Saturday, November 23, 2013

The gang that won't be able to shoot straight

The 'Bolivarian' armed forces of Venezuela, since Hugo Chavez bought a bunch of Russian weapons that are defective;
Opposition Deputies Stalin González (UNT) and Tomás Guanipa (PJ), who belong to the National Assembly (AN) Standing Committee of Defense and Security, are in possession of information regarding the status of such weapons imported [...from] Russia: "We count on reliable data which indicate that –as a whole- almost every weapon that has been bought from Russia presents or has presented problems and failures," González asserted. "Some of them have –of course- been fixed, but it is not generally the case. And such failures go beyond comprehension."
But they were cheap?
"The leaked information we have regarding the military Russian equipment is alarming," Deputy González indicates. "One wonders: how come they purchased such defective equipment? There is equipment with constant software failures, with structural problems, with no communication system installed, even some armored equipment that suffers failures when operating in a very hot environment; there are also combat vehicles which run out of battery in the midst of their operation, claims because of lack of replacement parts, among other things."
Beware the military-industrial-kickback complex;
The report issued by Citizen Control highlights the lack of concise information about the buy of weapons: "...it has been impossible to accurately determine the quantity, model and cost of military equipment acquired by Venezuela in 2005-2012, since the previous National Assembly agreed to decree confidentiality of the military agreements reached with Russia and Belarus." And they – as an organization- also indicate one of their concerns: the "shadiness" in procurement and the "operational problems that some systems have presented." 
Is it really a good idea, in South America, to make the military angry.

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