RUSSIA’S MILITARY….Eric Alterman’s buddy, LTC Bob Bateman, suggests that Russia’s upcoming “training mission” with Venezuela’s navy shouldn’t worry us too much:
Today the Russian Navy is a shell of its previous self. Someday that may change, but for now it seems they have only one small aircraft carrier (which would not even have that title in the US Navy, because it is too small), two “Battlecruisers,” three Cruisers, 26 Destroyers, and 16 Frigates. It is unknown how many of these can do more than float while securely tied up at a pier….Of their once-vaunted (and frankly, feared) undersea capability there is also little left but a skeleton. At the end of the Cold War the Soviet Union could field some 170 submarines, many, if not most of them, nuclear powered. Today there are but fifty still in the inventory, and of that only 26 were operational as of 2006 according to open source reporting in Russia.
On the other hand, Russian airpower, which also fell on very hard times after 1991, has started to revive. But it’s still a shell of its Cold War self too, which is yet another reason not to panic too strongly over recent events in Georgia. Putin’s bluster aside, Russia’s military capabilities these days are distinctly limited.
