Russia has experienced a decline in its overall military power since the fall of the Soviet Union, but it has recently announced its largest rearmament plan since the end of the Cold War. Its rearmament plan will include building “1,000 new helicopters, 600 combat planes, 100 warships and 8 nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines.” This massive militarization program will reportedly cost $650 billion. The militarization program will also include “a massive re-equipping of Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrent” and the “deployment of new generations of air defense and antimissile weapons.”
The article calls this program an “impressive shopping spree”, but also throws some cold water on the entire program in some later comments in the article. However, if Russia builds this much new weaponry, it will be a major military expansion to be sure. Russia can easily afford such expenses in a climate of rising oil and energy prices. Russia is a major exporter of oil and gas so its revenues skyrocket as the oil and gas prices rise on the world market.
This kind of Russian rearmament program is entirely consistent with the prophecy of Ezekiel 38-39 that Russia, China, Iran and their allies will launch a surprise attack against the latter-day nations of “Israel” (the modern nations descended from the ten tribes of “Israel”—see my articles, books and audio messages on this subject) at the very end of our current age. When American war-planners anticipate military scenarios, they need to always factor in the fact that Russia and China are strategic allies so Russian-Chinese military power must be added together in any realistic future war-gaming.
China and Iran are already known to be in the middle of massive weapons-building programs. China is especially known to be building weaponry (supersonic cruise missiles and ballistic missiles to attack US aircraft carriers and anti-satellite weapons to attack US satellites) to enable it to go to war against the USA. Now Russia is joining the militarization program.
What is the USA doing to prepare for this future war? Almost nothing. The USA is spending an immense amount of money on the Pentagon budget, but the nation is receiving very little “bang for the buck” in terms of new military procurements. The USA is basically expending itself fighting another no-win land war in Asia. The Vietnam War drained America of lives, equipment and money for many years. The two Iraqi wars did the same thing. Now the Afghan War is draining the nearly-bankrupt USA of more resources and is wearing out America’s fighting personnel and prematurely wearing out American military equipment with endless deployments. The second link below reveals that the USA intends to build almost no new warplanes for several years into the future to replace its current fleet of aging warplanes. Amazingly, the second link reports the average age of an American warplane is 22 years! This means the USA is still mostly using weaponry designed (or built) in the Reagan presidency.
So, Russia, China and Iran are building lots of new weaponry. The USA is not building much of anything in the way of new weaponry (it cancelled its top-of-the-line F-22 assembly line) and is wearing out the old equipment it has in its military inventory. The European NATO nations have all but disarmed. It looks to me like the world playing-field is being set up to make the USA and its NATO allies ever-juicier targets for a reinvigorated and remilitarizing Russia, China and Iran to attack. That is exactly what Ezekiel 38-39 prophecy will eventually occur.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20110228/wl_csm/366331
http://www.airforce-magazine.com/datapoints/2009/Pages/DesolationRow.aspx
