Posted: 5/19/2008 7:12:33 PM EDT
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The Red Dawn remake thread got me thinking. How long to Russia is back to her former strength? Russia has been making hand over fist money by selling oil lately. Her army has been in shambles or at least a large portion of it has been, but money has a tendency to turn things around quickly. I wonder how long it will be before Russia starts trying to flex it military muscle again? So what say you AR15.com? |
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Remember, Russia is not the Soviet Union. And many former Soviet states would not join Russia if Russia went on the path of conquest. That's not to say that the Russian Federation isn't worthy of note. It DOES have considerable military capabilities, or can develop them fairly quickly, but it's not the Soviet giant that it once was. And even then, it has turned out that the military strength of the Soviet Union was not as great as they wanted everyone to believe. Propaganda, politics, and parades gave the impression of a larger force than they really had. And it was a force without much reserve depth to it. It was not well suited for a drawn-out conflict, and was instead organized around the idea of a hard first strike and BRIEF mop-up operation. A good hard first punch, but not much staying power for going extra rounds. America's military has always been structured around the "Pack a lunch, this is going to take a while" school of combat. We EXPECT it to take a while, and plan for it, giving us an advantage as we can draw out a conflict longer than our enemies can. CJ |
| I agree Russia's army didn't have staying power that we were led to believe during the cold war. I do wonder if they have learned some valuable lessons during the afghan and Chechen war. A restructured paid Russian Army might be a formidable foe in the coming years. |