Should the West fear Russia's military build-up?

By Michael Stott - Analysis

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian bear is showing its claws again, but how sharp are they?

President Vladimir Putin has rattled the West with a wave of dramatic military announcements redolent of the Cold War.

Long-range Russian bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons are back on flying patrol around the world, prompting NATO fighters to scramble in response.

New long-range missiles have been test-fired, one streaking from one end of Russia to the other in less than half an hour, according to official accounts.

And the former Red Army is re-equipping itself, with defense spending growing 20-40 percent a year since Putin came to power in 2000, albeit from a low base after the ravages of the 1990s.

Should be West be worried ?

"Overall, Russia's military capability is well below 50 percent of what the Soviet Union had," Peter Felstead, editor of Jane's defense Weekly, said in a telephone interview.

"The bombers resuming flights was more a prestige thing and a diplomatic signal than real military posturing."

The State Department in Washington dismissed the bombers' reappearance as Russia taking "old aircraft out of mothballs" -- an unflattering reference to the backbone of Moscow's fleet, the propeller-driven Tupolev-95 which first flew in 1952.

"The West doesn't terribly need to worry," said Christopher Langton, a retired colonel who works as a Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London.

"Most of the product of the Russian military-industrial complex is for the export market to bring in revenues. Little goes to the domestic market."

YEARS OF NEGLECT

In the army, most tanks are outdated models from the 1960s and 1970s, according to IISS figures. Russia's navy has just one operational aircraft carrier after five others were decommissioned and sold to China and India in the 1990s.

And despite pledges to re-equip the military, analysts say new high-tech versions of existing weapons are still snapped up abroad before they come into service at home.

"The first buyer for the modernized MiG-29 (fighter) is Yemen and the second is Eritrea," said Ruslan Pukhov, director of Moscow's Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.