In August 2022, Dmitry Medvedev inspected the Motovilikha Plants. Located in Perm region, it is a major MLRS and artillery producer. Its manufacture includes multiple rocket launchers of Grad, Smerch, and Tornado families, Nona-SVK and Nona-M1 self-propelled mortars, Vena self-propelled howitzers, and others. This enterprise is also repairing and modernising the Soviet large caliber artillery that is now being extensively used in Ukraine.

On August 27, Medvedev published a video about the trip on his VKontakte social media page. 85 seconds long, it included a footage from the plant’s forging workshop. On a footage you can see Dmitry Medvedev and Denis Manturov (the Russian Minister for Industry and Trade) observing the production of a gun barrel, while Sergey Dyadkin, the plant’s CEO, is giving a commentary.

Left to right: Manturov, Medvedev, Dyadkin

What were Medvedev and Manturov watching at? Or rather, what production equipment did the plant’s CEO consider important enough to demonstrate to his high guests?

We believe this is a SXP-55 (p. 5) radial forging machine produced by the Austrian GFM, the original developer of the radial forging technology. It was produced in Steyr (Austria) according to the Motovilikha specifications, shipped to Perm, and launched into production in 1976 (p. 3). Almost fifty years later, it is still functional, producing and repairing gun barrels for the war in Ukraine.

What does it all mean?

Starting from the 1960s, the Austrian GFM company revolutionised the global artillery systems industry through the introduction of a new technology - the radial (or rotary) forging. Originally developed by Dr. Bruno Kralowetz, the founder of GFM, it improved the forging quality, reduced the need for (costly) subsequent machining, while requiring less time, energy and labor input per unit of product. According to a CIA Intelligence Memorandum (p. 5) of 1982, the radial forging decreased the time required for forging a tank or an artillery barrel from 270 to less than 10 minutes. Implementation of this technology, allowed to produce guns faster, cheaper and at greater quantities than before.

In Europe, it was called “radial forging”, in the US, it could be either “radial” or “rotary”

Developed in the midst of the Cold War, the radial forging method was in high demand on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Either American or Soviet tank and artillery producers modernised their gun barrel forging with the GFM machines. As a non-COCOM country, Austria had no restrictions on exporting the radial forging machines to the USSR. Consequently, the GFM could legally supply the Soviet military industrial complex with this cutting edge equipment.

In the 1960s Soviets experimented with the GFM forging machines, testing their capabilities. By the end of decade, experiments were proven successful and Soviets started reequipping their military and dual use sector with the GFM forges. According to a CIA report, between 1965 and 1982 the USSR purchased at least 26 GFM rotary forges significantly increasing their artillery production capacities. As in other cases, Soviets built up excessive capacities, far surpassing their peacetime needs, so they could rapidly ramp up production in war time.

Here is our boy. SXP55 machine delivered to Perm in 1974. Up to 203 mm barrels

203 mm is the caliber of 2S7 Pion self-propelled cannon

The GFM SXP-55 and Motovilikha

In the Soviet era, the Motovilikha Plants were a highly classified military producer. Therefore, placing an order for a GFM forging machine they acted as a civilian producer. A Motovilikha representative departed to Austria with the delegation of a Baku-located plant manufacturing tool joints for the drilling pipes. There he placed an order for a specialised, ad hoc machine capable of forging unusually thick walled pipes. Its purpose was explicitly civilian.

That did not and could not fool anyone