04-22-2014, 11:08 PM
That video comparing equipment and weapons is an important propaganda piece, mainly for their own forces, as well as armies in the region. It has no bearing with reality, but Russia has always been about parroting and posturing, while capabilities are marginal at best. Shear intimidation and speed have been more important, combined with a few simple weapons and equipment platforms and an aggressive foreign intelligence service with hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians to rely on living in the border nations.
A lot of that will be changing as Russia catches up with the 21st Century in terms of armaments and electronics, but the technology is all taken from things developed in the West in the last Century. I was involved with the Land Warrior program, and things have come a long way.
The video where they compare the same XM16E1 (made in 1967 at the latest) to their 1990's-era AK74 is a perfect example of a joke at work, especially since a beater XM16E1 from 1967 is a better weapon than the latest hunk of garbage off the mill in Izhevsk. The fat bad circus actor guy slamming on the forward assist after each shot shows the level of understanding of how to use the weapon actually reaches a lower level than what is taught in the US Army and Marines in basic training, and those are some pretty freaking low bars or performance to reach under.
The really sad reality is that I saw scored of Russian conscripts carrying the old 1930's-era napsack as a standard issue piece of equipment in 2008-2009. Even with Putin's push to modernize, they will have to jump through a lot of hoops that we've already dealt with literally decades ago. Adding night vision monoculars to the helmet mount are we? Welcome to the late 1990's. They've received a lot of technical military help from Germany, who have this strange obsession with warming up to the Russians for some reason lately. If you read Der Spiegel, you will find articles talking about "Germany's Special Relationship with Russia".
A lot of that will be changing as Russia catches up with the 21st Century in terms of armaments and electronics, but the technology is all taken from things developed in the West in the last Century. I was involved with the Land Warrior program, and things have come a long way.
The video where they compare the same XM16E1 (made in 1967 at the latest) to their 1990's-era AK74 is a perfect example of a joke at work, especially since a beater XM16E1 from 1967 is a better weapon than the latest hunk of garbage off the mill in Izhevsk. The fat bad circus actor guy slamming on the forward assist after each shot shows the level of understanding of how to use the weapon actually reaches a lower level than what is taught in the US Army and Marines in basic training, and those are some pretty freaking low bars or performance to reach under.
The really sad reality is that I saw scored of Russian conscripts carrying the old 1930's-era napsack as a standard issue piece of equipment in 2008-2009. Even with Putin's push to modernize, they will have to jump through a lot of hoops that we've already dealt with literally decades ago. Adding night vision monoculars to the helmet mount are we? Welcome to the late 1990's. They've received a lot of technical military help from Germany, who have this strange obsession with warming up to the Russians for some reason lately. If you read Der Spiegel, you will find articles talking about "Germany's Special Relationship with Russia".