out the geology and thus the sovereignty of the Arctic. But the scientists are strapped for money, he said, and would welcome some circumpolar co-operation.
The energy giants, meanwhile, are forging ahead. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin this week visited the Sevmash shipyard - still closed to non-Russians - where a massive oil rig designed to operate in pack ice at -50 degrees is being built.

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International Herald Tribune / July 18, 2008 Russia's weaponry shows signs of age

Российское оружие устаревает, производственная база разрушается, современных видов вооружения производится все меньше. Большинство разработок представляют собой слегка модернизированные версии оружия 15-20-летней давности.

ZHUKOVSKY, Russia: At a once-secret airfield outside Moscow, test pilot Sergei Bogdan proudly introduces reporters to what was billed as the latest in Russian military aircraft technology, the Su-35 fighter jet.
But the plane is only an upgrade of a 20-year-old model - and it can't match the speed and stealth of the latest U.S. fighter, the F-22 Raptor, which entered service in 2005.
Former President Vladimir Putin, now Russia's powerful prime minister, has boasted of new weapons systems and of strengthening the armed forces, raising fears in the West of a Cold War-style military build up. Flush with oil money, the Kremlin is in the market for new weapons.
But Russia's own state-run defense industries, experts say, face a crumbling manufacturing base and pervasive corruption; they have produced little in the way of advanced armaments in the Putin era.
The Victory Day parade in Red Square in May was intended to showcase the nation's military might. Instead, Russia's arsenal showed its age. Most of the planes, tanks and missiles that rolled past Lenin's tomb dated to the 1980s or were slightly modernized versions of decades-old equipment.
Bogdan, affectionately patting his Su-35 in a hangar at Zhukovsky flight test center outside Moscow, hailed its agility, advanced electronics and new engines. "It's very light on controls and accelerates really well," he said.
But Alexander Golts, an independent defense analyst, said the Su-35 is just one example of how Russian weapons industries are taking old designs out of mothballs and trying to sell them as new.
"The Soviet Union saw a tide of new weapons designs in the late 1980s which didn't reach a production stage," Golts said. "They can be described as new only in a sense that they weren't built in numbers."
Russian officials have spent two decades trying to build a so-called fifth generation fighter jet equivalent to Raptor, but the plane still hasn't made its maiden flight - and analysts are skeptical the first test flights will take place next year as promised.
Mikhail Pogosyan, the director of the Sukhoi aircraft-maker which is developing the new fighter, admitted that the company has a long way to go. But he added the pace of construction could accelerate soon.
"I don't think that we are lagging behind in a critical way," he said when asked whether Russia was falling behind the U.S. in fighter design.
As work to build the new plane drags on, another major weapons program also faces hurdles. The new Bulava intercontinental ballistic missile designed to equip nuclear submarines has failed repeatedly in tests. Prospects for its deployment look dim.
"The loss of technologies and the brain drain have led to a steady degradation of military industries," said Alexander Khramchikhin, an analyst with the Institute for Political and Military Analysis.
Russia's economic meltdown after the Soviet collapse put many subcontractors out of business, rupturing long-established production links. Assembly plants were left to rely on limited stocks of Soviet-built components, or forced to try to crank up their own production.
"Now when we finally get state orders, plants often can't fulfill them due to the lack of components," Valery Voskoboinikov, a government official in charge of aviation industries at Russia's Ministry of Industry, recently told parliamentary hearings.
Despite Putin's pledges to modernize military arsenals, during his eight years as president the military purchased only a handful of new combat jets and several dozen tanks.
Commentators say Russia's military technologies have slipped so far behind the United States and other Western nations that the country's share of the global arms market could start shrinking soon.
Russian arms sales have grown steadily in recent years, reaching a post-Soviet record of more than US$7 billion last year, according to official statistics. Russia accounted for a quarter of global arms sales in 2003-2007, coming a close second after the United States, according to the latest report by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
But Russia already has suffered several recent, highly publicized failures in arms exports, in which the broken subcontractor chain and swelling production costs were widely seen as key factors.
Russia recently failed to fulfill China's order for 38 Il-76 transport planes and Il-78 tankers, leading to the suspension of the deal. Earlier this year Algeria returned the MiG-29 fighter jets it bought from Russia, complaining of their poor quality.
"The system has been broken all the way down," said Anatoly Sitnov, who oversees the aviation industries in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Russia's aging work force presents another challenge. Many highly skilled workers left defense industries in the 1990s for higher-paid jobs in the private sector, and the arms industry's meager wages have hampered the recruitment of younger workers.
The average age of Russia's aircraft industries workers is now 45, and that figure is still rising. "There is an acute shortage of key specialists: turners, welders, millers," Voskoboinikov said.
Obsolete equipment has hurt efficiency. The last major modernization of defense plants occurred in the early 1980s, and many machine tools used in these factories are even older.
The government has responded by creating huge state-controlled military conglomerates, like the United Aircraft Corporation, saying they will streamline manufacturing. Critics say they will stifle competition, encourage corruption and further weaken Russia's arms industry.
"We built good planes in the past because we had a competition between aircraft makers," Svetlana Savitskaya, a Soviet cosmonaut who is now a lawmaker, said during parliamentary hearings.
"Pulling all of them together under one roof will end competition and destroy what we had. But it could make it more convenient for some to steal government funds."

Copyright © 2008 the International Herald Tribune All rights reserved.

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