Posted on 02/27/2008 9:46:29 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Russian defense spending to grow 20% in 2008, to $40 bln
18:29 | 26/ 02/ 2008
MOSCOW, February 26 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Defense Ministry will spend around one trillion rubles ($40 bln) of federal budget funds in 2008, 20% more than in 2007, a ministry official said on Tuesday.
"The Defense Ministry will spend a little less than one trillion rubles in 2008, which is about 20% more than last year," Deputy Defense Minister Lyubov Kudelina said.
She also said that in 2008-10, military spending would account for 15.5-16% of aggregate federal budget expenditure.
She said most of the funds would be spent on the maintenance of the armed forces, the procurement and repair of military hardware, scientific and research work, and construction.
The official did not say how much would be spent this year on the procurement of new military hardware, but last year's figure was over 300 billion rubles ($12 billion), 20% higher than in 2006.
Russia has downsized its Armed Forces to about 1.1 million personnel, but military spending has increased dramatically under President Putin. Defense spending is set to total 1.18 trillion rubles ($45 billion) by 2010.
US is at, what, $450B?
“Russia has downsized its Armed Forces to about 1.1 million personnel”
Yeah, they must have, you hardly ever see them digging ditches along roads or picking up garbage anymore.
I have recently been flipping through Ardady Babchenko’s “One Soldier’s War in Chechnya.”
Pooty had better start thinking about spending some of that petro-wampum on a complete rebuilding of the Russian Army, a more dysfunctional organization can scarce be imagined. Things are even worse than in soviet days.
I don’t care how much he spends on new toys, you can’t field a modern, high-tech professional army on the backs of brutalized teenage conscripts. They have never had a “professional” army in the first place. Conditions are so horrific for conscripts that virtually no-one re-enlists after their two-year hitch. There is NO senior enlisted cadre in the Russian army.
Then there’s this little matter of Russia’s demographic collapse...
They’re flexing their oil revenue ...
That works much less well in an era of modern mechanized forces (which can advance quickly over the land you just traded) and can easily decimate your poorly-trained, poorly-led human waves.
I would never discount any threat (and Putin is scary in his intentions) but Russia does seem to be something of a joke.
And we worry about the russians?
Actually, we're at $700 billion+
Does $700B level, I assume, include the ‘temp’ Iraq spending? I thought the consistent, recurring budget was approx $1/2T.
The $500bn figure is only what the Pentagon is allocated & does not include money allocated for either war, or defense spending through other agencies such as the Dept of Energy, DHS & others.
As the lefties like to say, we spend more on our military than every other nation combined.
OTOH, the unit cost of the SM-3 missile which hit the spysat last week cost about the same as the $10M budget for the original Star Wars movie in 1977.
Actually, we're at $700 billion+
I wonder what it'll be under Obama?
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