"The positive trend in recent years of increasing budget spending on state defence has been preserved and enhanced," the minister said according to Interfax news agency.

The shopping list included three battalions of BTR-80 armored personnel carriers, one squad of Iskander-M missile launchers, two warships, seven modernized Su-27SM fighters, nine defense satellites as well as nuclear and non-nuclear air-to-ground missiles, the minister said.

In addition, some 300 research and development projects would be completed in 2005 and the armed forces would receive the finished products, Ivanov said.

More than 62 billion rubles (2.3 billion dollars) would be spent on research and development, 112 billion rubles on purchases of military hardware and armaments, and 11.8 billion rubles on repairs.

The army would receive the lion's share or about 40 percent of the budget for purchases of new hardware and armaments, while the Air Force and the Navy would get about 20 percent each.

Part of the buget would go toward development of the new Topol-M mobile inter-continental nuclear missile, which Moscow claims will be able to penetrate anti-missile shields.

"The range of the system's use in combat has been broadened. The targeting precision has been nearly doubled and the precision ... has been increased... The probability of detecting a flying missile is now much smaller," Ivanov said.

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