What kind of shape are Russia’s armed forces in today?
They have recently invested many rubles in some fancy new equipment for all three major services.
On the negative side their training is not as good as their likely enemy; the U.S.
On the positive side, at least their armed forces are not shot by 16 years of continuous war.
Snarky comment by post 2. That didn’t take long.
The Russians suffer now from what the suffered from during the cold war. They have some great weapons systems, but their training, and more importantly, maintenance is usually lacking, at least by NATO standards. So the new system may work fine when built, but over time it’s not maintained, so it’s difficult to judge it’s effectiveness.
How this manifests itself is in the readiness of non-front line units, or units rotating into theatre. The “first to the fight” units are always the most ready, but how are the next levels? Most analysis that I’ve seen has stated that the drop off for the Russians is very steep, NATO, not as much, the US, even less.
They are quite prepared to push their neighbors around, you don’t need a world class armed forces to do that. They have nuclear missiles, bombers and subs that pretty much covers everyone else. Where they excel in is covert propaganda and cyber espionage, the first of which the US fumbles around with terribly because of our moral values. The US cyber espionage is most likely up to snuff, but we don’t comment on it so it’s difficult to compare.
The Russians have a very different philosophy to war than we do. We use expensive, sophisticated weapons. They use cheap, rugged weapons. The classic example is the AK-47 vs. the M-16. The AK is intentionally made from cheaper parts that fit more loosely together. The AK is less accurate than an M-16 at longer distances, but the AK is much more tolerant of dirt and poor maintenance. It’s the same with their aircraft. US military folks do runway sweeps daily to prevent anything bad from being sucked into their jet engines. The Russians routinely use horrible airfields that would make US airmen recoil in horror. But the Russian planes are designed for it. They are not only more rugged, but they have air intakes on the top of the plane that are used for takeoff and landing and covers that seal the main intakes so they don’t ingest runway debris. Russian planes also tend to be lacking in fancy avionics compared to US planes.
What this means overall is that the Russian military can tolerate years of poor maintenance better than NATO militaries can. As was already pointed out though, it’s a bit difficult to tell exactly how well a lot of their stuff still works.
Another point is that constantly engaging in warfare is actually good for your military. It’s not so good for human lives, but good for your fighting ability. If you are constantly fighting, you are constantly testing out your new weapons systems under real world battle conditions. You are also constantly training your fighting men and your military commanders, again under real world battle conditions. Militaries that don’t fight regularly may think they know what they are going to do when they get into a real world situation, but they often find that things that worked well in training exercises don’t necessarily work so well against a real foe.
That said, I’m not sure I agree with the “not shot by 16 years of continuous war” comment. In the past 16 years, Russia has had plenty of use of their military in places like Chechnya, Georgia, the North Caucasus, and Syria.
Russia is also larger than the US. They have a greater population to draw from. Their army is more than double the size of ours. They don’t have as many planes and helicopters as we do, but they have a lot more tanks and artillery. They’ve only got one aircraft carrier, and their navy is smaller than ours, but they have about as many subs as we do. Also, overall, our military budget is significantly larger than theirs, which factors into a lot of things, including the already mentioned maintenance and training issues.
Overall, it’s hard to say exactly how strong their military is, because we don’t know exactly how much their lack of training and maintenance is affecting their equipment. We also don’t have any recent battles pitching our high tech weapons system against their lower tech but more rugged weapons systems, so we don’t really know exactly how that would play out.
About 10 years ago, a pair of Ukrainian Naval Air Officers were embedded with my detachment for a few months while we deployed in the North Atlantic as part of the “Partnership for Peace”. They were observing shipboard helicopter operations and maintenance practices. I know they are not Russian, but they used old Russian equipment, and old Russian doctrine. They could not believe the condition of our helicopter, which at that point had been continuously deployed for the last 3 years. They also could not believe the responsibility that we gave to our junior enlisted when it came to performing preventive maintenance and corrosion prevention/treatment on the aircraft. My job was basically the preventive maintenance coordinator, so I went through the entire program with them, top to bottom, and they said that it could never be implemented in their military due to their reliance on conscripts. I believe the same to be true of the Russian military.
Very true.
Not true at all. Yoh are taking one type of weapon system and extrapolating that to every weapon across every service, which is not the case. The Russians have designed and deployed scores of fancy high end gear, many of which is the superior of US or Western counterparts. For instance.
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They have some of the best and most advanced SAM’s, from the SA-2 and SA-6 of the Vietnam era to the S-300/400 of today. And first rate RADARS. The US did not develop stealth out of fun.
