actually are training has gotten worse to the point anyone can pass boot camp, back when my grandfather was in the army they had to hold water buckets out in the hot sun for an hour, from what my cousin and uncle have told me even the most overweight or skinniest person can pass the physical fitness test. i remember my uncle told me they had a fellow that only did 15 push ups then was allowed to take a break because of his weight, before doing the rest of his 50 push ups.
well all the russian platforms have been upgraded to modern standards. there have been alot of new stuff the russians have put into service, like the new BMP-4, the t-95 MBT (still in the test phases), the kornet missle system. even the trust AK series has been brought into the 21st century with the ak-100's series the point im making is russian military projects didnt end after the cold war just the west doesn't really report on it because NATO doesn't buy Russian.
actually not much has really changed, the preditor drones is really the only successful aviation project the US has funded, the F-22 was an epic failure, and the f-35 is a money pit. in terms of armored vechiles the striker is the only new vehicle which even that is just modified LAV-25. in terms of new naval stuff, not much has changed either aside from some of the new ships being commissioned like the USS George H.W. Bush. really the only thing that has changed is the infantry load out, and some new electronic like new sensors and radars etc. me being a military analyst, i can say this for certian 80% of what are military has now, my father used when he was in the first gulf war.
thats not really true, the US and USSR technically equal in terms of technology speaking, because when the US made something good the Russians made something better, and when the Russians made something good the US made something better it was a constant cycle of countering the other sides weapons. it is true the US one the cold war because the USSR coudn't maintain its military industrial complex, but the US is starting to show signs of buckling because a war economy isnt sustainable for long periods of time. Eisenhower warned of the military industrial complex which is why he reduced the military under his administration and cut military spending because even after WW2 the US was spending way to much money in the defense industry im not saying the US hasn't done anything because that would be a fallacy, im saying not much has changed since the cold war.
Ah yes the good ole "In my day I had to walk through 10 miles of snow and fight off bears with my bare hands" My question would be, is just because you are fat or skinny, does that make you useless to a military complex? In some ways training today probably is easier, in some cases it might just be that they found out all that holding water in the hot sun does, is give you heat stroke.
To me what makes sense is that basic training isn't serving the same purpose it had in WWII. The purpose of basic today seems more to hammer your mind into the way of thinking that the military wants, and then they have other schools (special forces training etc.) to really hone people down to what they want. While in WWII they needed lots of general purpose soldiers and fast. So they had basic be the one stop solution for getting soldiers trained. I can't really substantiate these claims as I haven't experienced how things were in WWII and today. But it seems like a plausible conclusion.
In the case of Russia, more of my experience is in the Space end of their industrial complex. The NK-33 engine that they had developed for their N-1 rocket is a fantastic engine. However despite Aerojet contracting the Russians for more of these engines, Russia doesn't have the capability to manufacture them anymore. Another example is the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft that just fell back to earth a few days ago. It was a very ambitious mission and would have had amazing results if successful. However it seems that budgetary problems and half-handed engineering practices doomed the spacecraft.
And as a result Russia accused the US of using microwave emitters in Alaska to sabotage the craft. Instead of admitting a failure of design/manufacturing on their part. I never intended to said that Russian engineers stopped working at the collapse of the soviet union. My point was that most of their industral complex collapsed when the USSR did, and they had to spend time slowly building themselves back up to where they are now. While in the US we have some economic downturns, but the continuity of our industrial complex stays mostly the same.
As for the US aircraft, I'm going to stop you right there. The predator isn't the only successful aircraft to have been developed. It is certaintly a HIGHLY successful aircraft to have been developed, but even in the drone world there is a slew of highly successful aircraft. Like the Global Hawk, people just tend to hear more about the Predator as that tends to be what the use to shoot missiles at insurgents. And thus is in the news more often.
The F-22 is in no way a failure. It certently didn't meet their original expectations, but for that matter, neither did the Space Shuttle. For the F-22 its more of a case that we just arn't currently involved in conflicts that require it. If we got into a war with another superpower I imagine there would suddenly be plenty of missions for it, as it needs to go intercept other fighter craft.
F-22 like the F-35 the mainstream news just LOVES to pick holes in the aircraft. They always are going on about how OMG THEY HAVE TO DO FURTHER DEVELOPMENT AFTER ITS BEEN PUT INTO SERVICE. OMG IT HAS SOME DEVELOPMENT PROBLEMS. So they then start to call it a money pit, or case-and-point of military wasteful spending.
The reality is, this is what happens when you develop ANY new system. You always have problems. There hasn't been an engineering project in the history of mankind that hasn't experienced some sort of serious set-back or issue. That's just how things happen in the real world. To make matters worse, people always run with the expectation that things should always work the first time every time, and it obviously is a failure on the designers part for not foreseeing said issue.
I'm an Aerospace Engineer, So I will admit I am probably a little bit biased, but it irritates me to no end when people start making wild assumptions like "NASA DOSNT DO ANYTHING, NASA TAKES 99.9% OF THE FEDERAL BUDGET" etc. etc.
And your right, we are most likely using 80% of the airframes and basic armaments are still in use today as what we used in the gulf war. The Russians still use the AK-47 as a primary armament, and that was from 1947. Most of what has changed to day is what we use to gather and communicate information. I would say almost 80% of the information gathering/communication equipment that the military uses has changed since only 15 years ago.
As far as US military ships go, the biggest development would be the Aegis Combat system. Most of this development was done post end of cold war. And now we have almost 90 cruisers fitted with this system. Considering the Aegis is set to replace several previous ship classes, I would say this is a pretty significant development. Also the Aegis system was specifically design to combat anti-ship missiles. We also have the Stiletto stealth ships that are being manufactured, which are in some ways a descendant of the prototype Sea Shadow.
There are many reasons that can cause the US to collapse, and I would say overzealous military spending isn't one of them. I would agree that we shouldn't still be spending like we are at war, but it's important to maintain the industry. All of these Specialist designers for stealth technology and missile systems dont come out of nowhere. We need to maintain the industry we have to ensure that we retain the capability.
An example would be the Apollo era. After the last Apollo mission NASA pretty much went cold turkey, and stopped interplanetary human spaceflight. So now since all of that heritage and capability was lost over the years, we are still struggling to get it back.
It's never as simple as oh hey, lets just stop spending on military research and only do it when we really need it. Since if we did, and we did end up needing it, we wouldn't have the time to make all the mistakes required to build that industry back up.
