Russia Says It May Buy Remotely Piloted Spy Planes From Israel

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Russia Says It May Buy Remotely Piloted Spy Planes From Israel
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ

MOSCOW — Russia is considering buying an unspecified number of remotely piloted reconnaissance aircraft from Israel, the head of the Russian military said Tuesday, in what may be an attempt by the Kremlin to strengthen its intelligence-gathering capacity after the August war with Georgia.

A Russian purchase of such aircraft from Israel would be a significant expansion of military business between the countries.

“We are working on this issue,” Gen. Nikolai Makarov, the chief of the Russian General Staff, told the Interfax news agency. “We are talking about a test batch of Israeli drone planes."

In recent months, the Russian Defense Ministry has unveiled changes aimed at streamlining the armed forces. The changes include thinning the officer corps, improving training and living standards for troops, and buying modern weapons systems.

Talk of the purchase was probably prompted by intelligence-gathering failures by the Russian military during the war with Georgia, a country that already has Israeli-made spy aircraft, said Aleksandr Golts, an independent Russian military analyst. “The war in Georgia showed us that we are frightfully lagging behind in terms of technical reconnaissance,” he said. “There were many failures of intelligence.”

Russia has been unable to develop its own remotely piloted spy plane, though it had clear military dominance in the conflict, which lasted five days.

The negotiations on the spy planes are taking place against a backdrop of strong Israeli objections to a possible sale by Moscow of advanced antiaircraft systems to Iran and Syria, two vocal adversaries of Israel.

Source
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/17/world/europe/17russia.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss