KB Mashinostroyeniya, the Moscow region-based state defense, scientific and design enterprise which manufactures Iskander short-range missile systems, a range of anti-tank and man-portable air defense systems and other weapons and equipment, has reported ramping up the production of some of weaponry by up to 2.5 times since 2022, and fulfilling the state defense order in full.
“The Scientific and Production Corporation Design Bureau of Mechanical Engineering [KB Mashinostroyeniya, ed.] has fulfilled the state defense order by 100 percent since the start of 2023. Implementation is monitored every ten days. There have been no deviations from the schedule over a single ten day period,” KB Mashinostroyeniya owner High Precision Systems, a subsidiary of Rostec, said in a press release.
The company did not elaborate on which of its weapons systems saw a 250 percent jump in production. KB Mashinostroyeniya is best known for the production of the Iskander, a short-range ballistic missile system with a range of up to 500 km, and a warhead weight of between 480 and 700 kg. It’s also the maker of a number of MANPADS including the Verba, Igla and Strela, the Shmel thermobaric-capable anti-tank system, Shturm, Ataka and Malyutka anti-tank missiles, and the Arena range of active protection systems for tanks.
The company is also known to manufacture ‘Product 305’, also known as the Light Multipurpose Guided Rocket (Russian acronym LMUR), an air-launched missile carried by Russian helicopters including the Mil Mi-28 and the Kamov Ka-52. The 105 kg missile has a range of up to 14.5 km, an inertial-satellite/thermal imaging homing warhead, and can be manually guided by the operator in its terminal phase. The missile has been used in Ukraine against a variety of targets, including fortifications, military warehouses, pontoon bridges and tanks.
The US and its European allies have reported growing difficulty supplying its Ukrainian proxies with weaponry for the proxy war against Russia, with President Biden officially announcing earlier this month that Washington would be deploying cluster munitions to Ukraine due to Ukrainian and US ammo shortages.
The US and its allies have delivered or pledged to send over $94.5 billion in military equipment to Ukraine over the past year – equivalent to nearly 60 percent of Russia’s entire military budget in 2023.
But the advantage in cash flow has not given NATO and Kiev the hoped-for superiority on the battlefield, with Ukraine’s long-planned counteroffensive quickly bogging down after kicking off last month, and Ukrainian forces suffering horrific losses of over 26,000 troops and hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles.
In an interview with Russian television in late March, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia’s military industry was “developing at a very fast pace – at a pace that many did not expect,” and promised that the country’s defense enterprises would “produce three times more ammunition – even more than three times,” what the US and its allies pledged to deliver to Kiev, and over three times more tanks.