Why the Ukrainian Defense Industry failed (feat. Steven Zaloga)

In this video Steven Zaloga and I talk about the Ukrainian Defense Industry how it developed from the Fall of the Soviet Union up to about 2021, as well as the locations of important facilities and their products. We discuss the challenges, the problems, how it was integrated into the Soviet Defense Industry and what problems this brought for both Ukraine and Russia. We also look at what Ukraine and Russia did differently to keep their defense industries afloat.

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00:00 Intro
00:31 Ukrainian Defense Industry Overview Past & Present
01:37 Naval Industry
03:18 Aerospace – Missiles
05:53 Aerospace – Aircraft & Helicopters
06:50 Armored Fighting Vehicles
08:16 Ukrainian Defense Spending 2021
09:41 Ukraine’s Role in Soviet Union vs Texas/California in the United States
12:11 Dynamics & Location of Defense Industry: Tank vs. Aircraft
13:42 Reconquering Production Facilities as War Goal?
17:50 Post-Soviet Decline of the Industry
19:18 End of Trade between Ukraine & Russian since 2014
20:05 Brain Drain from Military Industry to the Game Industry
23:13 Engineering Education US vs Austria / Germany
25:30 Ukraine’s Challenge: Lack of Investment
27:18 How did the Russian Defense Industry stayed afloat?
31:04 Why did Ukraine fail in exporting Military Hardware?

#ukraine , #ukrainedefenseindustry, #russiaukraine

[nukkinfuts]

Sukhoi survived the hard times of the early 90`s mainly because the engineers there invested their own capital to keep the lights on - Sukhoi was <this> close to closing down..

[Masada]

Thanks for doing a talk with Zaloga. He doesn’t have enough stuff on YouTube

[variszuzans]

The legendary Steven Zaloga.. I read his tank books in the library as a student. The librarian looked at me as if I was weird :)

[AndreiKucharavy]

This is the first time I hear someone talk so clearly about the problem of human capital in the RU/UA/BY defense industries. A little known fact, but the mobile phones lost their foldable antennas in late 90s thanks to the engineers from Sukhoi radar design bureaus who were pulled in by South Korean companies when they were trying to pierce in electronics.

[mensch]

This is an extremely informative interview. Among many other insights, one thing that struck me was how "decoupling" the economies of the 15 former Soviet republics from each other is an underrated factor in the economic problems faced by the region after 1991. We are to some extent facing a similar issue worldwide since early 2020 with disruptions to global supply chains.

The post-Soviet experience raises questions about the typical economics textbook view of free trade "floating all boats". In a vacuum with no other variables, it is indeed true that comparative advantage means that more and more globalization and interdependence is more efficient and thus more desirable. However, the more interdependent countries are with each other (to the extent that parts for the same product come from different countries, as with the helicopter engine and tank cast part examples from Zaloga's presentation), the easier it is for events that might be out of one country's control dramatically affecting their economy.

[scandited]

90’s were hard times when even regular people starved, so not so many cared about army – everything was just about survival. Ukrainian DI can make decent and even nice prototypes, but as same as all post soviet countries lacks investment and funds, as a result, it remains prototype or ends up in very small numbers (like T-84U or Kurganets)

[citamcicak]

This reminds ma a lot of former Yugoslavian defence industry. It took all of the federal republics to build M-84 mbt.

[andrewnorrie]

Fascinating interview and for finally being able to put a face to Mr. Zaloga. Over the years I've built up a modest collection of his books.

[washingtonradio]

One point Steven made was that many of the newer players in the international arms trade are countries like South Korea which already have a robust civilian economy with products that were already competitive on the world market. So they had a better feel about what say US or European market requirements were than Ukraine. Also, South Korean companies probably had better contacts in these markets so if they needed to localize production they probably could make the necessary deals. Also, many South Korean companies have built manufacturing plants in other countries so they are very familiar with working with the locals. Ukrainian companies had to build up both their local civilian economy and create competitive products for the world market. One can name several South Korean companies but I suspect most could not name a Ukrainian company.

