Russia is going nuclear...

Thanks to Zuk for the info!

via ria.ru

"Well, why should the Armed Forces flood all the armed forces, our T-72s are in great demand on the market, everything is taken from it, compared to the Abrams, Leclercs and Leopards, for their price, efficiency and quality, It's the same situation with "Boomerangs," Borisov explained.
"We have no special need for this (mass purchases of new equipment - Ed.), These models are quite expensive in relation to existing ones," the Deputy Prime Minister said.

Instead, less money is spent on upgrading old equipment, allowing you to save budget funds.

"We succeed, having a budget ten times less than NATO countries, due to such effective solutions, when we look at the modernization potential of old models, to solve the tasks set," Borisov said.

Story here. 

Think along with me for a second.

Putin and the leadership of the Russian military witnessed the lesson of the cold war.  Rather the saw the end result of the cold war.

The Soviet Union was crushed.

Many analysts believe that Reagan caused the Soviet Union to get into an arms race and since they couldn't keep up we basically destroyed their union without firing a shot.

Now?

Now we have the Russian hysteria with sanction after sanction being applied against their country because of internal US politics (to a huge degree in my opinion) and certain elements of the US military taking the opportunity to re-engage in Europe.

From our side the propaganda is clear.

Russia is a threat...such a threat that the 28 nations that compose NATO must increase defense spending to meet this threat.  Additionally we see US forces conducting exercise after exercise on the continent.

Meanwhile you have the US looking toward Russia (and not China..the real threat) as a reason for pushing for even larger defense budgets.

From the Russian perspective its obvious.

Russia is being used as the boogeyman of the West.  They might even suspect that we are using them as an excuse to modernize/update equipment.

They've seen this play before.

They know what happens if they try to get into an arms race with the West so what is the solution.

You modernize old equipment at an affordable price.

But how do you keep the West from acting in an aggressive manner yet keep it from breaking the budget?

You go nuclear in a big way.

You go cyber.

You maximize electronic warfare.

And that's the crazy thing with this Russian hysteria.  Because so many are pursuing it for purely internal political reasons and because military leadership are following suit so that they can increase budgets and have an excuse for artificially raising the ops tempo, we are reinforcing the Russian view of needing to engage in hybrid warfare to survive a unified 28 nation alliance that is geared up for one thing.

From our view to defend against Russia and from their view to attack them.

Current policy is ensuring a more dangerous Russia and no one can see it.

NOTE:  Spare me the idea that I'm a so called Russia lover.  I respect enemies.  I try to imagine/devine motivations and reasons for their actions.  That's what I'm doing in this blog post.  This simple story in my opinion tells us so much more.  But I'll bite.  If you think I'm wrong and if you believe I'm off base then tell me why.