GarryB, remember the polished-knob your quoting thinks spending tens of billions developing a competitor F-35 program is a better relocation of funds.
Yes, I did notice a certain member suggest STOVL 5th gen fighters be developed to save a small amount of money building carriers... though he seemed to suggest that they would buy more smaller carriers than they could have if they bought bigger carriers so I really don't think there would be any money saved on carriers either...
ie don't buy the 1kg of cheese it is too expensive... it is $10, instead buy a new cheese cutter for $30 and buy the 250 gramme packets of cheese... you will only need to buy three of them... but you end up saving... nothing and get three small inferior carriers.
Poor were just an example the there are needs on different levels not only new missiles. You seem to confuse 2 things - I am not saying Russia wont buy new IRBMs or whatever they need. All I am saying it that this will cause increase in military spending.
I agree they should not waste money on unnecessary programmes, but the fact is that making Iskander longer ranged and big missiles shorter range to fill the gap would not cost much money at all.
They will currently have ICBMs targeted at Europe and China and Japan and SK and other places with US forces... being able to target those places with shorter ranged smaller lighter missiles might actually save a bit of money by reducing the number of big missiles they need.
Further more the expensive of building an IADS to cover the Russian territories... they are already doing that... but having to do that will cost the EU and enormous amount of money if they are honest, but I suspect they will just go into denial and ignore the problem of their vulnerability and not mention how exposed they are.
IMHO this is the main idea of US INF withdrawal. Military is secondary reason.
I suspect it is more a case that China has a fleet of mostly IRBMs that are not covered by the INF treaty and so the US has to counter them with shorter ranged missiles close to China or much more expensive much longer ranged missiles (like Russia does in Europe).
They clearly want IRBMs they can base in SK and Japan and threaten china with.
Amiland spends already 1 Trill. and ist military looks the same as the russian one in the 90´s. In 10 years they will have to spend 1,5 or even 2 Trill. just to keep part of their forces combat capable. Just some foolish politicians (and the oligarchs that pay them) could think that they can outspend Russia (and China, Iran...).
Most of the money they spend is infrastructure for a world wide empire of bases...
And that will only increase in costs.
if development of military sector is so good Russia then why Putin wants military companies to diversify with civilian products? Why Putin decided to bring down on military spending to 3% GDP ? he shpuld increase them isnt it?
Russian forces are defensive and should not become like the bloated western conglomerates that promote wars via the media they own to sell product... weapons in the US are like the illegal drug trade... except the pushers own the media and the government...
The answer is simple. Imagine, I am say moving to USA. Country of possibilities and my Us owner employer pays me $1,000 per month. I rent a flat for $300. The next year my rent goes up to $350, so folloing in your logic I have more money now to spend on different things? do I get this right?
A poor example.
The US is withdrawing from the INF treaty... Russia gets little say... they tried through the UN to get some discussion going but it was voted down by all those European countries that will start squealing about their defence situation very soon.
If the US withdraws from the INF treaty they already have Mk-41 launchers in place in Europe so it would be trivial to load naval cruise missiles there immediately.
This represents a threat to Russia... the obvious solution would be to target those launchers and their support systems with hypersonic missiles recently revealed, like Kinzhal... which is an excellent solution but longer term a much longer ranged ground launched weapon would make more sense and be cheaper and easier to deploy.
The current Iskanders range is limited artificially by the INF treaty and likely could be extended enormously with a few minor changes... for example its warhead could be reduced and made nuclear only for the IRBM role in the EU. The current vehicle carries two ready to launch missiles so making it a single missile equipped system could allow for a much much bigger missile perhaps with multiple powerful warheads...
New technology could be applied to make it more capable... a scramjet booster engine could extend range and boost terminal velocity...
These things could be easy to impliment and not that expensive.
As I previously mentioned thousands of subsonic 3-4 ton jet powered cruise missiles with inertial guidance and a big nuke weapon would be cheap to make and store... they could have bigger wings and twin engines and have a range of 6-10,000km so even if the US changes its mind and goes back to the table to discuss the INF treaty they wont need to scrap them...
And that is important too... make sure any money spent is not wasted... an upgraded Iskander could be air and sea launched so even if the INF treaty goes back into play they still get the new capabilities...
Ironic eh?
At one time I was worried that they might drop out of the INF treaty... because these weapons are very destabilising and any limits on western weapon capability is a good thing for Russia, but now I am worried that Trump might flip flop again and demand a different deal that is better for the US... fuck that.