With regards to what @Surpluswarrior talked about, I would not say everything was smooth. A lot of people say that Russia should have put the T-72B2 into service instead of wasting time on the cheapened out T-72B3 for example.
As for the reasons for the lack of artillery upgrades there is a multitude of reasons. But a lot of it was politics I think. The Msta used a chassis made at Omsk based on the T-80 and back then the Russian government had a policy to phase out the T-80 in favor of T-72 based platforms like T-90. After poor performance of T-80 in Chechnya where it did not perform any better than the much cheaper T-72.
The factory which made the actual artillery units by mating them to the chassis was also owned by a private concern and they basically kept embezzling money all the time. A huge amount of the problems in the Russian MIC were due to the catastrophic privatizations done in the 1990s.
All the new platforms like Armata, Kurganets, and Boomerang are delayed. Kurganets is not even the worst case I am afraid. Boomerang is the worst since they decided to change the size of the vehicle and make it larger. So they basically had to redesign the whole thing. The heads of the factory which made Kurganets were indeed arrested on corruption charges. Seems like they squirrel away the money instead of upgrading the factory for Kurganets production like they were supposed to. But the factory is the same one which built the BMD-4M and BMP-3 in many hundreds for quite a cheap price. So it was not all bad. The BMD-4M in particular replaced the BMD-4 which was costing a bundle and not being much better than prior vehicles and did it quite successfully being both better and cheaper than the original BMD-4 made at Volgograd. Mind you the poor performance of the factory at Volgograd is why programs like the Sprut, which is also made there, are so terribly delayed.
I have also heard all sorts of reasons for T-14 being delayed. The engine lifetime was not up to scratch initially. And then that they had problems with the electronics. When you consider that the T-90M was delayed for almost two years just because they wanted to fix the bugs in the automatic target tracking system in it, that is hardly surprising. The T-14 is way worse since it needs basically way more automation and gadgetry to get it to work smoothly.
I think one of the issues which cost the Russians quite a lot in this engagement was the lack of large enough numbers of modern radios and communications equipment. But that was a known problem, even the Minister of Defense complained about it a couple years ago. Still they never managed to solve it properly. The owners of the plant were cheapening out by using Chinese components in the radios, the Russian government caught them doing it, and then they had to use Russian components, but they never got the production rate up. The Russian MIC is really weak in electronics, the expertise is spread all over the place among several private conglomerates, and they neither necessarily want the same thing the government wants, nor do they have the critical mass and capital to actually improve their material conditions. Kind of a mess really. The abilities do exist in Russia to do basically everything they need to a degree, but they are spread all over the place.
As for the reasons for the lack of artillery upgrades there is a multitude of reasons. But a lot of it was politics I think. The Msta used a chassis made at Omsk based on the T-80 and back then the Russian government had a policy to phase out the T-80 in favor of T-72 based platforms like T-90. After poor performance of T-80 in Chechnya where it did not perform any better than the much cheaper T-72.
The factory which made the actual artillery units by mating them to the chassis was also owned by a private concern and they basically kept embezzling money all the time. A huge amount of the problems in the Russian MIC were due to the catastrophic privatizations done in the 1990s.
All the new platforms like Armata, Kurganets, and Boomerang are delayed. Kurganets is not even the worst case I am afraid. Boomerang is the worst since they decided to change the size of the vehicle and make it larger. So they basically had to redesign the whole thing. The heads of the factory which made Kurganets were indeed arrested on corruption charges. Seems like they squirrel away the money instead of upgrading the factory for Kurganets production like they were supposed to. But the factory is the same one which built the BMD-4M and BMP-3 in many hundreds for quite a cheap price. So it was not all bad. The BMD-4M in particular replaced the BMD-4 which was costing a bundle and not being much better than prior vehicles and did it quite successfully being both better and cheaper than the original BMD-4 made at Volgograd. Mind you the poor performance of the factory at Volgograd is why programs like the Sprut, which is also made there, are so terribly delayed.
I have also heard all sorts of reasons for T-14 being delayed. The engine lifetime was not up to scratch initially. And then that they had problems with the electronics. When you consider that the T-90M was delayed for almost two years just because they wanted to fix the bugs in the automatic target tracking system in it, that is hardly surprising. The T-14 is way worse since it needs basically way more automation and gadgetry to get it to work smoothly.
I think one of the issues which cost the Russians quite a lot in this engagement was the lack of large enough numbers of modern radios and communications equipment. But that was a known problem, even the Minister of Defense complained about it a couple years ago. Still they never managed to solve it properly. The owners of the plant were cheapening out by using Chinese components in the radios, the Russian government caught them doing it, and then they had to use Russian components, but they never got the production rate up. The Russian MIC is really weak in electronics, the expertise is spread all over the place among several private conglomerates, and they neither necessarily want the same thing the government wants, nor do they have the critical mass and capital to actually improve their material conditions. Kind of a mess really. The abilities do exist in Russia to do basically everything they need to a degree, but they are spread all over the place.
