@farmerman,
farmerman wrote:
Ill see whether Georgeob has any opinions about Russian "maintenance". Anything looks great when its less than 5 years old.
Why is much of the old Soviet nuclear navy on the bottom of the sea?
This is not something that I have spent a ton of time on but my understanding is that Putin and his people decided that the military they inherited from the Soviets would be a little use even if they could fix it, so massive reforms were taken, basically replacing the Soviet military with a new Russian military. The ranks were vastly shrunk, most of the equipment they did not even try to maintain, they set about making a new force structure with new training programs, and they got to work building new equipment. The idea was that Russia is never going to invade Europe, what they need a force of small highly mobile highly lethal units of well trained men who can operate largely without command and control from Moscow. Chechnya was the wake-up call.
Further I have heard that in order to get enough money to do all of that needed upgrades and maintenance to the nuclear force had to be sacrificed, the large nuke missiles and their launch systems being the one part of the Soviet Force that is still required in their view .
I too would be interested in anything that Georgeob has to say on the subject, he likely knows more than I do on this.