As threat of war grows globally is Kazakhstan ready to defend itself?

As war becomes everyday reality for more and more people around the world, many countries are beginning to beef up their defence capabilities.

The arms trade has always been a highly profitable business. Now the industry can expect a real boom. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), overall global spending on defence increased 3.7 percent in 2022.

Until this year, Kazakhstan was reducing spending on defence.

According to SIPRI, between 2019 and 2022 Kazakhstan’s defence budget decreased by 30 percent, whereas our neighbours have been increasing their defence expenditure.

Kazakhstan still has the biggest defence budget in Central Asia, but the region’s leader in terms of military power is Uzbekistan.

National defence expenditure has started to grow this year, increasing by 6.8 percent in January-August this year on the same period of 2022.

According to inbusiness.kz, the government is planning to spend about 2.4bn dollars on defence next year, a 11.6 percent rise on this year, mainly to modernise equipment and improve conditions for service personnel.

In the Global Firepower rating, Kazakhstan is in 63rd place among 145 countries.

Indeed, Kazakhstan has quite modest military resources. Officially, we have 237 military aircraft, 75 military helicopters, 38 fighter jets, 81 bombers, 17 transport and 25 training planes; the land troops have 300 tanks, 5,200 armoured vehicles, 247 mobile artillery systems, 456 units of towed artillery and 407 multiple launch missile systems.

Our defence industry, inherited from the Soviet Union, is a hostage of the funding ban, which makes us dependent on imports, chiefly Russian.

The political aspect of the situation aside, the Kremlin is bogged down in its war on Ukraine and cannot provide even its own army with weapons. Besides, Russian weapons’ performance in Ukraine has raised many questions about their efficiency.

According to the National Statistics Bureau, between 2018 and 2022 Kazakhstan reduced arms imports by 22 percent.

It can be assumed that the government is looking for new weapons suppliers, and Turkey could become one of them.

There are also efforts, verbally at least, to revive our own defence industry.

In his September address, President Kasymzhomart Tokayev instructed the government to work out “a mechanism of direct government support” for our domestic defence enterprises, “to reduce dependence on imports”.

In October the government ordered the creation of a state fund to support national defence enterprises to support the national defence industry.

The government has also cancelled privatisation plans for four defence industry facilities – Semipalatinsk Machine Building Plant, Semey Engineering, and Kazakhstan Aviation Industry and Steel Manufacturing.

In 2024 Qazaqstan Engineering and Turkish Aerospace Industries are planning to launch production of Anka drones in Kazakhstan. 

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