Russian Arms Sales

Little article on Russian arms sale, not a subject we track: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-how-many-countries-buy-weapons-from-russia-2017-7

The article is based upon the first DIA report on the Russia/Soviet military that they have published since 1991. I have not read the report but note that the article states: “The DIA report, however, has been criticized by some for being too hawkish, just like previous DIA reports on the Soviet Union.” I have not reviewed the DIA report and don’t have the ability to really do so properly, but I do remember well their old reports in the 1980s, and they were certainly “too hawkish.” They clearly overemphasized Soviet strengths and ignored many of their weaknesses. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

More to the point, we engaged one of the Soviet armed countries, Iraq, in the Gulf War in 1991; and we had a chance to review their military in the 1990s (something which I have some knowledge of). I have never seen a systematic analysis of what the defense and intelligence analysts were saying in the 1980s compared to what they were able to see in the 1990s, but there is an interesting story there about our misperceptions and failures to understand the Soviet military.

 

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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