The American outlet 19FortyFive has published an article by columnist Jack Buckby, in which he argues that several of Russia’s advanced weapons programs — including the T-14 Armata tank, the Su-57 stealth fighter, the MiG-35 combat aircraft, and the long-range aviation project PAK DA — face a significant gap between ambitious public plans and actual implementation.

Buckby maintains that Russia’s ambitions are large, yet its future weapons programs struggle to keep pace. He wrote that systems such as the Armata and the Su-57 were intended to strengthen the country’s military capability, but many of the most prominent developments still exist primarily as small-batch prototypes or early production models. Some projects, he argued, seem so far from practical realization that they may never reach the market.

He further claimed that the widening disparity between what Moscow promotes — or believes it needs — and what it can realistically deploy raises doubts about Russia’s ability to modernize its armed forces during wartime.

Buckby also asserted that the Su-57 program is among the most affected, noting that by early 2025 Russia reportedly had fewer than two dozen such aircraft in service, despite presenting the fighter at the 2025 Dubai Airshow and declaring strong international interest in the platform.

The concluding commentary to the article highlights what the author did not address: the modern war in which Russia is engaged has imposed new requirements on weaponry and forced the defense industry to reassess its priorities. If some programs have been paused, others have come to the forefront. For example, the commentary notes that Russia has little immediate need for the Armata tank at a time when contemporary warfare demands drones, electronic warfare systems, and high-precision weapons capable of reliably bypassing enemy defenses.

The closing analysis also points out that, during this same period, Russia has fundamentally renewed its strategic nuclear forces and developed several types of hypersonic missile systems that are described as not vulnerable to NATO air defenses and capable of delivering a nearly guaranteed strike on any designated target.