re: #439 lawhawk

Americans seem stuck in the Cold War mentality that Russia is an advanced technological menace. Indeed, this fuels a large part of our nation’s military budget, as we have to pay the equivalent of a small country’s GDP to multiple vendors to secure for ourselves the “latest and greatest”. The reality is that the post-Soviet collapse severely damaged Russia’s ability to build, maintain, and most importantly, upgrade its equipment. As you say, on paper, the advanced weapons in their arsenal are formidable - but they can’t afford them, like we can. And even if they could, it would be at the expense of losing out on even more of their Soviet-era equipment due to lack of maintenance and spare parts.