Russia wants its military drones to occupy 10% of weapon market

MOSCOW, Jul 20 (PRIME) -- Russia hopes to have 10% of the global market with its reconnaissance and combat unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, in the medium term, Dmitry Shugayev, director of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, told PRIME on Tuesday prior to the start of the MAKS-2021 International Aviation and Space Salon.

“In the medium term, we plan to occupy up to 10% of the global market with our reconnaissance and combat drones, we have all the prerequisites for that,” he said.

Customers are very interested in drones, and Russia already supplies sets with small reconnaissance drones to some countries. “We also expect signing of the first export contracts for our combat drones to happen very soon,” he said.

He also said that the service has received two orders from foreign partners for MiG-35 jet fighters since 2019.

“MiG-35 is the latest multi-purpose machine fitted with cutting-edge technologies. In 2019–2020, the service received three orders of foreign customers for the aircraft, one of them was to demonstrate the aircraft and two for delivery,” he said.

Alexander Maksichev, co-director of Russian–Indian missile producer BrahMos, told PRIME that the company plans to sign the first export contract for its missiles after the end of the pandemic.

“Speaking of the possibility to sign the first export contract for the BrahMos missiles, we managed to agree on a lot of things. Nevertheless, a meeting in person is necessary at the level of the authorities, and it should happen as soon as the situation with the pandemic improves. We can say that the contract is at the final stage of coordination, and it will be signed very soon,” Maksichev said without naming the buyer.

The governments of Russia and India will announce the first export contract as soon as it is signed, he said.

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