Just popped to my attention when Jeff commented. I see lots of press release stuff on new Russian stuff, but if you read closer into articles about done deals, the end up being crappy deals fraught with lacking quality and underdelivered promises. Which the Russians vow to make right but have a had time living up to. Nobody wants good 20 year old tech. Quantity does have a quality all its own, true. And modern stuff has pretty steep requirements regarding training and a skilled labor force to produce the folks to operate and maintain it. I saw forsthand the Bear bombers the Indians were operating before they bought P-8s.......... those were a horror show. Indians poured millions into modernization programs that never happened.....
Yeah, it takes a skilled workforce to produce the stuff, and the US and most of the west have that ability. What we don't have, it seems, is the ability to hang onto that stuff before it falls into the hands of those other guys. I mean by hackers, spies, and just plain stealing, which those other guys do very well, perhaps better than us, even. Couple that with greedy, or disgruntled Americans willingly exposing and delivering the info to the enemy, well, we have a real big problem.
Most of our enemies are not stupid, and they are getting more and more sophisticated in their use of our technology all the time. All it will take is one or two golden bb's to really wreck havoc on us and ours. A hacking group to take down systems for just long enough to gain the edge for them. They have lots and lots of stuff, and people willing to use that stuff.
I still think, and have posted this numerous times before, that the only solution is complete eradication to extinction of the enemy, but it ain't gonna happen. They will not win, but we won't either.
We live in dire times. Very scary.
