President Jair Bolsonaro’s visit to Russia had as its objective, in the military field, the prospection and eventual purchase or joint development of technologies in the areas of space, cyber warfare and nuclear technology.
Brazil is interested, for example, in technologies related to long-range and hypersonic missiles, anti-aircraft defense, patrol ships and fast assault launches.
“I think we have a very good window of opportunity to break with old paradigms in old situations of dependence,” Marcos Degaut, Secretary of Defense Products at the Ministry of Defense, told the column.
One of the most important facts of the visit to Russia was the signing of an agreement for the mutual protection of classified information. It was signed by General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira, chief minister of the Institutional Security Office, and General Nikolai Patrushev, director of the National Security Service (FSB, the body that succeeded the Soviet intelligence body, the KGB).
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“The importance of this bilateral understanding is that we will have facilitated cooperation in cutting-edge technology and sensitive areas,” said Brazilian Foreign Minister Carlos Franco França at the time.
In other words, Brazil wants to obtain strategic technologies from Russia that have not been shared by current Western partners.
“Our conversations with the Russian government could result in a very big qualitative leap for the Brazilian defense industrial base from the point of view of increasing technology to increase our degree of technological and strategic autonomy in several sectors,” said Degaut. .
In the exclusive interview with Guerra Jogos, the secretary mentioned the Russian technologies in which Brazil is interested. Based on the list, we have made a complete overview of satellite launch rockets and hypersonic missiles, missile guidance systems, air defense and ocean patrol vessels.
hypersonic missile
One of the most disruptive technologies that Brazil is interested in is in the space area. The idea is to gain access to or develop satellite launchers and hypersonic missiles.
The missile and the hypersonic glider are today some of the most prized weapons of the new arms race. These are missiles capable of flying at over 6,000 km/h within the atmosphere (five times the speed of sound) and maneuvering to avoid existing air defense systems. They can carry nuclear warheads.
Russia was a pioneer in this sector. It has owned the Kinzhal hypersonic missile since 2018, the Avangard hypersonic glider since 2019 and last year tested the Tsirkon naval hypersonic missile – which can be used in Putin-led missile exercises this weekend.
China surprised the world by testing the technology last year and the United States, although it has already succeeded in some tests, is not expected to include this type of weapon in its arsenal until the end of this year.
In December last year, Brazil successfully tested the scramjet engine of its 14-X hypersonic glider prototype. He was taken into space by a Brazilian rocket. But the national project still has at least three more phases of development. It will be necessary to create materials that resist a flight that generates heat of more than 2 thousand degrees Celsius in a few seconds – among other technical difficulties.
The talks between Brazil and Russia have not yet advanced to the point where it is possible to know whether Russian participation will be restricted to the rocket that takes the glider into space. This technology has already been addressed in the column.
The general idea is to enter into partnerships to develop the Air Force’s Strategic Space Systems Program.
guided missiles
Another technology that Brazil wants access to is the missile guidance system. Today, Brazil’s greatest advances in the area are related to Avibras. The company has a system called Astros II that is exported to countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia and NATO members.
However, it uses a saturation technology, that is, it fires several rockets in a short period of time to hit an entire area. That is, they are not “surgical” precision missiles.
On another front, the company is developing the most powerful cruise missile in Brazil for the Army, the AV-TM 300, which is not yet ready. It must be able to hit targets 300 kilometers away.
Access to missile guidance technology, in theory, can reduce dependence on the Army, Navy and Air Force, which today import this type of weapon.
Since the mid-2010s, Russia has been implementing a program to modernize its guided missiles fired from planes to shoot down other aircraft, according to a study by the think tank International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
During the Syrian war, the Russian air force used Raduga guided cruise missiles that were modernized during the program to shoot down targets up to 2,500 km away. They were dropped from bomber planes.
The Russian navy also used similar-range guided missiles (3M14 Kalibr) to target military ground units in Syria from the Caspian and Mediterranean seas, according to the IISS.
anti-aircraft defense
Brazil probes Russia to gain access to short-, medium- and long-range air defense systems. That is, missile systems capable of shooting down aircraft.
Little is known about which equipment Brazil wants to trade. During the PT government, Brazil and Russia began to talk about the Pantsir medium-range missile system. But the purchase did not advance.
Venezuela has Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missiles – which it even positioned on the Brazilian border during the refugee crisis in 2018. Brazil has nothing like it and, in theory, if a conflict had materialized, it would not be able to approach any aircraft within its own territory less than 300 kilometers from Venezuela, because of the range of the weapon of Russian origin.