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Generations of land attack and Anti ship guided missiles. Missiles which carry 1000 KG warheads thousands of KM at high mach speeds. Like the Kalibr. Or their latest one, the Zicron which can fly at Mach 8!!!
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They are the ones who designed the modern MBT, with the T-64 and its successors, they introduced innovations like composite armour, DU penetrators, ERA bricks, the most modern of which can defeat all current Western APFSDS and tandem warhead ATGMS.
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They have submarines which can dive deeper and travel faster then US ones and also they could carry a hell of a lot more weapons than their US counterparts. Russian Charlie class boats in the 1970’s could carry heavy AShM’s and were guided to tehir targets by satellite based datalinks, an ability US subs still don’t have (or need to be honest).
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The modern MiG-29 and Su-27 and their varients have a lot of advanced avioanics, including IRST, phased array RADARs, high end ECM suites, indeed the MiG-29 that the East Germans brought after reunification were found to be superior in WVR to the US F15C and competitive in BVR combat. SO they are as reliant of high tech as the US is.
While the Russian design philosophy does indeed require more rugged weapon systems than the US, poor maintenance is not something they can afford. The Su-27 mentioned above is especially known as a maintenance hog.
Its not just experience that is the issue here. When a military has been fighting for so many years, there is wear and tear on humans (as you have seen with multiple tours many US servicemen have had) and on equipment, which is used and abused and might not remain in tip top shape. As well as loss of perishable skills., especially ones that current conflict do not require. The US Army has found itself deficient in the standards and numbers of Artillery in recent years for instance.
Firstly, Russia is not larger than the US, their population is about half the size of the US (170 million to 330 million), the loss of the USS meant losing nearly half of their manpower.
Secondly, the Russians have a different threat perception than the US. The USN is designed to secure ocean areas and project US Land and airpower to theaters of war. The Russian Navy is designed to protect Russian trade routes and deny enemy use of waters. A different mission requiring different tools.
Thirdly, their training tempos have increased markedly over the last few years.
In addition, I cannot understand why the US has not yet withdrawn from the INF treaty. The US is facing peer adversaries (Russia and China) with thousnds of land based theatre missiles and has none of its own, except sea based Tomahawks. Which sounds less impressive versus some of the newer gear the Russkies and the Chinese have come out with.
Russia is larger than the US as far as land area. Their population is less than half of the US population, and it’s also older and more female than ours is, so no they don’t have a 'larger population than we have to draw from". They do have forced conscription rather than a volunteer army so if that’s what you mean then you’re right.
I was a submariner during the cold war. I can tell you that we pitied our counterparts their equipment, but very much respected their skils and courage. Even a substandard boat can be a deadly threat with a dedicated and well-drilled crew. I see it all the time that people sneer at the ex-Soviet and current Russian gear, but that’s an error of huge proportions. Old and obsolecscent =! useless; unsophisticated and inexpensive =! ineffective.
In cold fact, the Soviets and Russia build some highly capable weapons and systems, and if their conscripts aren’t as professional as western soldiers, they’re every bit as tough, courageous, and patriotic.
The Rusian war machine isn’t as polished as it might be, but it’s something to consider with sober respect - Contempt for your (potential) enemies is fuckup #1.
This matches what’s been reported elsewhere, and what I’m hearing from friends still serving. Putin is knocking the dust off.
Charlie and Oscar class with satellite datalink to guide heavy AShM seems to be pretty sophisticated equipment. One which the U.S did not have.
I really think you are remembering the USSR. In addition to the errors in population already pointed out ( the United States has a much larger population ), the current standing force of army regulars is all of 270,000 + ~50,000 of so paratroops ( not technically part of the army ). The United States army has 460,000 regulars.
Now Russia does have a larger formal reserve than the U.S., such that the numbers with all that added in come to a rough parity. But more than double is USSR numbers, not Russia.
The Russian military is a shell of what the the USSR once commanded. Their current military budget is 25-30% of what it was during the peak years of the old USSR and is maybe an eighth or ninth the size of the U.S. military budget. While Russia definitely counts as a substantial military power, European NATO excluding the United States easily surpasses them and of course the Warsaw Pact as such is now defunct. With the exception of their impressive hoard of legacy nuclear weapons, they are not really the boogeyman of the peak Cold War years anymore.
Russian population is less than half that of the US.
Russian active military is 1M. US active military is 1.3M.
Where do you get your facts?
Not the kinds of boats we’d have normally been facing in the component and function in which I served, but yes - Those are indeed sophisticated, installed in platforms of less sophistication. That’s another reason to not be contemptuous - A somewhat unsophisticated platform can house subsystems and weapons which are very capable indeed.
