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Soviet Union [USSR] Military Industries and Production
The integration of the party, government, and military in the
Soviet Union has been most evident in the area of defense-related
industrial production. The Defense Council made decisions on the
development and production of major weapons systems. The Defense
Industry Department of the Central Committee supervised all
military industries as the executive agent of the Defense Council.
Within the government, the deputy chairman of the Council of
Ministers headed the Military Industrial Commission. The Military
Industrial Commission coordinated the activities of many industrial
ministries, state committees, research and development
organizations, and factories and enterprises that designed and
produced arms and equipment for the armed forces.
The State Planning Committee (gosudarstvennyi planovyi komitet-
-see Gosplan) had an important role in directing necessary supplies
and resources to military industries. The main staff and deputy
commander in chief for armaments of each armed service first
determined their "tactical-technical" requirements for weapons and
equipment and forwarded them to the General Staff, which evaluated
and altered them to conform to overall strategic and operational
plans. Then the deputy minister of defense for armaments
transmitted the General Staff's decisions to industrial ministries
engaged in military production. He controlled several thousand
senior military officers who represented the military within the
industrial ministries. These military representatives supervised
the entire process of military production from design through final
assembly. They inspected, and had the authority to reject, all
output not meeting the military's specifications and quality
control standards.
In 1989 the defense industry consisted of a number of
industrial ministries subordinate to the Council of Ministers. The
names of most of these ministries did not indicate the types of
weapons or military equipment they produced. The Ministry of Medium
Machine Building manufactured nuclear warheads. The Ministry of
General Machine Building produced ballistic missiles
(see
fig. 33);
Soviet Union USSR - Machine Building and Metal Working
, ch. 12). Other ministries, such
as the Ministry of Automotive and Agricultural Machine Building,
also produced military equipment and components, but to a lesser
extent of their total output.
These defense industrial ministries operated 150 major arms
assembly plants in addition to the more than 1,000 factories that
produced components for military equipment. Each ministry had a
central design office and several design bureaus attached to it.
The design bureaus, named for the chief designers who headed them
in the past, built competing prototypes of weapons based on the
military's specifications. The central design office then selected
the best design and, if the military approved it, began serial
production. The aircraft design bureaus were best known because
Soviet aircraft carry their designations. The Mikoian-Gurevich
(MiG) and Sukhoi (Su) bureaus designed fighters; the Antonov (An),
Iliushin (Il), and Tupolev (Tu) bureaus developed transport and
bomber aircraft. The Mil (Mi) and Kamov (Ka) bureaus designed
helicopters.
The high priority given to military production has
traditionally enabled military-industrial enterprises to commandeer
the best managers, labor, and materials from civilian plants. In
the late 1980s, however, Gorbachev transferred some leading defense
industry officials to the civilian sector of the economy in an
effort to make it as efficient as its military counterpart.
Data as of May 1989
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