In the current Ukraine crisis, Russia fired the S-400, an anti-aircraft missile capable of hitting targets over 400 kilometers away, during exercises in Belarus.
coastal defense ships
The Russian navy does not have the same ability to act “away from home” as it did in the Soviet period. But a project to modernize ships aimed at coastal defense began in 2008.
Russia only has one aircraft carrier today, the Admiral Kuznetsov. According to the IISS, the country’s strategy, in general terms, is to invest in submarines (which can operate in any part of the oceans and deter attacks) and in a fleet that can defend its coast.
As the Brazilian Navy is also practically focused on the defense of the coast, the idea is to negotiate partnerships with the Russians in the construction of large oceanic patrol ships and fast assault launches.
Another area of research, this one still a little further away, is that Brazil and Russia can be partners is the development of civil vessels powered by nuclear engines.
Analysts believe that this could be the future of world navigation, due to the process of transition from fossil fuel sources to clean energy. There is no consensus among experts whether nuclear energy can be considered clean or not, but few other sources have shown promise to fuel world shipping. Russia already has low-capacity nuclear-powered icebreakers.
Border monitoring
The Brazilian government also probed Moscow about possible partnerships to develop the Border Monitoring System (SIsfron) and the Blue Amazon Management System (Sisgaaz). They are electronic surveillance and security systems made up of radars and satellites. They were designed to guard Brazil’s land and sea borders, but today they operate only in limited regions of the country.
However, this columnist learned from sources involved with Sisfron that integrating Russian technology with the existing system based on Western radars and systems would be an extremely complex task. Government officials point out that the lack of investment in Sisfron is already making the system obsolete.
the way forward
How can these purchases and partnerships come to fruition? It’s not clear yet, but we have some clues.
Russia’s military power declined sharply in the 1980s and 1990s with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Practically only the arsenal of missiles and nuclear weapons received funding.
In 2008, when the Russians invaded Georgia, several failures in the mobilization and performance of personnel and equipment became evident. Moscow then carried out its State Armaments Program between 2011 and 2020.
In parallel, Russia abandoned its old military system based on massive conscription of its population to make way for more professional military personnel. They gained battle experience from the campaigns in Syria, the invasion of Crimea, and the irregular forces campaign that led to the invasion of eastern Ukrainian provinces in 2014.
Russia has never been stronger militarily since the fall of the Soviet Union. But not everything went as Moscow planned. Regarding ground forces, a large part of the rearmament effort relied on Soviet equipment that was modernized, but not in the amount that Russia had planned. Nor have there been many advances toward disruptive technologies, according to the IISS.
There were exceptions, of course, such as the adoption of the S-500, the artillery unit capable of launching missiles over 500 kilometers away.
In the naval area, economic sanctions and poor shipyard performance caused the military industry to fall short. All Russian ability to operate in the “blue waters” (away from the coast) is based on Soviet ships. There are also not enough ships to carry out large-scale amphibious landings.
The Russian air force, hypersonic missile, drone and space and cyber warfare programs have all undergone major development.
But Moscow will still need to make a lot of investments both to complete the process of modernizing existing forces and to create new weapons that could unbalance the military landscape.
One of the ways to obtain resources for this is to invest in the export of weapons and technology. Russia is the largest arms exporter on the planet, second only to the United States.
Washington, in turn, restricts exports of some types of weapons and tries to impose sanctions on countries that buy Russian equipment.
Moscow will also have to make up for the cost of moving more than 160,000 troops and equipment to Ukraine’s border – a type of operation that doesn’t come cheap.
In this context, Russia is interested in having a client like Brazil and, eventually, a partner in the development of new weapons.
The question is how Brazil would pay for this type of war technology. Today, the Armed Forces develop weapons in partnership with Brazilian and foreign private companies or buy what they need abroad.
There are tax incentives for the national defense sector as a whole, but the Planalto does not support specific companies, guaranteeing their financing and survival. In other words, there are no “national champions”. Although many analysts advocate this model (which occurs in the US, for example), it would be out of step with the liberal policy of the current government.
One way could be to foster partnerships between Brazilian and Russian companies to build equipment. Or buy from Russian companies, but demand counterparts, such as technology transfer or production in the country. These are models that Brazil already practices.
Exports of war equipment, which reached a historic record last year (R$ 9.4 billion), may eventually help national companies to work together with Russian companies.
There is also the option to invest in defense state-owned companies, which is less likely, analysts say. But in almost all cases, to acquire advanced and competitive weaponry, Brazil will likely have to invest public resources. The government seems to point to a solution that will help to develop the Brazilian defense industrial base.
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