My list has holes because actually its worse than all that. To list all the areas where Russia has lost its position would take a week.
Yep, everyone buys some stuff abroad but Russia is heading to the point where its not buying a few stop gap systems abroad but entire classes of weapons that will make up a very large % of the procurement budget.
In many respects, the country is returning to where it was at the end of the 19th century when it imported and licensed foreign designs exclusively.
Even basic kit for infantry is now imported. As it stands right now Russia cant even make competitive optics for small arms. Watch videos from Dagestan and Chechnya, and count how many soldiers have put EOTech on their guns. You want to brag about the MiG’s IRST when there is not a single acceptable red dot sight made in Russia?
They dont even make goggles and knee pads domestically and have to import Swiss goggles for the mountain divisions, Swiss and German skies, and American pads. Russia, the land of snow and ice, has to import skies for its mountain units! Is the US importing basic infantry kit too? These are small things, but signs of a deeper disease.
More like you listed a bunch of equipment they never took much pride in anyway. The USSR never made targeting pods, as aircraft had internal targeting systems; they never made any revered pistols or bolt-action rifles post WWII either. Russia has never attempted to make large naval vessels either, since Soviet ones still work fairly well for another decade or so. So I don’t know what you are talking about in terms of “economically” – you have no benchmarks whatsoever. Smerch is arguably the best MLRS around, unless you have direct evidence to the contrary. Lada is in testing – some small part of the electronics didn’t work right – boohoo, its a test sub – what a surprise? And for diesel engines, there’s some fairly decent T-90 potential upgrades with loads of extra horsepower.
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