According to Russian military commentator Nikita Petrov writing for RIA Novosti, in 2007 Russia earned more than $5.5 billion in weapons exports and has a backlog of orders worth more than $20 billion.

Different institutions have different measuring yardsticks for weapons exports and definitions on what they are. However, the U.S. Congressional Research Service estimated Russian arms sales as worth $7.1 billion in its report "Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1998-2005."

The CRS, surprisingly to American eyes, ranked France, not the United States, as the second-largest arms exporter with 2005 sales worth more than $6.3 billion, just ahead of the United States with $6.3 billion.

As we have noted in previous articles, Russia has a number of advantages over the United States in its arms export business:

First, the record global prices for oil and gas, of which Russia is the world's largest combined producer and exporter, have filled the Russian treasury to bursting point, enabling the Kremlin to offer exceptionally favorable payment terms for arms export contracts.

Second, major nations with vastly ambitious armament programs like China, Iran and Venezuela will never buy their weapons from the United States and only reluctantly from U.S. allies, even if they were willing to sell: As all three have huge foreign currency reserves from export earnings, they offer a bonanza to Russian weapons producers.

Third, the volatility of U.S. politics and the well-understood record of successive U.S. congresses in imposing sanctions on previously concluded arms deals makes many countries wary of relying on the United States for their major armaments systems when export of these and their spare parts could be cut off at any time. Indonesian leaders, who recall the U.S. sanctions imposed in 1998 in the row over East Timor, have openly said this was a consideration in their precedent-breaking $1 billion arms deal with Russia.

Fourth, there are major occasions where the U.S. military's obsession with relying on nuclear or exceptionally high-tech systems has literally forced U.S. defense contractors out of some major arms markets.

Also, despite the continuing strategic relationship, including on nuclear issues, developing between the United States and India, India continues to primarily rely on Russia for its major land, sea and air weapons systems, as it has for the past four decades.

One of the most important of these is diesel submarines. The U.S. Navy has not bought any for decades, and no U.S. ship defense contractor has the capability to make them any more. That was why Israel had to turn to Germany to get the three Dolphin-class submarines or U-boats that carry the Jewish state's survivable second strike retaliatory capability of nuclear-armed cruise missiles. And it was why India had to go to France to buy Scorpion submarines to establish the same survivable second strike deterrent against neighboring Pakistan.

Consequently, Indonesia could not have bought its own new fleet of diesel submarines from the United States even if it had wanted to.

However, there is another very obvious and sobering reason why so many countries, including longtime U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, and a new important partner like India, are turning to Russian weapons systems or continuing to buy them: Many of them, as well as being very cheap, are very good.

(Next: Russian weapons design philosophy)

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