Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
I just want to touch on this for a second. Putin is bad, really bad, but I do not get this fear that they are a superpower on the rise again, or that they have designs on Western Europe.
The country is a broken slag heap, and most of their armed forces are rusted out. This is not the USSR circa-1971.
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People keep saying this and I disagree with it. Russia has been going through a major military modernization program while at the same time moving to a more professional military.
From a sub perspective they are putting the Borei class missile submarine to sea and it represents a generational leap forward in terms of its ability to hide from American submarine forces and sensors. At the same time they're about half way through a major upgrade to their strategic rocket forces. They're midway through an upgrade of their TU-160 Blackjack forces and they're probably going to start producing them again so that they can upgrade their naval aviation wings.
With the blackjacks the re-opening of the production lines probably means that they are having some trouble with the PAK next generation bombers, but still using the Blackjacks to replace their aging bomber force is a significant step forward.
The Russians also have a goal of modernizing up to 70% of their conventional military ground forces by 2020, with the upgrading of their tanks, artillery, personal kit and armored vehicles.
russia has shown some very good capabilities lately with the upgraded sea launched cruise missiles, they're also working on their capability in terms of land and airbased nuclear and non nuclear cruise missiles.
As well they're becoming special forces enamored and are spending lavishly on their special forces units.
Russia also learned a lot of key lessons in the last decade about failures in their command and control, intelligence gathering and organization of units. They also realized that their methods of training their conscripts doesn't really create great or professional soldiers, and because of budget woes, they might shrink their army and spend more lavishly on a smaller group.
At the end of the day, in terms of subs and aircraft and primary tanks, armored vehicles and artillery they've closed but still trail the West, but that gap is a lot smaller. I do believe that if they were to fight NATO in a large scale war that they would probably lose. But the Russian's if they fight are going to fight in small scale battles and overwhelm NATO and depend on a improved logistics line.
Russia believes that the proper strategy is to nibble instead of eating it all at once.
We also have to look at the fact that if America leaves NATO or pulls back in terms of responsibility to NATO, that the rest of the NATO militarizes aren't in exactly great shape or even good shape.
