Vandelay
Life is absurd. Lean into it.
What kind of military sortie are you basing your analysis on? Defense of their country, an advance on Ukraine, NATO, or against the US themselves?Well I don't usually get involved in these convos and though I think the Russians bit off a bit more than they could chew in Ukraine, @The M.I.C. comments have some context.
Russia's technology in anti-air defense (the S-300 and S-400), anti-ship and anti-sub hypersonic weapons, ballistic missiles, and some other advanced shyt is basically top of the line tech. It has long been knowledge that S-300 and S-400 are the premier AA weaponry and their hypersonic torpedo tech is just better. I trust the ballistic missiles fire right since they basically owned the space launch market until we got Elon and SpaceX up and running. Their cyber capabilities, which scare me the most, are something we don't want to see deployed in earnest.
Here's the problem: Russia (and also China) have developed tech to fight a war against us. Basically to beat Americans you have to deny us air superiority and naval superiority. They could send thousands and seamen and pilots home in caskets if they were in that kind of a fight...but they aren't. Fighting Ukrainians on their own soil requires a trained and motivated infrantry, good tanks, APCs, etc. and other things they haven't invested in as highly since a large land war didn't seem the most likely outcome. Javelins etc. were made to pop those things and the Ukrainians have used them well. I have a feeling Putin's mistakes probably came from overruling his generals in how to conduct this war but that is another story.
Part of the reason Ukraine gave the Russian Air Force that work and they can't freely bomb the country into submission is Ukraine has S-300s. That Stinger missile stuff can't do the job like those can.
This is basically a Russia-US-NATO proxy war though people don't like to admit that. We give the Ukrainians weapons, satellite imagery, we have AWACS planes in the Black Sea and E. Europe so they know about any Russian air support the minute it takes off, we have advisers on the ground etc. In this kind of situation, the offensive party doesn't do well. Look what happened to us in Vietnam when they had Soviet/Chinese support or when the Angolans/Cubans mopped up the South Africans in the late 1980s. Poor countries with Superpower backing defending their homeland rarely lose in the last 75 years. Their countries can be devastated in the process though. Our success in Iraq came because the Soviets were out of the picture and the Chinese were like IDGAF. On the other hand, Russia and China would likely be in the mix if we attacked Iran so we would see a similar disaster.
Gas prices are currently low not due to shale oil but because we are tapping the strategic oil reserves. We've taken out almost 200 million barrels this year or nearly 1/3; it is at its lowest level since 1984. If all was gravy we shouldn't have to do this. If we were doing this just to get cheaper oil (avg price of reserves is about $30/barrel) we should be replacing it with oil just in case but there has been ZERO input into the reserve this year.
The only tech that I'm aware of that is more advanced than the US's is hypersonic missiles. Their rocket tech is not far more advanced and of the military tech that they have it is most likely not maintained as it needs to be.
You being a logistics guy, you know all equipment needs to be properly maintained regularly or it does not work properly, and I imagine this goes for their guidance systems in many of their anti-air and ballistic missile systems. It's not build and forget.
This is one of the plethora of reasons they are failing in Ukraine because their logistics are in disarray. And because now they are sanctioned even heavier, they can't even get the components to build, rebuild, repair and maintain the equipment they have which is why they are trying to procure equipment from North Korea of all countries.
