The Russian bluff: Russian military in decline
 

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...562073,00.html

Very good read (though Subsim's Kapitan will not like it :D )

Maybe the cold war ended but the arms race never did. As they said in the article, Russia has more money to spend because of oil. I think if they had that money back then, the cold war would have never ended. Regan's strategy for winning the cold war was spending them into oblivion and it worked. Now it won't.

There are times when I read the headlines about all the crap happening all over the world and I wonder..... was it always like this? Is it any different now because we have a camera in everyone's face and can broadcast it live 7/24 to the entire planet and we just get to see more of it?

what you call "the crap" is being conducted by the "crappers" with greater efficiency due to the globe having become a village.

I wonder what the russians spend so much money - but produce only so small a handful of fighters, and tanks, as the article said. where is all the money going? They should be on their way to become an international top notch army again, instead they are prjected to decline and become a mediocre medium-size army by european standards, being outclassed by Turkey.

Something still stinks in their production and development cycle.

Umm... corruption?

Russian has sufficient money to allow rampant corruption to take place? I don't think so

If they had so much money, they wouldn't be selling technology and arms everywhere, and China wouldn't get so much Russian armaments (although I feel pound of the recent China improvements in arms and other aspects)

The lack of money compounded by the lowered priority of national defence after Cold War, I think, is the major reason why Russian Military strength declined these days, as they have to sell stuffs to fuel their money usage, and they cannot take care of so much equipments and soldiers, either. Some show off actions, like having bomber patrols in the sky (if I'm right), also increased unnecessary military expenditure

If you say a large part of money is missing, I'd say its because of some newer but later canceled projects, which wasted money without any material gain

Actually their military spenings are in steep rise, Peterloo. It is due to their leading role as global gas producer, and their selling of oil. that is what we are wondering about. Compared to the steep increase in military spending, the growing of their military is almost non-existent, and the size of their forces are in decline wiothout compensating that with greater quality. the article lists some examples of projects that failed or went terribly wrong. And then: corruption, as Rifleman probably very correctly assumed.

the Russians are not the only majhor popwer selling arms, btw. european nations, the US, India and China do the same, the latter two just not the the western nations anymore.

We europeans just lease the Russians' transport aircraft. :smug:

Those interviewed in the article were correct in fearing China...

Look at it this way...

theres all the suspected natural that theoretically can rival the ME by way of oil, gas, etc. China needs more and more as it grows, and hey look, theres next to nobody defending these untapped reserves. I doubt it will be too long before china decides that the price of a war will be well worth the savings gained by not buying resources from OPEC...

just my 0.02

1) Base costs. US$35 billion or so, even assuming the aid of a large black budget, is not exactly ample when you have a ~400,000 man army (as opposed to ~100,000 in Britain with a nominally similar sized budget), ~200,000 man Air Force and a ~150,000 Navy. Since they are moving around more these days, it is natural that they are having difficulty squeezing out money to buy many new weapons.

2) R&D: The Russian arms industry is among the broadest in the world, which means a lot of money gets sunk into research. When a European country doesn't build a RWR or whatever, they buy it from their neighboring European country. Russia develops one. This kind of thing means that for a similar investment into military-related affairs, an European country can build more than Russia, all else being equal.

So there's tons of open land in Siberia?:hmm: Where do I buy a piece of land?:hmm:

I think it would be interesting if China decides it needs to expand. How do you say lebensraum in Chinese? Could the Russians even stop the PLA in a conventional war?

China will NOT aggressively launch a war of attack to conquer an obvious part of Russia. They do it differently. Since many years they are sending settlers into these vast empty lands, shifting the demographic balance and "outbreeding" the Russian natives. Where in past years the economic patterns saw Chinese tresspassing the borders to trade on the russian side, today, fewer and poorer russians travel the other way to trade on the chinese side. This signals that the income of local Russians also has seen a dramatic decline. The decreasing economic perspectives, addtional to the Chinese settling, bring many Russians to a point were they leave these regions voluntary to try their luck elsewhere. So, it compares a bit to the chinese settlement program in Tibet, or Islams land-taking in europe by colonization in europe. In a way it means to wage war by using the innocence of families, simple men, their wifes and children as the weapon to fire. You either massacre them, or you loose - takes just more time, but it is a very robust strategy. So far noboby has firgured out how to counter it with "civilised" measures.

Once the population aböance has decisevly chnaged and demographic facts are created, it then is possible to imagien that china eventually - eventually - will take military action to defend these Chinese communities and the land they have taken in case Russia tries to drive them back by force.

No. That becomes a saver assuimpion with every month passing by. the Chinese military is modernizing, and becomes stronger. the Russian military is in decline, and often in a poor state. Last but not least: the russians are outnumbered, I think.

Crap, that sounds like the boarder with Mexico:dead: . I'm not too savy on Chinese history, have they every aggresively expanded their boundries (by force)? I know China has spent a good portion of it's time fighting off invaders.

You are denfinatly right there! China has them outnumbered for sure. Russia's population is in serious decline. I still find it scary that they are modernizing so fast. If they keep this up, no one will be able to stop them. (atleast in Asia) Now, as for their navy?