NATO countries collective defense budgets are about $1.2 TRILLION. $850 Billion of that is USA.
We are told that in 2021, Russia's defense budget was $69 Billion
Granted, they aren't running a global empire, with 280 bases around the world, and we are.
But Raytheon says we are out of anti-tank, missile and artillery shells, while Russians have no problem expending 5X the Ukrainians.
Something very weird with this picture.
I think the defense contractors are lying about what we have. Otherwise Biden would give it all away if he knew.
There’s something to be said about comparative costs and differences in purchasing power between nations.
There’s also something to consider about just how much grift and wasteful excess occurs in the Department of Defense. As far as I’m aware, the Pentagon has failed its last five audits.
“There are roughly 750 US foreign military bases; they are spread across 80 nations!”
Very little of US defense spending is spent on cheap and simple artillery shells.
And US doctrine does not contemplate months of artillery duels with massed guns. It assumes, implicitly, that such use and concentration of enemy artillery would be prevented by other US weapon systems and aerial interdiction.
Ukraine does not have anything like the USAF to call on, so they are reduced to playing the same game the Russians are. Both Ukrainians and Russians are reduced to this primitive sort of warfare by their limitations.
“NATO countries collective defense budgets are about $1.2 TRILLION. $850 Billion of that is USA.
We are told that in 2021, Russia’s defense budget was $69 Billion
Granted, they aren’t running a global empire, with 280 bases around the world, and we are.
But Raytheon says we are out of anti-tank, missile and artillery shells, while Russians have no problem expending 5X the Ukrainians.
Something very weird with this picture.”
President Dwight D. Eisenhauer said it best, and can’t be repeated enough: “Beware the industrial military complex.”