Combining on a Global Basis

Organizers have released a detailed agenda of the top event of the year in the defense industry, Russia Arms EXPO 2013 (RAE 2013), the IX International Exhibition of Arms, Military Equipment, and Ammunition, which is taking place September 25-28 in Nizhniy Tagil. 

For the first time at an international exhibition of this level, the agenda will feature a special set of activities aimed at discussing international legal aspects of the defense market. Organizers plan to involve in those discussions top Russian and international experts in international security, political scientists, and top officials from the UN and other international organizations. 

Besides, like before, the focus of RAE-2013 will rest on issues specific to the military industry. On this track, the discussion will touch upon issues such as modernization of Russia's defense industry production facilities, financing the state order, developing the talent pool for the industry, utilizing private-public partnership in the development of new-generation military hardware, and so on. The plenary session will focus on implementation peculiarities of the Federal Targeted Program for Defense Industry Reformation in 2011—2020 and the issue of innovations in the defense industry. Other subjects on the agenda include the 2020 State Armaments Program and its potential impact on the new look of Russia's armed forced. Experts will also discuss ways of cooperation with international producers of military hardware and high-tech equipment. 

Separate lectures and seminars in the military-industry block of the RAE-2013 agenda will be devoted to specific issues of tank construction and UAV design, military personnel protection, energy efficiency and sustainability in military production, procurements, peculiarities of investing in defense industry, and others. 

The international legal block at RAE-2013, focused on ways of maintaining peace, preventing military conflicts, and boosting state control over armament exports, will consist of two exert discussions. The first one, titled International Peace and Security: the Philosophy of Crisis Response, will deal with the subject of international security, including the Responsibility to Protect initiative, as well as preventive diplomacy, and the role of peacekeeping missions organized without bias and guided by humanitarian principles. 

The other part, named Global Arms Market: the Outline of Fair Trade, will gather together experts who are interested in the strengthening of relevant international regimes and abolishing one-sided sanctions against military product manufacturers as an instrument of unfair competition, and who are ready to discuss openly the national practice of arms exports and international legal norms in this sphere. 

"The combination of military-industrial and international-legal blocks on the RAE-2013 agenda shows the multifaceted nature of the event, which manages to be of military, industrial, academic, and international political nature at the same time", says Alexei Zharich, Chief Communications Officer at Uralvagonzavod, the General Coordinator of the exhibition. In his opinion, all of the above will further add to the growth of the Nizhniy Tagil exhibition as a truly global event.