Rusiian Military is superpower

Ok I`ll try to make my point as clear as possible. I`ll mention that I`m not a native English speaker, so excuse me for my spelling and grammar errors (anyway I`ll do my best to get rid of them) About resolution - I`m not clear how to properly describe it but main idea that I had was - Russian military is not a superpower (so I`m against this idea) because Russia is economically weak country, therefore it cannot sustain large army and deploy it globally in reasonable amounts (fighting countries like Iraq and Afghanistan). So more to the point: Russian government very often cannot pay wages to their soldiers [1]. These are not exceptions, but reality of modern Russia. Effective army doesn`t consist only from numbers and tonnage. Every soldier has to feel that it is worth being in the military service. Although I didn`t mention that Russia has mainly conscript army and military service last from 2 to 3 years. Very common thing among conscripts are phenomenon called 'Dedovshchina' (humiliation of junior soldiers) [2] [3]. Do I have to tell, that it is impossible to instill courage, comradeship, loyalty for country and other important military values in such a barbaric environment? Also - conscript army will never have such motivation as professional soldiers, because volunteers are motivated by money while conscripts are just waiting for the end of their service term. This lack of motivation can be fatal, because modern warfare today is being fought using high technology weapon systems and giving an AK-47 to soldier (even if there are hundreds of thousands of soldiers) is not enough. Modern warfare (like in Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan), where adaptation is more important than firepower.[4] Actually I couldn`t figure out what GDP dept has to do with military power? Ok, so be it - USA is a leader in this aspect. BUT - we are not talking about some 50 or 100 years in future (maybe there won`t be any USA then) so one main indicators is - how much money country is spending for it`s armament (it includes R&D of new weapon systems). Russian military spending has fallen dramatically since collapse of USSR [5]. Russian Federation military budget - 1.109 trillion rubles (around 35 billion U.S. dollars) [6].USA - $533.8 billion [7]. Russian inflation rate also has been constantly around 9-14% [8]So - USA is fighting 2 wars simultaneously and it has military presence all over the world. Source for my statement about Russian percentage for world military spending - [9]. If we presume that USA can be called military superpower (because it is the only state that clearly illustrates it with action), couldn`t there be some correlation? If world`s greatest superpower spends almost 10 times as much for it`s military, how come that Russians are so super effective in their attitude towards military expenditures? Russian military technology is aging [10] [11] - if the trend continues Western military industry will take over Russian part - India, China (not mentioning that they are developing military industry themselves so in not so far future they won`t even consider buying Russian equipment). What does it say about Russian military industrial complex if they pay their workers salary in sugar? It`s pathetic (or speaking in financial terms - not profitable) [12] And talking about Russians keeping some top-secret underground facility for their weapons cache is plainly childish - we can presume that US government has some ultra ``high tec`` alien UFO`s in Area 51 too. Everything is possible but were are your evidence? My evidence is that Russian sea and air fleet are aging and considering their military spending it doesn`t seem they have much money to spend on new weapons. And one more thing - Russia`s largest weapons manufacturer 'RosoboronExport' (http://www.roe.ru...) is state owned enterprise but doesn`t mean that all profits goes directly back to militarists. As for combat experience and possible substitutes. There are such thing called 'Wargames' - basically it means simulating wars using given data (troops, ships, airplanes, etc) and calculating the winner [13]. But it is hard to define using numbers such things as - military leadership, troop morale, will to fight - in short - all the psychological factors of warfare. And Russian military lacks many of them - Military leadership - it is well known that every army when starting the war replays the last one - it is inevitably, because every next war is different - it is one thing to fight in Europe near your country, but fighting 10k miles across ocean in hostile and unfamiliar environment is a lot harder if you haven`t invested resources in preparation for every possible encounter. How can country prepare for possible future wars across globe if it is sitting ducks in it`s barracks. If that was the case every military would use PCs to calculate their odds in different combat situations from comfort of their home. Russia has very little military presence abroad (and even it is mainly symbolic). Besides even if computer calculations are correct it is just simulation assuming that in real life army is capable of completing tasks necessary to achieve victory - logistics is working perfect, every unit knows it`s place and objectives, there are sufficient funds to pay for combat actions. There are numerous evidences that Russian military is barely capable of fighting war that is near it`s borders - Georgian war in 2008 - it showed that Russians are using not so sophisticated equipment (still hiding? :D ) - mainly Cold war surplus and some pretty new but with flaws. There are even evidence that some time military radio communications were so bad that soldiers were forced to using mobile phones to communicate between units. [14] [15] And is is only honest to say that Georgian military was ill-prepared and weak to resist Russian attack and their main strategy was to retreat to Georgian mainland. A little bit OFF TOPIC - If we compare these wars - in Georgia and Chechnya with stunning US military achievements in early phases of Iraq and Afghanistan it`s clearly visible how incapable Russian military is. You had an argument that USA is waging useless wars. Sorry, but military did it`s job long ago - now military is stuck with doing political tasks because of Washington`s dead end diplomacy and objective reality of Middle East. Military Vs. Military phases of both wars resulted in perfect victory. After smoke cleared there was power vacuum - it is as to say that local police department is guilty for increase of criminal elements in city. Police (read - US military) can do only as much as it can - trying to catch (read - kill) as many criminals (read - Taliban, etc.) as it can, but what can they do if there are more of them waiting around corner (read - neighboring countries - Iran, Pakistan, etc.)? We are talking about enemy crushing capabilities not about usefulness of these wars. [1] http://www.nytimes.com... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org... [3] http://www.youtube.com... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org... [5] http://www.globalsecurity.org... [6] http://english.peopledaily.com.cn... [7] http://en.wikipedia.org... [8] http://www.indexmundi.com... [9] http://www.globalissues.org... [10] http://news.bbc.co.uk... [11] http://www.frost.com... [12] http://rt.com... [13] http://en.wikipedia.org... [14] http://www.boston.com... [15] http://www.reuters.com...