this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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So far, we've seen a lot more practical tech deployed by Russia than by the west in the conflict. The dynamic with state owned industry and private contractors is very different. The whole set up in the west is a basically a scheme to siphon as much tax money out of the system as possible and transfer it into the hands of the people who own the war industry. That necessarily means making weapons that are expensive to produce and maintain. That's how you make the most money. On the other hand, a state owned military complex sees costs as a negative and the pressure is to produce things that are cheap and reliable.
Russian military complex is not quite state owned. It's complicated. For instance, Kalashnikov is a private organisation now. Russian Helicopters (it's the name of the company) is a joint stock company. Same is Rostec, iirc. Sukhoi construction bureau gets a lot of their systems from other orgs, many of them private. The government is issuing demands to crank up production, but is unwilling to cough some dough for the workers. It's a mess
I was under the impression that Rostec was state enterprise? And I recall reading that a lot of old Soviet infrastructure such as UralVagonZavod is still around and under state ownership. This kind of stuff seems to be the core of the military industry as most of the fighting is done by the artillery. I get that things are also messy, but it's pretty evident that the mess in the west is on a whole different scale.
The key here is "enterprise". It's basically a stock company, with the control stock owned by the government. It's still answerable to capital. So is the government. My friend works in a place that got rolled into Rostec some time ago (no details obv). Some of the changes imposed from above are straight up western IT shit. Meanwhile they can't get the AC fixed, so last year they suffered in +40C indoors.
I think what it comes down it is how quickly Rostec can be streamlined into something that's actually efficient. Ultimately, the government has the power to force it to change, and I imagine now that there is a need there will be changes. However, there is no possibility of doing that in US right now especially given that US is not directly involved in the war. There is no legal or political path for the government to dictate to the private industry. And same story in Europe where companies simply don't want to build factories because they expect to lose money on them in the long run.
I get that things in Russia could be a lot better, and that capitalism brought a lot of the worst aspects of the west along with it. I'm just putting this into perspective that the west is inherently in a worse position because capitalism has been operating here for much longer.