[lavaroise]

Topol-M etc are not R&D. They even sell their squall torpedoes, their SS-400 anti-missile/AWACS batteries (better than PAC-3 Patriots) and other high tech goodies to third world nations. Their subs are not R&D either, nor is their latest S-500 batteries.

Russia has maintenance "problems", however they symetricaly favor the maintenance of systems specificaly designed for strategic destruction of the US while the rest they can afford to keep down in maintenance. Indeed Russia has about 10 to 20 times more officers per foot soldier than normal. Since it only takes 2 weeks to train a foot soldier for a war and a couple years for a colonel, they could care less about preparing and maintaining foot soldiers, just as long as they have the right number of officers who get training in Chechnya.

We on the other hand are not preparing for the same kind of surprise confrontation as we are spending on foot soldiers much more. In terms of number of officers our army is much much more inferior than Russia's and maintained in much worse ways. The only superior officers we could dig to match Russia's level of maintanance would be managers from ENRON - try that one out.

[11B3]

Officers are tits on a boar in modern combat. NCOs truly run the show, and their subordinates are right behind them in the learning curve. I've had both good and bad officers, with the majority having a combat life expectancy of a few firefights, and the good ones we would protect with all we had. The Russian military is no different than its' Soviet past - the conscripts don't even know where they are when they are deployed, and they don't have access to maps. (Even if they could read them.) Their tanks follow pre-positioned guides at intersections or just follow a pre-set azimuth regardless of what happens around them. By taking out the command vehicles in a Russian unit, you've taken out the unit. Take out the command vehicles in an American unit, and the others come after you immediately.

What most Americans don't understand if they haven't served in a combat arms unit is that the US military isn't the strongest only because of our weapons - it is mainly due to our tactics and the integration of systems in the Combined Arms doctrine. No other military force can share vital information between various units and branches on the battlefield like we do. We've learned how to take the blitzkrieg to a whole new level, with redundancy built into the system to counteract the loss of individual pieces from asymmetrical warfare.