Swindle1984 wrote:
In WWII, the US had to help them out with lend-lease so they could get enough small arms, munitions, and vehicles to actually wage war outside of their own borders.
Wrong, the vast VAST majority of the small arms, munitions and vehicles used by the Red Army in WW2 were home grown, Lend Lease was relatively insignificant and only really picked up steam in later 44, by which time the Red Army had won most of the critical battles they had to fight against the Germans.
Once they had enough industry (what they didn't burn when Germany rolled in) going that they could support themselves, they managed to beat back a force that was waging a two-front war and was short on resources, and then conquered Eastern Europe, which the Germans had already conquered for them.
Only a small fraction of the German armed forces were fighting in the West against the allies -and it still took the Western allies quite a bit of time and a couple of false starts to push into Germany. The VAST MAJORITY of German firepower and manpower was deployed against the USSR and the USSR was fighting that more or less on their own and I will point out a lot of Eastern Europe actually fought WITH the Germans AGAINST the USSR, and they had to be taken out as well, including Finland, Hungary, Romania...
And they still took ungodly casualties.
In pure military casualties, only in the very early years. In 43, 44, 45, you can see there is a steady and sharp decrease in the Russian casualties, despite being on the offensive rather then the defensive, because they had become the undisputed masters of strategic land warfare.
And I'll also point out the fact that Zukov made the Japanese armies in the East his BITCH when the Red Army redeployed for August Storm, annihilating the IJA in a textbook assault that used combined arms and lighting warfare at its finest.
They invaded Afghanistan and got their asses kicked so badly that they abandoned the job and left. They were there for YEARS and couldn't accomplish what the US did in WEEKS.
Did you perhaps notice that the US is STILL fighting in Afghanistan against more or less the exact same type of enemy the Soviets did and 'winning' in about the exact same way? Did you perhaps notice that the Russians didn't put very many men into Afghanistan at any point -less then the total international force in there now IIRC- and more or less ended up in the same stalemate situation we are in now?
The height of the Cold War was the height of Russia, and they still couldn't do jack shit with the most massive military in the world.
...Because they didn't send more then the smallest FRACTION of that massive military into Afghanistan? Did you perhaps remember the whole 'MAD' thing, with tens of thousands of nukes pointed at each other that tended to discourage military adventurism?
Just about every strategic analysis had the Red Army overrunning Western Europe in a VERY short time with their conventional forces, should it ever come to that. Of course, then the nukes all fly and its game over, hence why it never happened.
Today, they've got soldiers pimping out recruits for gay sex, AIDS is rampant, they can't equip half of their troops with body armor, most of their armored vehicles are horribly obsolete, they fucked up repeatedly in Chechnya, and their grandest military accomplishment since WWII was the invasion of Georgia, a country that could have been taken by a squad of boy scouts armed with Daisy BB rifles. And they still got their shit ruined in a number of engagements.
You're absurdly overstating your case here.
Yes the Russian army has problems. But they have utterly CRUSHED Checknya. The first time they went in, they got their asses handed to them because they sent in crap units in small numbers. The second time they went in, they f*#ing flattened the place and have long since taken it all back, having all but exterminated the terrorists using the place. They are hardly using horribly obsolete stuff, their 'in service' stuff is actually generally quite new and/or heavily upgraded. I'll also point out that the US couldn't supply all of ITS people with modern body armor when they went into Iraq, most NG units were using 1970's era 'flack jackets' for the love of God. There are always problems supplying the latest and greatest kit and Russia went through some very patchy times in the 1990's which did much damage to their armed forces, but its an absurd overstatement to call them worthless.
And given the utter balls ups the US has made of Iraq and Afghanistan, I'd hardly be pointing fingers.
The only reason anyone considers Russia an actual threat is because they have nuclear weapons.
Tell that to all the states around Russia who want 'in' to NATO. You really think they fear Russia using nukes on them and thats why they want in?
Of course, most of those nukes are decades old and Russian maintenance seems to largely consist of "is less than 75% of it rusted? Da? Then it's fine." I've seen photos of Russian missile silos where the missile was almost completely submerged because of ground water seepage. So God only knows how many missiles would actually launch if WWIII broke out tomorrow, much less how many would actually hit their targets and detonate properly.
Which is why they have been deploying newer ICBM's to replace a lot of their older ones, most of which are in fact in perfect working order because the Russians place great importance on keeping their nuclear weapons working. They did have maintinence problems in the 90s, but they have placed great importance on trashing their older nukes and keeping/introducing their newer / new nukes in response, albeit at lower numbers of total warheads.
Seriously dude, do some research.
) Then again its probably less cultural stereotypes and more military patterns/stereotypes (You get styles of warfare t hroughout our history cropping up in the Guard basically.) and the cultural stuff is just sometimes included.
- PeZook
