Nice graphic. Completely misleading though. (Not picking a fight with you thatsbaseball, just giving context.)
It's become painfully obvious how old and ****** the vast majority of Russia's equipment is... I mean like 40+ years old. Those tanks and APC's you see on TV? I've seen them before, its the same exact **** Glory and the boys smoked (See graphic below) back in 1991 when the US and Allies rolled in on Saddam and the 4th largest and powerful military in the world (it's true 700 planes, 6000 tanks, 650K troops, all top of the line Soviet ****.) In Desert Storm the US coalition blew that **** to hell and back on what is now known as the Highway of Death. When we rolled through more than a decade later that **** was still sitting there.
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It was inferior equipment then and its damn near obsolete now. Most civilians in the US think of our military based on long occupations and fighting insurgents (Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.) Those missions are fools errands. Your only job is to protect yourselves and civilians while hoping not to get blown up by an enemy posing as a farmer in a rice patty or a guy selling electronics at the bazaar. In conventional warfare, we are virtually untouchable.
For as long as I remember I have considered the Russians a worthy adversary. But not anymore. On a neutral battlefield like Ukraine, Russia would last maybe 96 hours before waiving the white flag. It would be a slaughter. Our technology and training is light years ahead. We have 600+ stealth fighters and bombers, they have 10. Our pilots get more than twice the flight hours every year than theirs. Their soldiers are rolling into Ukraine with no GPS (Phones taken away to boot) and are instead using printed out mapquest looking directions. Nearly 20 years ago in Iraq, every US vehicle had a "Blue Force Tracker" a 15" flatscreen (Dawgstudent approved) GPS that had realtime location tracking of every coalition vehicle in country. Any unit could mark suspicious activity or possible ambush/ied locations on the map and every coalition soldier would see it.... These poor bastards are still analog in a digital world.
In the last 30 years Russia has spent a grand total of $1.3 trillion on their military. That's less than 18 months for us. Yes they have 1500 hundred fixed wing military fighters... But how old are they? We are busy retiring our F-15's (which are 104-0 in air to air combat by the way) which are better than 90% of anything they have so we can go to completely stealth fighters. Which are undetectable on radar and would not have to dogfight any Russian aircraft (just fire some missiles at the Russian fighter from 50 miles away and move on) or sweat SAMs. The *** whipping would be so swift and lopsided, the Army and Marines would probably not get involved. We would come in and help rebuild schools and cleanup I guess.
While I am on a roll... To the handful of you bitching about the weakness of the modern soldier or the fact that they're not "masculine" enough... Here's a fact those of you who haven't served might not know. 90% of the military are there to support the 10% who actually fight in combat. Those 90% don't need to be the ultimate badass, they need to be smart, well trained, and mentally tough. It's especially delightful to hear a whole lot of people that have never toed the line themselves talk ****, especially the politicians that get their mouthbreathing constituents riled up. The biggest failure Russia is having revolves around their complete cluster17 of a logistical/support operation. The whole damn lot of them look like a monkey 17ing a football. It's because they have conscripts and dipshits everywhere, no matter how "masculine" they might be, they are not well trained, intelligent, or mentally tough.
They will eventually take out Ukraine military, but at a very high cost. They will never hold the country for more than a month though. No chance. I have seen that shitshow first hand, virtually impossible when you have it together against a marginal insurgency.
Yes they have nukes, but from what I have seen so far half of them would blow up in the silo and the other half would peter out in the Ocean if they were to fire them. Just know that at anytime we want, we could throw their asses right back across that red line. Not advocating for it, but the way the sanctions are hitting it may be safer to fight them conventionally, Putin is going to be very desperate, very soon if he doesn't get an offramp.
