Russia and Ukraine

[The Grand Nudger]

Their goal was the swift annihilation of a country and a culture.  It not only still exists, it's making a laughingstock of them and costing them billions in weapon trades.

The s and k series was supposed to be better than patriot.  Turns out it's only marginally better than a bottle rocket. They (and by extension any other purchaser) should have spent their missile money on glide bombs.  The only people doing well off the war in ukraine, is us.

Demand for us weapon systems has increased beyond capacity...and we make alot of weapons.......meanwhile, at the last big despots ball, literally zero orders were placed for russian shit.

The S300 is quite good actually, provided that it's being used by a professionally trained force who know how to pick objectives and are motivated to use them properly.  I.e. the Ukrainian S300s have been well deployed and used.

Ukraine wants patriots.  The s and k probably don't rise to the level of quite good, but having anything that's good enough and sometimes does the job is better than nothing.  

At issue is whether the systems ever deserved their reputation, and the answer appears to be no.  Yes, garbage crews are an issue.   Poor manufacturing quality is an issue.  A clever adversary using every available method to defeat your system is an issue.  In some hypothetical world where russia was the kind of country that made better weapons and properly trained their crews and had a clown for a foe..in short, if russia were ukraine...well..looks like they'd still want patriots.

This isn't limited to just the s and k either. Russian armor has been defeated in the most absurd of ways, if you believe a single word of what russians say about russian weapons or what us defense contractors say about our own in relation. T90s have been engaged and defeated by bradleys....with the cannon. Jerry rigged toys have been striking russian vehicles with literal piles of every type of ewar russia has tied onto the hood. The dedicated ewar platforms are a favorite target for more advanced but still handmade drones. At this point they're erecting full metal sheds, murdering their traverse, and that doesn't seem to work either.

The russo-ukrainian war has been a disaster for the russian arms industry - in that the only thing they can sell on that anyone will believe them about..is that their stuff is cheap. The buyers already know that, that's the problem. Partner nations, putative allies, have to wonder if their buddy fucked them in ways that could take millions, billions, and years to recover from - if they have the time. I guess they can only hope that no one pissed at them is watching ukraine and getting ideas in the interim.

As I've mentioned in thread before, I think that this might be critical to understanding why putin rushed the invasion. If anyone knew what the world has now learned beforehand it would be the russians themselves, and they might have bnelieved that their window was closing or, in fact, already closed barring profound outcomes in third party countries - which might also help to explain why they spend more on intelligence and influence ops in those third parties than on ukraine.