That's right, thanks to President Trump, Jens Stotenberg is happier than he's ever been,,,
In the days of Von Richtofen being gutsy could be a game changer, even WWII or Korea, but now everyone gets better training and only highly qualified people end up in the cockpit, the Russians and anyone else would be in trouble if they went up against NATO.... real trouble
Well, of course, Russia does not have the airforce to face NATO head on, nor even the US Air Forces. I was just talking about the original Su-27 situation at the time it came out.
Right now the situation has changed with the AIM-9X, IRIS-T, AMRAAM, Meteor, etc. Systems like the JHMCS. The latest generation Western engines. The Western powers are switching to AESA radars and Russia is lagging behind on that, because of their semiconductor manufacturing industry being in the state that it is, and them being behind on solid rocket fuel formulations.
However Russia still is a regional power capable of global power projection. Their main weakness is their Navy. But I consider their other systems to match up decently enough to provide them with an adequate defense. Given their budget limitations they had to make the most of what they had and I consider them to have successfully made the switch in the Army and Air Force to modern designs where it mattered the most. The strategic submarine forces also have been turned around.
The Su-57 will be part of the next generation platforms in the future. I think I have said this here before but I think it has capabilities in between both the F-22 and F-35.
Right now the Russian defense industry has been re-focused towards civilian products for import substitution. Because of the devalued ruble the Russians need to reduce their imports in order not to use as many foreign currency reserves. This means that all weapons programs in the Navy and Air Force over the next 5 years are quite possibly going to suffer from delays but this was a necessary step in order to force the industry to compete in the market against competitors which use more modern manufacturing techniques. To force the industry to
modernize and get out of its comfort zone which has been military arms sales.
If, for some reason, oil&gas prices rise again, then Russia will be in a position where they will have developed and matured several weapons platforms like the Armata, Su-57, Yasen. They will have them primed for manufacture with most of the kinks and flaws ironed out. This means that once they have the capital available it will become possible to replace their existing weapons inventory at a rapid pace. This is akin to the situation of the Soviet Union in 1939.
Rising oil prices is not an impossibility given several factors. The USA's economic and military posture against Venezuela and Iran. The internal instability in present Saudi Arabia with their leader transition. The shuttering of noncompetitive drilling operations in Canada and the United States. Russia has an economic advantage not only in producing but in transporting energy that these other countries do not have. For example Canada has much higher extraction costs and a large fraction of their oil output is transported by train or truck to refineries in the US, mostly located in the Gulf Coast, driving up costs significantly. The pipeline projects in North America were severely delayed and Canada never invested in their own refining capacity. This in the current low-oil price scenario they are suffering. Hard. As the global economy cools down so will demand for oil. So I expect oil to come down even further over the next two years unless a war or something like it happens. After that there will be mass bankruptcies in the industry and oil prices will rise dramatically. When they do, so will natural gas and coal prices, as they are somewhat fungible to a degree.
Russia is outnumbered by NATO and its allies. But you have to remember one thing. The Russians have a country with ~150 million people but they never stopped conscription. Most of the NATO countries, including the USA, are based around volunteer forces and in case of the need for a rapid mobilization the amount of troops they could make available are a lot less than what Russia can field at any given moment. So in that regard their defensive posture is sufficient.
Modern Russia seeks not to repeat the mistakes of the Soviet Union and bankrupt itself with military spending. So it is natural that in the present macro-economic situation they prefer to invest in upkeep and upgrades rather than manufacturing whole new platforms. But contrary to the 1990s they have designed or are in the process of design and test of several platforms, so things are not quite as dire. Nor is the current level of readiness of the military forces.
For example the Russian Air Force has a more modern trainer aircraft, the Yak-130, than the USA has right at this moment with 100+ in service. This means they can train their air force much better than in the 1990s.
