Western weapons seized by Russia as trophies are being carefully studied to reveal the military technology secrets inside, French intelligence sources said.
Some Western military equipment and weapons recently seized by the Russian Army were displayed at the Army-2023 International Military Technical Forum taking place in the Moscow region and attracted a lot of attention.
The above information was given in a report by the French National Intelligence Agency. The French AMX-10RC light tank from Nexter, the Australian Bushmaster armored personnel carrier from Thales Australia and the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drone from Baykar Makina do not cause much technological excitement in Russian engineers. But stealthy cruise missile models like the Anglo-French Storm Shadow from MBDA and versions of the Swedish CV90 infantry fighting vehicle made by BAE Systems AB have attracted a lot of attention.
These are combat vehicles and attack weapons that contain many advanced technologies and are largely unfamiliar to the Russian defense industry, so they will provide very valuable information when exploited. Currently, GosMKB Raduga Joint Stock Company, specializing in missile technology, is making efforts to research the collected Storm Shadow cruise missile fragments. Moscow is expecting a lot from the results of this work, to try to compensate for failures in developing the latest generation Kh-69 cruise missile, when the weapon is behind schedule.
At the same time, the Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG missile may soon become obsolete if Moscow discovers secrets in guidance protocols and stealth technology. It all depends on what Russian engineers discover. In addition, the undamaged CV90 infantry fighting vehicle that the Russians seized is also a “technology mine”, providing information about armor, exterior coatings, optical systems, combat infrared…
There are concerns that reverse engineering will allow the Russian Federation to catch up with the West in this area of armored construction, as it tries to implement the Armata heavy universal tracked platform program, reports summary. However, there are also other opinions that believe that researching Western weapons is one thing, whether or not to grasp advanced technology is a completely different matter. With many advanced electronic devices built on semiconductors and high-speed processor chips installed in Western weapons, Russia simply cannot produce fully functional copies.
It should be emphasized that many of Moscow’s leading military experts have affirmed that producing high-tech processing chips is much more difficult than mastering nuclear weapons technology. Therefore, in the immediate period, if there are no cooperation programs with foreign countries, the above mentioned trophy weapons will probably only be suitable for exhibitions to display propaganda.
