That, but alternatively, the problem with advisors is what happens when one of them dies, for any reason? The same talking heads that are shilling for Putin today will keep on shilling for Putin if and when an advisor ends up dead. Only it will be in the guise of hawks, making absurd demands for intervention. Not because they actually expect or hope the US will intervene directly, but because they want to make continued indirect involvement (aid to Ukraine) politically untenable. A sort of false dichotomy consisting of “Either honor this soldier’s sacrifice by responding with overwhelming force, or else admit it was foolish for the US to get involved, withdraw all support at once, and apologize to the American people for getting them involved in another foreign war without the wherewithal to stick it through. And then resign from office.”
In short, advisors complicate things politically if and when something happens to them.
That’s what military contractors are for (i.e. mercenaries). No one cares when mercs are killed. Add some convoluted funding, and there’s plausible deniability as well.
Because they can easily train in neighboring NATO countries on the same equipment? At this point the Russians are fighting NATO technology without NATO having to put up manpower, and are looking pretty bad. Ukraine is acting as the tip of our spear without us having to supply boots on the ground, I think President Zelensky made that clear last night.
I’m a little shocked that they only have one carrier. And it’s been in drydock for four years to hopefully expand it’s use for another ten years. Who the hell came up with a plan like that?
I’m sure this is correct. Why fly in people from thousands of miles away when there are people that can drive there in an hour or two?
So, has the Russian military always had this issue with its military equipment spontaneously destroying itself, and we’re only just now hearing about it because of the war? Or maybe is the war straining their logistics, funding, etc. to the point that what was once routine maintenance and vigilance isn’t being done? Or is this all actually the work of a crack team of Ukrainian commandos?
Well, with the aircraft carrier, it’s been well-known for years that they can’t really keep it afloat. Prior to this war, that was mostly just amusing, but now, we can see it was probably the canary in the coal mine. Everyone used to say, “Well, okay, carrier operations are really hard, and really expensive”, but now, we also need to allow that the Russians just aren’t very good at this.
I’ve gone through several Mainframe changes. My employer always brings in Factory support to install and test the equipment. Our Systems Programmers gets training on the new hardware.
I would expect that defense contractors usually install Patriot systems. Shake it down for bugs. Train staff and hand over the keys to the soldiers.
We are in uncharted waters. Patriots are typically installed in countries like UK or Germany. No one is trying to blow up the systen before it goes online
I don’t remember hearing about any Soviet military difficulties in Afghanistan. I mean, they did get pushed out but it seemed at the time similar to the US misadventure in Vietnam and later, Iraq.
This may be because I just wasn’t paying that much attention at the time.
There were tons. Even then the conscript troops were considered unreliable cannon fodder of limited effectiveness and Soviet conscripts were relatively better-trained and supported than the modern Russians. The only troops the Afghan Mujahideen considered formidable were the VDV (airborne), particularly the helicopter assault units, and the Spetznaz units generally.
Between 1991 and 1996 they downsized drastically. Two operating helicopter carriers and four aircraft carriers were decommissioned. One was sold to India, an incomplete hull was sold to China who later completed it and a third keel of what would have been their first genuine nuclear super-carrier was abandoned and scrapped.
I strongly suspect that the biggest contributor to Russian military problems both in their own and Ukrainian territory are decades of a culture of lying and grift - if officers and enlisted weren’t actively selling equipment to make money for themselves, they were covering up the corruption and incompetence of others in order to hide problems from their leadership. That kind of thing can’t get fixed in months or even years, it will take decades.
in the 1990ies you couldn’t walk in any major central european city without stepping on soviet “militaria” being sold on the streets (not even the back of a truck, a blanket on the street)
anything from medails, uniforms, night vision goggles to Mig-29 cockpit parts … and that was just the part that was on display … I hate to think what else was offered on “special request” or on condition of “under 4 eyes only”.
I still have a legit clock out of the Mig-29 (pulled? … or just sold from the factory?) somewhere in my junk room.
so yeah - that culture is decades old, probably with heighted emphasis from the late 1940ies on.
And then how long before the respect is earned back? Obviously, they have not heard of Andrew Cunningham’s quote: “It takes the Navy three years to build a ship. It will take three hundred years to build a new tradition.”