If soviet technology was behind in the 80's, what is it now against modern American weapons?

This artillery we sent to Ukraine is absolutely wrecking the the soviet, I mean russian, troops. These weapons have otherworldly accuracy, and they're backing the soviets, I mean russians, up.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/22/ukraine-artillery-russia/

U.S. officials said Friday that they will send additional sophisticated artillery systems and ammunition to Ukraine, bolstering the country’s forces again as they carry out a coordinated campaign of strikes on Russian military targets.


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The latest $270 million package includes four M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, boosting the total number the United States has provided Kyiv to 16, said John Kirby, a White House spokesman. The package also includes 36,000 rounds of ammunition for howitzers and funding for up to 580 Phoenix Ghost drones, unmanned aircraft that can be used to target opposing forces directly or to perform reconnaissance for artillery strikes.


“This is an ongoing process,” Kirby said of supplying weapons to Ukraine. “It’s almost in near-real time as we continue to follow events on the battlefield and talk to the Ukrainians about what they need.”

 

Russian army and State itself is rotten thought with corruption and incompetence, they have Central Africa levels of corruption. And of course it can not avoid Military Industrial Complex too.

 

"I don't have to tell you who won the war. The Artillery did."... General George Patton

HIMARS is the updated, longer-range version of MLRS/ATACMS. MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) provided the "steel rain" of Desert Storm fame. Each round carries 600 M442 DPICM rounds. An M442 round is roughly the size of a hand grenade. It has a shaped charge which blows downwards to penetrate armor while shrapnel splays to the sides to penetrate softer targets... like people. Each HIMAR round can put a piece of shrapnel into every square inch of a football field. Devastating stuff.

 

You might say artillery has no place on most modern battlefields, but the russians are fighting a conventional war, and they're being driven back by a smaller force equipped with better weapons.

Will the Ukranian military use this opportunity to retake Crimea from the russians?

 

Artillery has been one of the lynchpins on the battlefield for hundreds of years. Infantry is the QUEEN OF BATTLE, Artillery is the KING OF BATTLE. (As the saying goes... putting the balls where the QUEEN wants them.)
As I posted here somewhere before... "I don't have to tell you who won the war... the Artillery did.".... GEN George Patton

 

There are a number of false assumptions in the title of the post. Firstly it does not follow automatically that all Russian weapon systems are technically inferior to American (or NATO) systems. Russia builds some very credible and capable systems for example its S400 anti air system is highly advanced and offers a range of capabilities in one system that NATO can't match except by using multiple different systems. The point being that no single nation, not even the US leads the world in all areas of weapon design. Case in point? The M777 howitzer is a British design adopted by the US because it was better than anything domestic suppliers had on offer.

One of the advantages of NATO is that if someone does come up with a system that is better than anything other members have on offer everyone has the option of using it, even if they just purchase the rights and build it themselves which is what the US tends to do. For that matter some of the most important innovations aren't even in weapons but things like sensor tech, communications, combat medicine and logistics and support. Long gone are the days when an army was just a lot men with uniforms rifles and back packs.

So for a long time now Russia has been able to design and can produce modern and potentially effective, tanks, helicopters, diesel submarines. So its not the case that all Russian systems are substandard. The issues lie elsewhere and can be seen on display in Ukraine and they are critical to the reason why Russia has done so poorly:

1) Economics. Compared to NATO and the US Russia's economy is about 1/20th the size and even allowing for purchasing power parity that still means Russia can't afford R& D & production runs for high tech weapon systems unless it can also sell some those systems overseas. This also means it also has to 'pick its horses', unlike the US it simply can't afford to produce or buy the 'best 'of everything. So it has to pick and choose which weapon systems it thinks it wishes to maintain parity to the west in. This feeds into the next issue;

2) Corruption. Large amounts of money supposedly spent on building and maintaining weapon has apparently been stolen. Complex weapons require regular and expensive maintenance, especially things like jet aircraft etc. If money meant for maintenance isn't spent on maintenance you end up with less systems available when needed or ones that break down sooner than expected. We've all seen pictures of Russian tank 'depots'. This feeds into the next issue.

