[The Duke]

Many of their toys are falling apart from lack of maintenance.

But how do we really know that? I mean, am I supposed to believe Dan Rather on this!? Also, why would a nation in such a state produce a nice, new, nationkiller sub?

It just doesn't all add up to me.

[KirklandJunction]

The Kursk wasn't an immediate immaculate conception. It, and its predecessors, go back to Stalin.
How can they do it? Starve the people! Spend all the money on subs, missiles and planes.
Remember NATO expanding to defend Europe against the Russian dominated Warsaw pact threat of thousands of tanks?
After Eastern Germany fell, we found out the tanks couldn't run.

[John H K]

Many of their toys are falling apart from lack of maintenance.

But how do we really know that? I mean, am I supposed to believe Dan Rather on this!? Also, why would a nation in such a state produce a nice, new, nationkiller sub?

We REALLY know that. It's pretty blatantly obvious what a sorry state the Russian Navy is in. It's exceedingly easy to track ships entering and leaving port, and the Russians hardly ever sail.

No matter how bad you think the Russian military is, it's worse than you think. Just a complete disaster in terms of maintenance and training. Huge problems fighting in Chechnya which is a fairly tiny place that's IN Russia.

There's still leftover inertia from when Russia WAS a superpower....try checking on when the Kursk was laid down. You'll note the Kursk is no longer a nice, new sub, btw. Takes a while for that much military production to grind to a halt. They're still working on new military technologies, some new weapons, to make export money. But in terms of what REALLY matters (maintenance and training, boring things like that ) not stuff that doesn't really matter but seems to be important to people that don't really understand things military(breathless, overhyped website reporting on stuff like the Shkval, etc.) the Russian military is a disaster.

[marsh2]

BTW, there was a lot of inference tossed around that the US was implicated in the sinking of the Kursk. I recently heard she was salvaged and brought back to port. Any word on what the final determination was? Was is an issue of maintenance or was there some other factor that led to its demise?