[adventured]

The majority of US military spending is on soldiers and things related to soldiers (VA care, housing, retirement, education, etc). Most people think the US is spending all of that money on hardware, when that's not the case.

Incomes and general costs related to soldiers in Russia are even lower proportionally compared to the ratio of the per capita output gap between the US and Russia. Russia doesn't take very good care of their soldiers in most regards. If you divert a higher share of your military spending to R&D and hardware, as opposed to soldiers, you could close the gap some (and the US wastes plenty of money on unnecessary things; so if Russia is more careful about that, and chooses to focus more on what they can really afford to make a dent in, they can further close the gap).