Funds affect everything; from design, tooling, to sustainment and continual improvement. If you don't think so, look at the US military circa 1989 and circa 199

Funds affect everything; from design, tooling, to sustainment and continual improvement. If you don't think so, look at the US military circa 1989 and circa 1999. While there were qualitative improvements in those 10 years, the 1999 US military was much weaker because of huge cuts in military spending, AKA the Peace Dividend. Look at all the failed, truncated, or outright cancelled US military programs over the last 30 years. Crusader. Comanche. A-12. Seawolf. DDG-1000. B-2. F-22. EFV. GCV. These were all either shortsightedly gutted or cancelled when they didn't progress enough in development. Developing military gear is very hard, even when you have the world's largest military budget. Now imagine doing it with 5% of that GDP. That's how small Russia's economy is compared to the US. Don't make the mistake of thinking that Russia can't develop good weapon systems because their leader is a snot sucking wanna-be imperialist. They just can't develop AND produce them in the scale that they used to. Funds matter...