The world’s biggest arms manufacturers have descended on Egypt’s El Alamein air show this week to show off their latest and greatest equipment to prospective buyers. Russia is bringing its crown jewel. The Su-57 fighter jet, known to NATO as the “Felon,” is Moscow’s answer to America’s F-35 and F-22 Raptor.
But it’s not really about the jet—it’s the slogan attached to it and every other piece of hardware Vladimir Putin is trying to promote. Rosoboronexport, Russia’s state arms dealer, announced on the eve of the show that more than 90 percent of the weapons systems it has contracted for export this year are battle-tested against modern Western-made equipment. This “Made In Russia, Tested against NATO” pitch seems to be working.
Rosoboronexport claims it closed more than $13 billion in new contracts in the first half of 2026, roughly as much as in all of 2025. Moscow badly needs the comeback. Years of Western sanctions and wartime demand have crippled the sector; Russia’s market share of global major-arms exports collapsed from 21 percent in 2016-2020 to just 6.8 percent in 2021-2025.
Putin may have found the perfect way to advertise his way out of the hole; now, he has to prove Russia can actually deliver. Rosoboronexport CEO Alexander Mikheev made the company’s strategy explicit before the Su-57 takes to the skies over Egypt this week. More than $13 billion in arms export contracts had been signed in six months, he said, with aircraft and air-defense equipment bringing in the bulk of the cash.
Moscow had been putting this marketing tool to work for months before Mikheev’s announcement. At the World Defense Show in Riyadh in February, Rosoboronexport staged world premieres for a batch of weapons developed from “experience gained in battle.” They included the new Sarma multiple-launch rocket system and BTR-22 armored personnel carrier, both presented as products shaped by lessons from real combat in Ukraine. Two months later at the Defence Services Asia expo in Malaysia, Rosoboronexport advertised the Su-57E not simply as a fifth-generation fighter, but as one with experience firing long-range missiles while operating amid heavy air-defense fire and electronic countermeasures.
Putin and arms export chief Mikheev have good reason to believe battlefield experience can translate into big business. After years of war in Gaza and the success of the “Iron Dome” air defense system in thwarting the bulk of Iranian missile and drone strikes, Israel’s Defense Ministry announced a record $19.2 billion of defense export agreements in 2025, nearly 30 percent more than the previous year. The ministry explicitly credited the combat-proven performance of Israeli systems with generating international demand.
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