The Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST) recently released a new issue of the “Moscow Defense Brief”:http://mdb.cast.ru/ — a one-stop shop for Russian defense industry and arms trade junkies.

This issue of MDB provides an insight into “developments in the Russian defense sector in 2007”:http://mdb.cast.ru/mdb/4-2007/item_4/article_1/, which included restructuring of Russia’s arms trade monopolist “Rosoboronexport”:http://www.roe.ru/ into Russian Technologies corporation and the continuation of Russia’s obsession with consolidation of defense enterprises into state-owned holdings. In addition, an article on “preliminary arms trade results”:http://mdb.cast.ru/mdb/4-2007/item_3/article_2/ mentions that Russia may transfer the S-300 air-defense system to Iran after all (see a “RIA Novosti backgrounder”:http://en.rian.ru/russia/20071228/94513968.html). I’ve worked with the guys at CAST and I really like them, but I am a little skeptical that this transfer is actually pending. Finally, the MDB provides summaries of “major contracts”:http://mdb.cast.ru/mdb/4-2007/item_5/article_1/ and “major deliveries”:http://mdb.cast.ru/mdb/4-2007/item_5/article_2/ of Russian weapons systems in 2007.

Speaking of the S-300, Turkey apparently still “can’t make up its mind”:http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=136740 on whether it prefers the Russian air-defense system to the U.S. Patriot. Hopefully, it will choose soon — so that it can make the awesome tables in the “Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations”:http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RL34187.pdf come fall.