Excellent realistic overview of real problems in Russian military
I will post excellent post of Russian member from one military forum I am member of. Great read.
"As long as the military academy system remains in place to train a new Stavka every generation, as long as basic training institutes exist, as long as an institutional culture is in place the Russian army remains intact -- the reason is that the factories and industrial infrastructure is in place to quickly replace old kit with new. Nizhny Tagil can easily churn out 700 tanks a year. Between Knaapo, Irkut and the Chlakov plant Russia can output 60-70 Flankers and 10-20 Su-34's a year and probably another 20-25 MiG's. The entire force can be replaced in 6 years. Infrastructure like satellites, military housing, even the freakin field kitchens are more problematic than the flashy toys. Institutional decay within the officer corp is also more of a concern than the number of T-90's and BMP-3's in service. You have to have the men capable of waging modern war and the human component is more lacking than the material one. It takes 3 years to train a single submarine crew. The Yuri Dolgaruki's crew was in training 4 years before their boat even hit the water. This is why the Kremlin spends more on base construction than it does on weapons procurement. Soviet housing is falling apart. The military academy system is also crumbling as many schools find themselves sitting on real estate in Moscow worth billions of dollars while their funding from the state is minimal -- so they sell off the dirt under them and move to the middle of nowhere or close outright. The strategic missile forces academy is closing for example. Where will the next generation of SMF officers come from?
In Russia there are a lot of problems with civilian contractors. Our Haliburton equivalents rob the MoD blind. The corruption doesnt come from Sukhoi or firms that size, it comes from the little mom and pop shop that has a contract to provide potatoes or sheets. The contractor oversight system is not up to Western standards. Every problem the US has with contractors is 10x worse in Russia. This is why we have an army where every soldier wears a different uniform. This institutional issues are way more relevant than the number of T-90's in service. We churned out 400 T-90's in one year for India. We can do the same for the domestic army. That isnt where the problem is. The money involved for such a procurement isnt that big either. 2 billion allocated in 1 year fattens up the tank force for the next 5. But where do you get the men willing and more importantly able to man the kit?
As for having a regional power military, you are again looking at the wrong thing. How many regional powers have a satellite constellation the size and quality of Russia's? Our chicom friends have neither the same number of early warning nor the same number of communication satellites. If war would break out between Russia and China tomorrow Russia would win for no other reason than we have more and better satellites already in place. Try fighting a modern war without satellites, you cant. We have spy sats with resolutions of 1/3 of a meter. Things like AWACS also give us the advantage. The Chinese AWAC fleet is still in its infancy while we have 15 tried and true A-50's and the ability to get more. The Chinese have at best a handful and most of them built on Il-76 air frames from us. Theirs are newer and more capable, but ours are to be upgraded in the next 2-3 years."
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