What honestly surprised me the most was the shockingly poor state of the equipment I have seen. Some of the APCs in particular look like they have been parked in a barn for 30 years (which they very well may have!)
Given that exporting arms is a huge source of revenue for the government, I would have assumed they would have relatively modern inventory. But the cobbler's children have no shoes, I guess.
This reeks of delusional leadership. They saw numbers on a page, and spent decades bragging about rusting inventory. Meanwhile, the West has actually rotated through three generations of inventory and have prepared for the opponent they thought they were getting
>Given that exporting arms is a huge source of revenue for the government, I would have assumed they would have relatively modern inventory. But the cobbler's children have no shoes, I guess.
Russia doesn't have modern manufacturing capabilities and personal to operate it. Most of stuff that is made it's "one off samples".
As anecdote, they discovered only today that flagship russian cpu elbrus that supposed to be used by military/government is actually made in taiwan and than relabled in russia. Yesterday TSMC announced that they stop manufacturing it.
Russia did buy from AMD old line from German factory a bunch of years ago, but it's still doesn't really working properly(iirc)
I've always wondered what condition their ICBMs and nuclear arsenal are in. Are they all rusting in silos in various states of disrepair? I'd imagine upkeep costs for these things would be astronomical considering the reported size of their nuclear arsenal.
It is either that, or send in replaceable shock troops to tease out defensive capabilities, then send in the real forces. I can imagine Russia, paranoid as always, may have wondered at want technological war machine wonders we were providing Ukraine.
That seems more likely, Ukraine does not have unlimited reserves of munitions and only so many ambushes it can spring. That said, I don’t think the paratroops that have allegedly been shot down / defeated are usually replaceable, but are usually some of the better trained / equipped.
I‘ve seen the „Ukraine is gonna run out of material at some point“ mentioned a bunch in the last few days and am genuinely curious: Aren‘t they getting resupplied by NATO? Trying to run a NATO aligned state who is not physically cut off from western supply lines out of munitions seems insane, am I missing something?
Given that exporting arms is a huge source of revenue for the government, I would have assumed they would have relatively modern inventory. But the cobbler's children have no shoes, I guess.
This reeks of delusional leadership. They saw numbers on a page, and spent decades bragging about rusting inventory. Meanwhile, the West has actually rotated through three generations of inventory and have prepared for the opponent they thought they were getting