There was a OpFor airforce engagement exercise some decades back, to train against (then) Soviet air combat tactics - IIRC, two pairs on each side. Within a minute of engagement, all eight aircraft were ruled ‘killed’ - The scenario was labled "Towering Inferno.’ This, despite the aggressor aircraft supposedly flying Soviet-performance aircraft, and using Soviet doctrine. The lessons learned includes the fact that an obsolescent aircraft can carry a sophisticated weapon, or can be upgraded with sophisticated retrofits. That same lesson applies to any platform.
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The last generation of Soviet submarines were functional peers of US equipment - though at the time those were in very short supply. Since then, attrition and new construction has changed that proportion in favor of the better boats. Our technilogical lead has essentially vanished.
Sorry, but this is untrue. European NATO has nothing equivalent to Russian capabilities in Long range aviation (Blackjack, Backfire, and Bear Bombers), medium bombers (Su24 and 34) ground attack (Su-25) submarine forces (Oscar, Akula class SSGN and SSN), space capabilities, or the size and scope of Russian Armoured and mechanised forces.
[QUOTE=Tranquilis]
Not the kinds of boats we’d have normally been facing in the component and function in which I served, but yes - Those are indeed sophisticated, installed in platforms of less sophistication. That’s another reason to not be contemptuous - A somewhat unsophisticated platform can house subsystems and weapons which are very capable indeed.
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You were in Sturgeons right? I though the USN had made the elimination of CCCP guided missile submarines a top priority incase of war, since those could make life miserable and short for Carrier groups and convoys?
I was thinking combined raw numbers + military budget, which easily outstrips Russia. European NATO partners didn’t tend to build strategic weapons platforms ( excluding the minor prestige projects of the UK and France ) because the U.S. had those areas well covered.
I don’t tend to regard Russia’s vast scrap heap of rusting second-line tanks and such that threatening, because I don’t think they have the maintenance budget to make them that threatening. In the 1970’s and 1980’s the ultimate worry was that the huge Warsaw Pact hordes could sweep across Europe based on sheer overwhelming numbers and firepower. Whatever the probability of that back then, it is certain Russia today is not remotely capable of such a feat. They have neither the numbers nor the logistics. And if you do include the U.S. military in the NATO ranks the disparity grows even larger.
Again, Russia today = militarily formidable. But it is no longer Goliath. If it gets into a war with NATO it will be more of a David.
subdevgru one
Thanks for your posts Tranqullis, they make interesting reading (though this thread is a good read in general) do you have any more information or links regarding this incident?
As an interested amateur this is something I’ve long suspected, that even without nuclear weapons being involved both sides would have very quickly suffered unsustainable losses. I also suspect that the sheer speed, complexity and destruction would fairly quickly result in severe problems with command and control, the human mind would have difficulty following everything that was occurring.
On a sidenote there is a 1980’s trilogy of books set during a NATO/Warsaw Pact conflict mostly contained at sea (Frigate/Carrier/Submarine by John Wingate) which has a memorable sequence where both sides use nuclear weapons during reinforcement convoys in the Atlantic, they quickly come to a tacit agreement to use conventional weapons only because of the above reason.
What about the Armata platform? Does NATO have any answer to it, and is there any advantage or disadvantage to a completely new design vs retrofitting M1s into a newer generation?
Has this changed in recent years? With China buying and building carriers, NATO weakening under US isolationism and generally being preoccupied with the Middle-East, has Russia become more interested in force projection?
This corresponds closely with the USAF attitude in the waning cold war years when I was in.
IMO and from what I’ve been reading, at the collapse of the SU the Russian military entered an investment and O&M free fall. They are now climbing back out of that hole and have been for 10+ years. Progress is uneven, but images of rusting equipment and vacuum tubes is very much not the norm any more.
I’ll also endorse AK84’s second post. Despite some folks’ objections to it.
Right now the US military is pretty well-worn and maintenance has been badly underfunded and under-executed to support the optempo of the various wars.
We also have a recapitalization problem in that by using up the useful life of a lot of machinery earlier than in the peacetime plan we’ve committed ourselves to expensive life-extending remanufacturing of now obsolete systems or to buying a lot of new systems on a compressed timeline of 5 to 15 years instead of the 10 to 40 years that had been planned. Or to simply having a hollow force of non-functional equipment parked outside where the satellites can see it and hope the enemy is fooled into believing all that stuff is 100% capable.
The good news is we have lots of recent combat veterans at all levels. So proficiency is high. At least for the types of battles we’ve been fighting. If we are asked to fight the same sorts of wars again we’ll be on our A-game. How well that translates into fighting the kinds of wars we’ve not seen in 50 years nor emphasized in the last 20 is a different question. That may well have a different answer.