THE NEW SPACE RACE: Russia Wants to Quadruple Military Space Rocket Production. It’s Counting on Chinese Machinery.

Russia’s plans to sharply expand production of the Angara launch vehicle depend on large-scale imports of advanced industrial machinery, internal documents from Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, Russia’s leading manufacturer of space launch vehicles, show. A significant share of that equipment is supplied by Chinese manufacturers that also operate in the US and European markets, while the true origins of some brands may be deliberately obscured.

Russia is investing tens of billions of roubles to sharply expand production of the Angara family of launch vehicles, which are used exclusively for missions commissioned by the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Its existing manufacturing base is incapable of supporting that expansion, prompting the construction of a new production complex in Omsk equipped with hundreds of new machines.

Internal documents show that a significant part of the project’s technological core will rely on Chinese-made machine tools.

I’m so old, I remember when Russia had a leading space program — and China had hardly any at all.