A call to reality: Russia’s special military operation showed the world the weakness of the American defense industry, by Lucas Leiroz

The Russians have better weaponry than the U.S. and they pay a lot less for it. From Lucas Leiroz at strategic-culture.su:

Decades of making weapons to sell rather than fight and fighting low-intensity “wars” have turned the American military-industrial complex into a network of useless startups.

Every day videos circulate on the internet showing Russian soldiers shooting down Western drones used by the Ukrainian armed forces. There are records of the use of hunting rifles, stones, pieces of wood and even simple water bottles against American drones in Ukraine. Apparently, anything can be used to shoot down a Western UAV, this being a fragile and vulnerable military artifact.

In the same sense, Western tanks and artillery systems once feared around the world have proven to be true paper tigers on the battlefield. Having absolute control over the airspace in the conflict zone, Russian forces freely use aviation, artillery and drones against armored vehicles and missile launch systems in Ukrainian positions. Moscow constantly eliminates NATO military software, destroying not only enemy machinery but also the entire myth of American military “superiority.”

Russian efficiency against overrated Western military products has shocked the world audience. Few people expected Western aid to Ukraine to be so ineffective. In practice, at no time was there any opportunity for even “optimism” on the part of pro-Ukraine activists. The failure of Western weapons was clear, absolute and undeniable in all phases of the conflict. Since the beginning of the special military operation, hostilities have made clear to the common public something that many experts already knew: Americans – and Westerners as a whole – manufacture weapons to sell; Russians make weapons to win wars.

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has become accustomed to a condition of global military hegemony. With the end of communism and the dismantling of the USSR, Washington no longer had a geopolitical adversary with equivalent combat strength, becoming the only world power. After reaching this condition, apparently, American strategists entered a kind of “comfort zone”, adhering to the irresponsible belief in an “end of history”. In the American mindset, all conflicts from then on would be low-intensity wars, demanding reduced military strength and more focus on technology than on conventional military capabilities.

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