WASHINGTON, October 27. /TASS/. Western countries seek to inflate the cost of Russian weapons to justify their own spending on over-priced and ineffective missiles, military expert Mike Fredenburg wrote in an op-ed for Responsible Statecraft.
He pointed out that "Western analysts exaggerate Russia’s financial strain, while providing cover for exorbitant missile prices being charged by Western defense contractors." "This distortion obscures the reality that Russia’s cost-effective missile production provides a big advantage in sustainability, while high Western missile costs, combined with US difficulties in rapidly expanding missile production, is a huge disadvantage in any kind of sustained conflict, and could be a fatal disadvantage in going up against a peer competitor that can throw thousands of missiles at our ships and even attack US based military facilities," the expert noted.
In his view, "the West likes to inflate the cost of Russian weapons as a way to suggest Moscow is in a financial bind and manipulate the narrative of a looming Ukraine victory — while also masking real inefficiencies in the US defense industry."
The analyst emphasized that "due to difficulties in expanding production of prohibitively costly Western missiles, combined with low real-world missile interception rates, even if the US and Europe sent all their air defense missiles to Ukraine, they would fall far short of being able to stop most Russian missile and drone attacks." Fredenburg argues that "Western estimates produce misleading figures." "These inflated costs bolster the narrative that the strain on Moscow is tremendous, while downplaying the increasing challenges for Ukraine and NATO to effectively counter Russia’s relatively inexpensive missiles and drones," he specified.
"When it comes to weapon systems development, Russia typically adopts an evolutionary approach, incrementally improving existing systems, while the US is far more likely to pursue revolutionary designs incorporating unproven technologies, inflating costs," the expert remarked. He compared Russia’s Kinzhal hypersonic missile, effectively used in the course of Moscow’s special military operation, with the United States’ AGM-183 Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) program, which began in 2018. "It took a much riskier approach and is now over budget, behind schedule, and in danger of being canceled after over $1 billion invested," Fredenburg stressed.