Kimppis Mon Dec 25, 2017 5:45 pm
Why? I'd argue Russian military is probably atleast as strong as UK, France and Germany combined. Over $100 billion makes perfect sense.
The combined dollar spending of maybe $150 billion gets those 3 countries... 500K (?) men, 600-800 MBTs, little artillery, comparatively weak IADS, around 12 destroyers, 12 SSNs, 6 diesel subs, only a few small warships (below frigates, they do have a decent number of frigates combined) that are weakly armed, exactly how many long-range cruise missiles?, and maybe 700 "fighters", no bombers, 200 (?) attack helicopters that are AFAIK comparatively lightly armed... That's less than Russia.
What, you seriously think the US military is 9 times stronger than Russia's? That's what $80 billion would mean. I'm trying to compare them more directly, hence $150 billion, which if anything is too low as well.
This is a little off-topic, but China's "$150 billion" is a total joke too... I'm not kidding when I say it could be as high as $460 billion. 1. China PPP GDP is 23 trillion, 2. China probably spends 2% of its GDP on defence, not the official 1.3% or whatever... Well, that's $460 billion. Doesn't sounds ridiculous at all when you actually look at the overall size of their military and what they are doing with it, especially with surface ships and when you consired that the US spending is... close to $700 billion?. Their naval build-up is very impressive. China is building atleast 5 (!!) Type 055 cruiser simultaneously, and that doesn't even include god knows how many Type 052Ds, among other things.
1. USA $650 billion
2. China $300-450 billion
3. Russia $150-200 billion
4. India $80-100 (India is problematic, its domestic MIC is comparatively weak and corruption and other similar issues have to be a massive problem)