Some choice quotes:
"Vladimir Putin has the old politburo to thank for the huge stockpiles of weapons that were built up during the cold war"
"Russia’s ability to build new tanks or infantry fighting vehicles, or even to refurbish old ones, is hampered by the difficulty of getting components. <...> The lack of high-quality ball-bearings is also a constraint."
"They [military firms] also largely depend on machine tools imported years ago from Germany and Sweden, many of which are now old and hard to maintain."
Given that the country has no ability to produce ball bearings - and in other news, even nails, and can only cast gun barrels in single digits on western equipment, consider me HIGHLY skeptical that any rocket modernization that was supposed to have transpired has gleaming ready to fly stuff. More likely the money was "razpil" (разпилено) - literally "sawn off".
Some choice quotes: "Vladimir Putin has the old politburo to thank for the huge stockpiles of weapons that were built up during the cold war"
"Russia’s ability to build new tanks or infantry fighting vehicles, or even to refurbish old ones, is hampered by the difficulty of getting components. <...> The lack of high-quality ball-bearings is also a constraint."
"They [military firms] also largely depend on machine tools imported years ago from Germany and Sweden, many of which are now old and hard to maintain."
Given that the country has no ability to produce ball bearings - and in other news, even nails, and can only cast gun barrels in single digits on western equipment, consider me HIGHLY skeptical that any rocket modernization that was supposed to have transpired has gleaming ready to fly stuff. More likely the money was "razpil" (разпилено) - literally "sawn off".
Still, lets hope we don't have to find out