Comment by dijit
4 hours ago
In nominal terms "we outspend them" is true, but it misses the forest for the trees.
Nominal spend is the wrong yardstick when one side builds at home for a fraction of the cost; Russian labour, steel and energy are far cheaper at the point of use, which is why PPP estimates put their real military output roughly level with the whole of Europe combined.
And spend isn't the binding constraint anyway: it's production. A budget line is not a full magazine, and we've spent years throwing our stockpiles into Ukraine while letting our shell and propellant lines wither instead of refilling them.
"We don't need to catch up" assumes the money on the page is already steel in the field. It isn't.
Russia is 3x poorer than germany and has half of our GDP.
Russia has power because of their nuclear arsenal which is unclear how well it is maintained.
But no we can fill up and build faster and better than russia.
And the war against ukraine is hurting russia now for over 1000 days. Russia even has to go so far to reduce mobile and internet. This alone hurts Russia as a whole.
[dead]