3) Stockpiles. NATO was completely caught of guard by how rapidly Russia expended its stock pile of PGMs during the war in Ukraine, first having to supplement them with cold war (less accurate systems) brought out of storage and then having to reduce the use of all such systems. Before the war NATO still assumed Russia maintained its cold war era practice of stockpiling huge quantities of munitions. Maybe on paper they did but if so it looks like various officials were overstating how many PGMs were produced and/or how many were held in reserve and operational. The rate of munitions expenditure in Ukraine has also been a wake up call for everyone else BTW. I can can pretty much guarantee Generals all over the world are telling their governments they now need to add a zero to the number of PGMs and dumb munitions they will need on hand in the event of war.

4) Technology. Russia has a sold engineering sector but it doesn't have a chip sector to speak of. This has made it critically dependent on western technology for critical components and spare parts and in some case the machines needed to produce the components in the first place. So while its weapons do in many cases contain components that are every bit as good as those used in their western counterparts it also pays not to piss off your suppliers.

5) Training. (Or it's not how 'big' it is it's how well you use it.) The US and many other (not all) western armies have large training budgets and plan for many hours of field training and live fire exercises. If your soldiers don't spend hours training in the use and repair of complex technology in the field they won't be able to use that technology effectively once they have have to fight for real. In part because of the issues above Russia badly under invested in training prior to the invasion and Ukraine is now replete with examples of how poorly trained the average Russian soldier was. So more often than you'd expect training trumps technology and a well trained crew using 2nd rate gear will achieve better results in the field than a poorly trained crew with 1st class gear.

6) Logistics & replenishment. Modern systems need constant maintenance and spare parts. If you don't have and can't get those parts in the middle of a war zone your screwed. Again, feeding into all of the other issues above Russia has demonstrated woeful capabilities in this regard, notably dramatically it underestimated how many transport units and ground vehicles their army need would need in the wartime to sustain their troops and equipment.

7) Lastly high tech is often surprisingly not that high tech because some weapon systems have long development times. For example the F-35 first flew in 2006 and its electronics were built around components available at that time. These days they tend to build upgrade capacity into fighters and other complex weapons but the fact remains you could probably walk into your local tech retailer tomorrow and buy an laptop with more modern electronics than you'll find in the F35.

Here endeth the rant!

 

Patton has been dead for almost 80 years son. Wars are fought differently now.

 

There's been numerous bangers on Krym the last month....a signal of further aggression is a good guess.

 

~ Russia needs a new slingshot — one not `Made In China' . That will give them a better chance ...

 

And its unlikely those are even our top of the line. Tho its worth noting Russia hasn't been sending their top of the line to Ukraine either.

But ya, we learned in WW2 that precision indirect artillery strikes on demand is probably the single greatest force multiplier for ground troops, and its been high on our list of 'do this well' ever since.

 

Not that differently. The only fundamental change from Patton's time is how far away you can be when you fire the weapon and how accurate it can be. Being far away tends to be quite expensive, which makes those weapons good for small, precise strikes at distance. In this war a superpower with notionally one of the largest militaries in the world has all but exausted its longe range, precision weapons inside 6 months.

If you want to put a lot of explosives on a particular spot artillery is still VERY important. That is why modern armies tend to have a LOT of self propelled and towed artillery. It isn't there for show. This war certainly isn't typical of how a NATO force would ideally fight, but the ground component of that force is going to have a lot of tube artillery with it.

