Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu promises the arrival of the PAK FA (T-50) fifth-generation fighter jet in 2019 and the new S-500 surface-to-air missile system the following year. Shoigu believes such procurements will help to protect Russia against modern means of aerospace attack. While, Colonel (retired) Viktor Baranets argues that such developments, coupled with other trends in Russia’s military modernization, will offer the country a level of “strategic parity” with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)....
However, such perspectives seem rooted in optimistic defense ministry information campaigns, which explicitly promote an image of a resurgent military well on its way to meeting modern challenges—including any possible threat posed by the United States or NATO. The generally positive publicity for Russian manufactured arms and equipment is certainly doing no harm to arms exports...
...there are persistent and deeper issues at play within the domestic defense industry that no amount of information spin can conceal.
...low level of state investment in research and development (R&D)
Delays to procuring new systems frequently center on the inherent failure to coordinate between the various interested parties, including the defense companies and arms or branches of service that those new assets are earmarked for.
If expensive items, such as the PAK FA or the S-500, are procured in meaningful numbers, properly integrating these systems will require great coordination and effort. At the same time, lingering doubts apparently exist concerning new technologies linked to main battle tanks, with the defense ministry planning to procure modernized older tanks rather than rely exclusively on the new T-14 Armata...
But to extrapolate from this that Russian forces have already reached some level of conventional parity with NATO—or even that they might sometime in the near future—stretches the spin too far.
Moscow’s Pursuit of Military Strategic Parity With NATO
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