Posted on 12/21/2022 11:34:55 PM PST by Cathi
Clayton Morris: Washington's Dangerous Policies Have Put U.S. and Russia on the Brink of Direct Clash - Diplomat. All out war and it sounds from the United States side that they are ramping up this rhetoric instead of trying to tamp it down. What do you make out of these words coming out of Moscow over the past 24 hrs.
Scott Ritter: Well, I mean we have to understand where the United States is coming from first. We're losing in Ukraine. We have double downed; we've taken the mortgage, the kid's college fund and everything and we have placed it on a losing bet. We are going to lose. Ukraine will be defeated and decisively. NATO will be humiliated and the United States will be left holding the broken pieces. This is a reality. Now what does America do for that. There is going to be a lot of rhetoric, of course designed to shape a narrative. A hope that somehow Russia can be persuaded to seek a diplomatic solution...an offramp to this conflict. And so, rather than moderating their approach, rather than adopting the language of compromise, the United States is being aggressive.
The most recent aggressive move is the decision to provide Ukraine with Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries. But, when you think about it the first Patriot isn't going to show up on the battle field for months. This was is going to be over by then. It's a meaningless gesture and the United States knows it is a meaningless gesture. You'd have to train up an extraordinarily large number of Ukrainian forces....each battery takes 90 men...on the complexities of a system that doesn't work. Let's just be clear about the Patriot system...it doesn't work. It didn't work in the Gulf War. It didn't shoot down any of Iraq's scuds. It shot down more ally aircraft during Operation Iraqi Freedom than Iraqi missiles and was unable to protect Saudi Arabia's Aramco oil fields from the Huti drone attacks a couple years ago. This system has an abysmal combat record. Even if it did work it could not be incorporated into the Ukrainian Air Defense Network which is a Soviet era network right now being sort of patchworked with Western systems that are incompatible. There is no unified command and control, etc.
So the Patriot will go in. It won't work. It will be destroyed. Ukrainians will die. This is the outcome. But, from the Russian perspective this is just one more example of the United States upping the ante. And the Russian point of view is...to what end? Why does the United States keep doubling down on stupid? Doubling down on failure? At some point in time if you keep doing this the trajectory leads to the inevitability of a conflict...a military contact between Russia and the United States, Russia and NATO. So I think Russia is doing it's due diligence by calling the Americans out on this. By saying "This is a very dangerous direction you are heading on. You might want to think twice about continuing down this path."
Patriots do work. You don’t have credibility if you don’t see how you got this wrong.
A good portion of the massive Uki funding is feeding the insatiable Defense swine — which in turn feeds the political machinery that defrauded the taxpayers.
Meanwhile, we have a bunch of indignant FR clowns advancing the Uki charade at any cost.
“Patriots do work. You don’t have credibility if you don’t see how you got this wrong.”
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TRT World
NEWS MAGAZINE
The Patriot Missile is a myth
ADAM BENSAID 7 FEB 2019
The American public and the rest of the world have been sold the myth that the Patriot missile system is effective, and top of it’s tier. Here’s where this was proven wrong.
“The US army has announced its intent to procure a limited number of Iron Dome weapon systems,” said Colonel Patrick Seiber, spokesman for Army Futures Command, on February 6, 2019.
The choice to acquire the Israeli missile defence system marks a significant shift from US reliance and the global emphasis on the effectiveness of the Patriot Missile System of the same class.
Research and development of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system were partly funded by a $429 million US investment.
Missile defence remains a contentious issue in the 21st Century. While global powers develop state-of-the-art missile systems to counter stealth aircraft on battlefields shaped by raging electronic and cyber warfare, their track records for shooting down missiles leaves much to be desired.
For the United States, this is especially problematic given that the Patriot missile system is at the forefront of NATO defense strategy. More critically, the US announced punitive sanctions on Turkey for opting to procure the S-400 missile defence system over the Patriot missile system after being repeatedly denied procurement rights. The US changed its stance on not selling the Patriot missile system to Turkey, after it had already inked a $2.5 billion agreement with Russia for two S-400 batteries in April 2017.