[anselmdanker]

Great presentation by Stephen Zaloga .Thanks for covering this aspect .

[rogerpennel]

There are a lot of reasons why Ukraine wasn't able to capitalize on its arms industry.
1)A lot of their products weren't new. Instead, they were legacy Soviet designs. During the 60s-90s Soviet weapons didn't perform that well on the battlefield and the 1st Gulf War showed everyone what a NATO force armed with Western weapons could do. Do you really want to buy arms with a poor track record? Wouldn't you want the weapons the winning side used?
2)Many of their customers opted to have Russia or Ukraine update/upgrade existing weapons instead of buying newly developed weapons.
3)The post-Cold War arms market was flat. There was a severe glut of used surplus Soviet gear available at scrap prices. So why would 3rd world customers buy new versions of old weapons when they could purchase old weapons much cheaper?
4)Small defense budgets. Both Ukraine and Russia suffered from greatly diminished defense budgets so while they were capable of developing extremely advanced prototypes they couldn't afford to put those systems into production without foreign orders and their own military opted to upgrade what it already had rather than buy new.
5)Chinese competition. The Chinese slowly built a large arms industry that produced licensed/unlicensed copies of Soviet-era weapons. Many of the systems the Chinese are selling are updated/upgraded Soviet-era weapons that are cheaper than newly built Ukrainian or Russian weapons while still being technologically competitive.
6)Israeli and Western arms manufacturers were able to provide updates/upgrades of Soviet weapons that allowed users to keep older Soviet systems in service.

[kocyszemaitis]

Interesting. I used to work for DoD where we helped YuzhMash and Pavlograd Chem Zavod eliminate their solid rocket SS-24s (RS-22) to comply with Start II elimination obligations.

[cannonfodder]

An extremely informative interview. It's striking how such distributed integrated economies can be so easily disrupted.

Like today's global economy, the soviet dissolution broke chains in the system. And they are still struggling to rebuild.

Great interview.

[grizwoldphantasia]

First off, this was much more interesting than I had expected. I initially watched out of channel loyalty, not expecting to watch the whole thing, but you two made it worth watching and paying attention all the way to the end. Thank you!

Then a couple of odd thoughts ...

1. Instead of "turning swords into plows", we'll have to say "turning sword makers into plow makers".

2. Someone needs to write a science fiction book where war games have become so realistic that wars are now decided by game simulations rather than real wars; new airplanes, tanks, ships, rifles, etc are still designed and created, in order to prove they are real so they can be incorporated into war games. Countries' military budgets are spent on war game support to make sure that is realistic too. This requires war game developers to shift to neutral countries, but because the definition and acceptance of "neutral" depends on which countries are concerned, multiple war game companies develop in different neutral countries. India might be neutral as far as South American or African countries are concerned, maybe even Europe, but use a Swiss war game for India-Pakistan conflicts. and South American or African war game for East Asian conflicts. Wars gradually become popular again, since casualty counts and infrastructure ruin have vanished. Some countries which were not in conflict until some new mineral resource is found may find they cannot go to war because all existing war games are not neutral for both countries; but because physical militaries have shrunk and deteriorated so much that a real war is impossible, they have to fall back on old-fashioned diplomacy, and the war gaming countries panic, rush to spawn a new subsidy elsewhere, and in the meantime try to sabotage the diplomatic talks for fear it will become a new fad and undermine the war gaming industry. I give this idea away free of any copyright :)

[DanielLLevy]

My taxi driver in Tel Aviv the other day, had immigrated from Kerch, Ukraine, and held an Engineering degree in maritime motorization from Kyiv U. Great guy BTW!

