NATO’s rearmament reigns the secular defense debate of quantity vs quality

While NATO countries, including Canada, increase rearmament, they are increasingly faced with various ghosts of the Cold War, including the resilience of the Russian industry and its ability to be able to deliver weapons – which, although often technologically lower than the West – are “good enough” to wage war.

Moscow’s ability to produce A lot Dones, missiles, planes and other weapons of war have been hampered by long -term quality sanctions and erosion.

“Russia is currently having trouble building truly new and technologically advanced systems,” said Mathieu Boulègue’s report, published last month by the Chatham House reflection group based in the United Kingdom.

“Instead, it is based on systems and research inherited from the Soviet era. It also depends strongly on third -party suppliers to replace the essential components of the West – with import substitutions and interior production not meeting the requirements.”

The report partially exposes one of the greatest debates in the Western Defense Community at the moment. The 32 members of the NATO military alliance agreed to considerably expand military spending, aimed at making five percent of their gross domestic product for defense expenses by 2035. The accent, especially for Canada, is in high -tech innovation.

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But, should experts ask, should NATO countries invest billions of dollars in costly high-tech weapons systems, such as the F-35 Stealth Jet and the Sophisticated and recently ordered class River Hight Destroyers? Or should it be more accent on cheaper disposable technology?

Although the recognition of the debate does not exclude each other, the criticisms of high -spending high -tech plans indicate how Russian reservoirs of several million dollars are disabled and destroyed by small drones, inexpensive – inexpensive – in certain cases of garage.

The emphasis on the quantity on quality is something that NATO should pay particular attention to its creation of rearmament plans, said a Canadian expert on arms control.

“This is a long and long debate,” said Andrew Rasiulis, who formerly headed the management of nuclear policy and arms control at the Ministry of National Defense.

“The quantity has its own quality, and the Russians have the quantity.”

He said that too much should not be done because Moscow’s ammunition and equipment are less sophisticated and that the NATO countries, such as Canada, must examine their investments not by the objective of spending a certain amount of money, but what is meaningful.

“What is important is the capacity on the one hand to dissuade and defend, if necessary, against the other side,” said Rasiulis.

In many ways, NATO has already been here.

When the Cold War reached new heights in the 1980s, the Soviet Union maintained a huge military presence in the countries of the Warsaw Pact with a ratio of five divisions for each division led by the United States. NATO has compensated for better technology and nuclear deterrence.

Russia was largely equipped with less sophisticated Soviet weapons which benefited from common parts and ammunition, which meant simplified logistics and training.

Chatham House’s report said that despite the record level of the Kremlin military spending, the current state of its military industry is that of regression – contrary to what the Kremlin would have the world to believe.

“Production should probably be simplified and slowed down in the coming years, while Russia will be forced to accept the reduced quality of the results and will suffer from” stagnation of innovation “in its technological research and development”, indicates the report.

“These problems are not insurmountable. Russia will continue to mingle and continue to produce systems that are” good enough “to constitute a sustained threat to Ukraine. But being” good enough “to prolong a war against Ukraine is not the same thing as being able to follow Western (and Chinese) progress in military technology in the longer term.”

Russian knowledge shared with North Korea

However, it seems that the debate on quantity against quality is not only the NATO problem.

Ukraine’s defense intelligence Kyrylo Budanov said in early June that the basic technological know-how experienced by Russia was shared with North Korea.

On July 1, he said that Moscow had transferred the first batch of his air-s1 air-surface missile systems to Kim Jong-Un diet and provided technologies for Shahed-type attack drones.

“This will certainly bring changes in the military balance in the region between North Korea and South Korea,” said Budanov, quoted by the Ukrainian media.

Recent information, he said, indicate that North Korean workers are trained in Russian factories, including installations in the special economic area of Alabuga, Tatarstan, where modified Shahed drones are assembled.