Israel’s Iron Dome has allegedly shot down more than 1,200 projectiles since going operational in 2011, catching the attention of some countries including Saudi Arabia, and more recently the United States.
The system is unique in that not only does it feature a reliable rate of interception, but it can tell if the incoming projectile is going to miss a target, saving a $100,000 interceptor from being fired altogether.
But given that the United States is already the owner of cutting-edge missile defence systems for its forces - also widely used by most of its NATO allies - the decision to acquire the Iron Dome System to “fill a short-term need” is questionable.
Why the Patriot Missile doesn’t work
The US 2019 Missile Defense Review cited the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missile defence system’s “proven combat record”.
US officials inflated its success during Operation Desert Storm significantly, however, surrounding the missile system with a mythical reputation for effectiveness.
During the 1991 Gulf War, the American public was informed that the Patriot missile had a near-perfect record, intercepting a total of 45 out of 47 Scud missiles.
This estimate was later revised down by the US army to about 50 percent. Even then, it noted “higher” confidence in only about 25 percent of the cases.
A Congressional Research Service employee commented that if the US army had consistently and accurately applied its assessment method, the number would be far lower. Reportedly, this number was one Scud missile shot down.
Following a House Committee on Government Operations investigation, not enough evidence was found to conclude that there had been any interceptions at all.
There is little evidence to prove that the Patriot hit more than a few Scud missiles launched by Iraq during the Gulf War,” the investigations concluded.
“There are some doubts about even these engagements,” it added.
The report, which called for declassifying more information on the Patriot missile and an independent evaluation of the missile defence programme, was crushed under a lobbying campaign by the US army and Raytheon, leaving only a summary publically available.
Seeking options
More recently, however, Saudi Arabia put its Patriot defences to the test and found them severely lacking, with outright failures.
In repeated missile strikes from Houthi rebels using unsophisticated ballistic missiles, the Patriot missile failed, at times spectacularly.
Despite Saudi Arabia claiming a high success rate for the missile system, it discussed obtaining advanced S-400 missile defences from Russia following the Patriot failures.
A diplomatic source also claimed in mid-September that Saudi Arabia had purchased the Israeli Iron Dome defence system to defend itself against Houthi rebel missile attacks.
Saudi Arabia isn’t alone in pursuing better options for the sake of national security. NATO allies such as Turkey also entered into discussions to bolster their missile defences by acquiring the Russian missile system, causing significant friction with the US, triggering a trade war and leading to threats that F-35 stealth fighter deliveries to Turkey would be cut off altogether.
Incoming, Incoming
During late March 2018, Yemeni Houthi rebels launched seven ballistic missiles towards Saudi Arabia, which were intercepted, according to the Saudi Press Agency.
The National, an English-language news outlet from the United Arab Emirates, reported that “one person died and two others were injured” by shrapnel over Riyadh.
But Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said on Twitter that in video footage of the missiles, it appeared that one defence system had ‘failed catastrophically’, while another ‘pulled a U-turn’ and exploded in Riyadh.”
This was not reported by Saudi news agencies, which continued to claim that all incoming missiles were shot down.
Lewis believes that it was “entirely possible” that it was the defence system failure, instead of the incoming missiles themselves, that caused casualties or injuries.
This raises critical questions not just about Saudi Arabia’s use of the missiles, but of the United States, which sold Saudi Arabia — and its elected public — a false representation of the missile defence system.
A closer look
More recently, experts at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies closely studied two different missile attacks on Saudi Arabia from both November and December 2017.
In both cases, they found it highly unlikely that the missiles were intercepted, despite official statements.
In their study, they examined where resulting debris, including the missile airframe and warhead, fell and where the interceptors were located.
In the two cases, a clear pattern was visible. The Patriot missile itself falls in Riyadh, while the incoming missile separates, passes defences and lands near its target.
One such missile warhead landed within a few hundred metres of a terminal at Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport. The second warhead, fired weeks later, nearly destroyed a car dealership.
In both cases, the report concluded that in spite of official Saudi claims, neither missile was shot down and that Saudi Arabia may not have even tried to shoot down the first missile in November.
