Russia's military has surely improved greatly from their Goons of August embarrassing performance against Georgia in 2008. But the Russian military still mostly sucks and has little prospect of new major weapons for production rather than for propaganda.
AFTER THE Soviet Union’s collapse, Russia’s once-mighty armed forces were laid low. Moscow bus drivers out-earned fighter pilots. Hungry soldiers were sent to forage for berries and mushrooms. Corruption was rife—one general was charged with renting out a MiG-29 for illicit drag racing between cars and jets on a German airfield. “No army in the world is in as wretched a state as ours,” lamented a defence minister in 1994. Yet few armies have bounced back as dramatically. In 2008 Russian forces bungled a war with Georgia. In response, they were transformed from top to bottom.
But the headline assertion of "Russian military forces dazzle after a decade of reform" is nonsense.
Russia's total spending (with assumed secret spending) is probably 4% of their GDP but Russia's military is still small and with only a segment of that force anything close to a "dazzle" level, as I noted in 2014:
People are catching up with Russia's poor performance in 2008. But tone established in this beginning is misleading.
The article even notes that Russia's better trained troops are few in number. No more than 100,000, according to Strategypage. The article quotes someone as putting the total at 50,000 to 80,000.
And exercising within Russia's borders shouldn't be the sign of an elite military.
As for the Crimea operation, while it was impressive it was not a military operation. It consisted of flying in or driving in 20,000 troops to Crimea over several weeks while Spetsnaz special forces simulated a popular revolt by leading 10,000 local militias (and in future years I'll be curious to know how many were actually imported from Russia). Without kinetics, it isn't warfighting that was on display. Impressive, yes. Evidence for a reborn army? Hardly.
To the author's credit, despite the rattling of NATO and the first three paragraphs of the story (and the title) lauding Russian military improvements, the article ultimately notes that Russia's military really isn't a threat to march very far west.
And Russia's major weapons development is stuck on Soviet designs. That is not a dazzling sign.
Russia is a threat because of nukes, geography, and relentless paranoia. But don't make them out to be ten feet tall.