[DeeEight]

One reason certain companies win contracts in the USA is basically the US Government has long taken the view that if they let a company fail, and there's no other corporation seeking to buy them out / merge with them (as Boeing did to M-D and Northrop did with Grumman), then they lose the jobs of that company and the expertise of his employees, possibly to another country (as they saw firsthand with A.V. Roe Canada after our government cancelled the Arrow). And very often they'll select the inferior design in a competition to prop up the company behind it. That for example is why Fairchild won the A-X competition with its YA-10 over the YA-9 of Northrop. Northrop at the time already had a growing order book for F-5 sales, which is how they had the funding to come up with such a great attack aircraft design, while Fairchild had basically nothing else in development and would have collapsed if they lost. Skip ahead a decade and Northrop wins the deal for the B-2 bomber, because after the F-20 flopped due to US government reversals on export policy (which originally saw the F-16 be ineligible for export to some countries, then be eligible), they were in danger of collaping. Skip ahead another few years and Lockheed wins the ATF program with the inferior YF-22 over the Superior MD-Northrop designed YF-23. Northrop had the B-2 money coming in and M-D had a healthy order book for F-15Es. When Boeing had the C-17s in production, that was a contributing factor for why Lockheed won the JSF competition. In Naval shipbuilding...the LCS program was originally intended to operationally evaluate two competiting class designs, the Freedom and the Independence class.... pick one as a winner and then produce only that one. THe Navy wanted to pick the Austal USA produced (in Alabama) Independence class, buit were forced by Congress to order both variants so that the Lockheed Martin Marinetta shipyard in Wisconsin would remain in operation, in spite of it being the inferior ship, and given the enormous number of problems the freedom class ended up being plagued by...well...you see the error of that decision. The US Navy now wants to divest itself of all nine operational Freedom class ships, in spite of the fact five more are currently building or on order.

[dmytrokyrychuk]

Quick fact: out of the cities that Steven Zaloga and other English speakers say have new names only Dnipro has a new name. Very few cities were renamed at all after 1991 (off the top of my head, I remember that Dnipro, Varazh and Kropyvnytskyi were renamed recently). The "new" names he is referring to are not new, they are simply the Ukrainian names that the Ukrainians have been using for a long time. The "old" names are the romanized versions of the Russian translations of the Ukrainian names.

[stormiewutzke]

I am in the welding industry from Washington State in the United States. This makes perfect sense. Often you will see industry stick to an area but the reason it stays there is the ecosystem that develops around that industry. The actual infrastructure can be important because of the cost of building something new, but it requires that it remain working. Most equipment has to be maintained to stay good and will loose value if it sits. If the major equipment has to be rebuilt all at once it will often become better to buy new equipment especially when spending enough money taxes can often be lowered if there is a move to a new region. Often if something stays running there will be everything needed to support the industry in the area. This can include labor skills and specialized education. I have lived in two small cities that had 2 year technical colleges that offered a highly in demand degree that was only shared by one other school in the country. If there is ever any sort of shutdown or even enough of a slow down there will be a rapid breakdown of that ecosystem until it's just gone. For example in welding we have had a lot of problems with slowdowns cutting the need for welders and employers not bringing in new people and keeping the pay standards high that when the economy changes leads to huge shortages that end up being followed by construction changes to get around the shortages that lead to stabilizing the skills at fewer people and the cycle repeats. For some trades it can lead to the migration of types of work leaving entire parts of the world and changes in what actually can be built. A break-up like the USSR had to have a massive affect and some of the more transferable and higher earning skills may move but sometimes skills will just be lost. The world is going to begin to struggle with this in the future as the baby boomers haven't transferred many skills.

[falanglao]

Congrats for getting Steven Zaloga on your channel! Great presentation

[MrTomte]

I just watched WW2TV's video on the battle of the Bulge where they had a 1.5 hour talk with Zaloga and I thought how excellent that is: one of the best authors out there getting time here on YouTube, they ought to do this more! Then Military History Visualised brought this. Made my day!
Thousands of thanks to you Bernhard Kast!