Quote:
Originally Posted by Mohoender
I agree to this. I recently learned that GPS had been shot down during the Russo-Georgian conflict of 2008, not surprising and explaining part of what appeared to be weaknesses of the Russian forces (who could not use precision ammo and had to attack at shorter range than the West now do). This weakness has already been overcome by Russia (Glonass) and probably by China (Compass).
Also, I don't wish it, I would be very interested in seeing the result of a long conflict were both sides would have tremendous difficulties to maintain the actual technological level.
Another weakness in the West comes from the fact that we have not fought anything outside of petty wars since 1991 (also true for Russia and China). Over the past 20 years, all our offensive actions have been conducted using overwhelming superiority against greatly weakened foe and we, as Russia, are not always doing that well. Actually, I'm even tempted to say that Russia did slightly better than NATO over the last 10 years: the Second Chechen War can compare to the war in Iraq or Afghanistan and the South Ossetia War was won in less than ten days. Remember that the First Chechen War had been lost by Russia, they have already gone a long way.
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While I won't speak as to the others, I do feel that I have to say something about the last example. The war with Georgia isn't as much as a glowing example of how good the russians are. The fact that it was pretty much all over in 10 days isn't something the Russians should be bragging about. While it is true that the Georgian's 'officially' started the mess by over reacting to what they felt was a minor provocation by mostly internal security concerns was proven pretty threadbare when all those russian divisions, who by merest of coincidences, just 'happened' be to right there, and by strange turn of luck, just 'happened' to be fully up and ready to invade another country. The Georgians was way way out of their league against the Russian Army. The best trained and equipped forces they had wasn't available, the air was natural at best, and downright hostile most of the time, and was outnumbered by a truly significant degree. The fact that they lasted 10 days is a knock on the russians inability to deliver a knockout blow and the sheer will to fight on in the Georgians. At the end, the russians had to fall back to the old fashioned soviet doctrine of throwing enough sh*t at the wall to get some to stick. I won't go into the political debacle that surrounded the US reaction to it, since its a rather inflammatory point of view on my hand, but be it as it may, I wouldn't call the invasion of Georgia as an example of how the russian army is getting its stuff together.