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Russian military power |
Russian armed forces provide Moscow with clear military superiority in the post-Soviet region, despite Russia's troops not being able to match the whole of NATO.
The US, Russia, and China are considered the world's strongest nations when it comes to military power, with the US the undisputed number one.
Even so, Russia's still has plenty of arrows in its quiver, most notably the massive nuclear arsenal of some 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads.
Leaving the nuclear weapons aside, however, the US has an overwhelming advantage in conventional forces, including a much stronger navy and air force, Russian military analyst Aleksandr Golts told DW.
China, according to Golts, would also have the advantage of numbers in any conventional showdown with Russia. In other areas, however, things are not as clear-cut.
"Russia's air force is much stronger than the Chinese for now," he told DW. "It questionable about the navy, as the Chinese are now undertaking a very ambitious program of shipbuilding and they are much more successful in building a [global] blue Navy fleet than Russia."
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Russia's battleships |
Still, while Russia's battleships are old, they are often equipped with very modern cruise missiles, according to Golts.
However, the military expert warns that ranking countries by military power is "more or less useless" as armed forces' effectiveness depends on the goals set by the nation's leaders.
'We don't always know where the target is'
This point of view is echoed by Russian journalist and military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer, who warns that real-life conflicts depend on many different variables, including the geography and the people involved.
"It's like predicting a result of a soccer match: Yes, basically, Brazil should beat America in soccer, but I have seen Americans beat Brazil in South Africa, at the Confederations Cup," he told DW. "You never know the result until the game is played."
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Felgenhauer notes that Russia is lacking in many areas of modern military technology, including drone design and production, electronic components, as well as radar and satellite reconnaissance. For example, Russia is currently producing surveillance drones under an Israeli license, and it is completely lacking in assault drone capability.Russia is also working on modernizing its command and control centres, which serve to process information from the battlefield and feed it to the troops.
"That's what the Russian military is talking about: Yes, we have weapons, including long-range weapons, but our reconnaissance capabilities are weaker than our attack capabilities," Felgenhauer said. "So we have long range, sometimes precision-guided weapons, but we don't always know where the target is."
No more German and French satellites
These problems were exacerbated by the 2014 Crimean crisis, according to the analyst. In the years leading up to the showdown with the West, Moscow was spending at least $500 Million per year in the US shopping for the so-called double-use merchandise, which can be used for both military and civilian purposes.
"It was electronic components for Russian weapons and satellites, different kinds of special glass and steel," Felgenhauer says.
Similarly, "France and Germany were making double-use satellites, which were basically military satellites, recon satellites, for Russia. And all that kind of stopped."
Source:DW