 

I liked your "rant"....that's the benefit of an NCO Cadre which they don't have...it's the NCOs who maintain the day to day knowledge of process and procedure that allows on-going training at a squad/unit level which doesn't really happen in Russian units - much like the Chinese they just train for "spectaculars". Also an equivalent red/blue team engagement regime like Red Flag for example would help them keep current with what others are doing.....anyway liked your post

 

China will be dissecting this omnishambles from a hundred different angles. While no one would insult the modern PLA/AF/N by suggesting they are in anywhere hear as bad shape as their Russian equivalents, there is still a ton of Russian DNA in China's military structures & equipment. Watching Russia fail so spectacularly against a much smaller & worse armed opponent despite all the advantages Russia notionally possessed should get the attention of the folks in Beijing. If it doesn't then they are WAY too overconfident, especially given that their presumed next opponent is being trained by some of the same people who trained the Ukranians.

It will be interesting to see if any changes are made.

 

Well, this has been a solid testing ground for nations to run tests on their weaponry in live situations.

 

agreed!! A lot of people have been awed by Chinese rhetoric and jingoism towards Taiwan based on numbers but as Monash rightly points out numbers mean diddly squat if you're not proficient committed fighters which the Chinese are not. They are drilled to look good in front of a senior audience; exactly like the VDV were at ZAPAD 2021 where during their joint exercise they looked will drilled and slick but fell apart in spectacular fashion in very short order in February. I guess the West will need to take a long look as well as amongst other things there's a rather large disconnect with commonality and supply of equipment and its purpose....but that's a longer conversation

 

Actually, wars are fought quite the same. The technology has changed, but the principles of mass, maneuver and such are immutable. Using overwhelming force at the critical time and place is as valid a principle of war today as it was in Alexander's time. I must admit that my friends and I discuss this a lot but we always end up agreeing that Sun Tzu is as applicable today as he was when he first starting writing things down.
I'm sure we'll have those discussions a lot during my 50th Reunion of the West Point Class of 1975, which is coming up soon. (COURAGE AND DRIVE! '75!)

 

In terms of both training and equipment, any NATO-standard army would ROFLstomp the Russians, assuming they had the numbers, weapon systems and logistics in place.

 

It is a good possibility.

 

Wars are not fought the same at all. Battles can be fought without enemy combatants ever seeing each other. That wasn't the case on the ground during the World War II, and it certainly wasn't the case during Alexander's time.

It would be an awesome slap to the face of Russia. I still find myself wondering if Russia has yet to take the kid gloves off. They're certainly a bigger, more powerful force. That said, the US wore kid gloves during the Vietnam war, and we still managed to kill them at about a 12-1 ratio.

 

How about some reality from the RUSI Report which is Britain's equivalent of the Rand corporation. They published an amazing report on Ukraine and it showed that Russia has an unbelievable industrial capacity. All the ammunition that Russia is firing would take them about 1 month to produce, and it would take the US 3 years to produce the same amount of ammunition.

In other words, Russia already has that industrial infrastructure which we don't, as well as all the raw materials. They are almost totally self-sufficient in everything - including food. So much for Russia running out of ammunition and needing help from N. Korea.

Of course we have our propaganda (lies), and what better weapon is there than deceiving the American people into believing we're invulnerable.

Get on to 16:00 on the video and you can hear it from Clayton Morris:

 

The Russians aren't behind in weapons technology. They're behind in training doctrine. Their troops are practically untrained.

Some of the videos I've seen from the battlefield show Russian troops screwing up stuff that's Infantry 101.

A 5th grader in the Boy Scouts has more tactical training than these poor bastards have.

 

On the training front, isn't that partly because they rely so much on conscripts? What's the point of investing in training unless it's on professional career soldiers?

 

The point of investing training is so the troops can perform on the battlefield and have a better chance of survival.

 

Excuse me, where did you see videos of the battlefield? All I've seen is massive fire all over the place. Are you sure they weren't Ukrainian propaganda?

 

Well yes but if they are only serving for 7 months, vs 30 years, seems like a waste, especially to a country/leader with little care for human life like Stalin, I mean Putin. But maybe it depends on if we mean basic or highly specialized training