Then there are the warplanes. The SU-27, roughly equivalent to the U.S. Air Force's F-15 ($40 million a pop), goes for about $12 million, while the MiG-31, comparable to the F-16 ($20 million), can be had for $12 million. Neither Russian plane compares favorably to its American counterpart, but they're both first-rate weapons. Many a small and even medium-size Third World country could alter its respective regional balance of power with a package of a half-dozen Russian fighters (or provoke a small-scale arms race among its neighbors to prevent that from happening).

Military officials struggling with a guerilla insurgency will surely want to spend time reviewing Page 64, and what experts consider to be the world's most advanced armed helicopter, the Black Shark. Russia is too poor to put the Black Shark into production and has been able to build only three prototypes. The country is anxious to land a big foreign order so it can crank up the assembly lines for export and -- through the magic of producing in bulk -- end up with helicopters it can afford for its own Air Force. Moscow nearly sold 145 Black Sharks to Turkey last year, but that country caved to pressure from the U.S. government, which is seeking to win the roughly $4 billion order for Boeing's Apache Longbow or Bell Textron's King Cobra. (The Turks have still not decided which Western firm will get the order.)

There's plenty of other hardware available in the Russian catalog. The T-90 tank sports state-of-the-art "reactive" armor featuring a sensor that picks up incoming missiles and triggers a charge to destroy them. The Tunguska-M anti-aircraft gun -- "a tracked combat vehicle designed to ensure round-the-clock protection of motorized infantry and tank regiments against low-flying aeroplanes and helicopters in any weather" -- is superior to anything in the U.S. arsenal.

Naval aficionados can pick from a host of surface warships, minesweepers and submarines. One attractive option is the project 11541 frigate, which sports a helicopter-landing platform, and comes armed with anti-ship missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, an artillery mount and torpedo and depth-charge launchers. (Prices for these items, I'm afraid, were unavailable.)

For now, Russia's export drive faces important restrictions. The country's old reliable customers in the Warsaw Pact have joined NATO or are broke (or both). The United States, as seen in the Turkish helicopter deal, has repeatedly pressed its allies from buying Russian equipment so as to retain market share for American manufacturers.

But new Russian President Vladimir Putin is keen to crank up export assembly lines, as part of a broader build-up of his country's military forces. "[Putin] sees the defense sector as a driving force for the industrial sector in general," an unnamed source told Jane's Defense Weekly this month. "At the same time, he needs to fix the armed forces in order to maintain Russia's international credibility and influence." Combine that with a few favorable geopolitical developments -- for example, a real rapprochement with China, a North Korean oil strike or a loosening of U.N. sanctions on Saddam Hussein -- and the Rosvoorouzhenie publication may become more than just another direct-mail also-ran for the discriminating weapons importer.

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