It's kind of a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason. USSR/Russia has always loudly overstated the capabilities of its military and military hardware. The US

It's kind of a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason. USSR/Russia has always loudly overstated the capabilities of its military and military hardware. The US tends to stay mum about the capabilities of its hardware and when it talks about them, it tends to understate. Even when the F-22 shot down that Chinese balloon (a hilarious use of cutting-edge air power) it was more impressive than it might have seemed at first glance. For years the claimed ceiling of the F-22 was 50,000 feet. But then they mentioned that it shot the balloon down from a height of 58,000 feet. Now the Wikipedia article (after years of edit fights) seems to have settled on 65,000 feel and the official USAF page says "above 50,000 feet". Maybe a trivial example but kind of representative. (Don't get me wrong, the US "flexes" military might in other gaudy ways. I'm not saying we are humble and Russia is not. It's just funny how the two countries go about it differently....)