With little evidence that Saudi Arabia shot down any missiles fired by the Houthi rebels during the Yemen conflict, and the United States’ own failed experience with Patriot missiles during the first Gulf war, a more serious question is posed: who is to say that the Patriot system even works?
While the US army’s statement announcing the acquisition of the Israeli Iron Dome missile defence system clarified that it would be a short-term solution while the US reviews its options, by purchasing an Israeli system and overlooking a US system with a questionable past, the US may be admitting to the failings of its own missile defence.
Source: TRT World
adam.bensaid
AUTHOR
Adam Bensaid @AdamABensaid
Adam Bensaid is a Senior Producer at TRT World.
I honestly believe that most of these clowns, God bless them, are permanent residents of the left tail of the Bell Curve. When their Creator was handing out gray matter, not everyone got an equal share, they are perennially unable to connect the dots.
I am truly dismayed as never before by our "leadership". They are leading us "to hell in a hand basket" (to coin a phrase 🙂 ). They are like sharks in a feeding frenzy. No thought whatsoever, just a frenzy, an orgy of dumping America's treasure down another rat hole. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine — there's always another unfillable rat hole.
Patriot Missiles are set up to defend certain areas and/or specific defense sites. The missiles are not [usually] set up to shoot down all incoming missiles. Thus, some incoming missiles are not targets.
Early Patriot Missile Systems could suffer some programming errors. One error was specific, because of an old processing unit; and tracking of inbound missiles might eventually error:
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~smp/COMP205/LECTURES/ERROR/lec23/node4.html
Yet, the greater error (back then - 1990’s) was, that Patriot Systems rely upon “combined arms” information flows - meaning coordination of various weapons systems that are supposed to be keeping each other updated with the latest threat info.
Without such coordination of info, some mix of automatic-plus-human decision making, could result in a miss.
AFAIK
Meanwhile, a Patriot Missile System on the ground in Ukraine, is likely to need a lot of protection. Putin may “naturally” require destruction of the system site, using whatever Putin demands for that destruction.
these people need to be pulled from any official office before they drive us headlong into a mess we can’t recover from
I’m sure the pro-Ukers on FR will be more than happy to see this happen when it turns into a WW3 of the nuclear variety.
💥💥💥 The Ukrainian conflict has benefited US arms manufacturers who are profiting from it with abandon, according to The Responsible Statecraft columnist Julia Gledhill.
In her article, she writes that the US Congress has given the Pentagon “wartime procurement powers” to speed up aid to Kiev. Now contractors associated with arms deliveries to Ukraine do not have to account for their expenditures. In the author’s opinion, arms manufacturers are certain to take advantage of this opportunity and jack up product prices. 💥💥💥
The Washington Post
Democracy Dies in Darkness
Amid a show of unity, Zelensky and Biden differ on some war needs
Behind the smiles and handshakes and a new $1.85 billion military aid package - the Ukrainian president and his advisers continue to push Washington for advanced weaponry that Biden is reluctant to provide
By Karen DeYoung and Missy Ryan
Updated December 21, 2022 at 8:29 p.m. EST
December 21, 2022 at 8:13 p.m. EST
| Published
Deplete our best military hardware, drain our strategic oil reserves, pit every social group against one another hoping for violence, disarm every Patriotic American, don’t prosecute criminals but DO prosecute grandma, grandpa and any parent who gets in the way of the indoctrinations, spend every last American penny to add financial bankruptcy to the moral and political bankruptcy we already have and lie about what is true to the faces of the American people every way and every day, and what do you get? Just another day in this progressive March to end the United States of America...once and for all. We are weak, broke, divided and worst of all....STUPID! But yeah. Let’s concentrate on transitioning 4 and 5 year olds and not even think about what the history of the world has taught us all and just accept what is about to happen as a big shock and surprise. Brandon said his goodbyes to these “United” states long before the big cheat. Now we’ll all have to. Sure hoping someone will change minds and Make America Great Again but no breathholding going on here. Not pretty but pretty simple.
On the merits, the Turkish argument offered against the Patriot is grossly ignorant in that Israel's Iron Dome is not equivalent to the Patriot. Iron Dome is a terminal defense system against small rockets, principally launched from Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria. Against longer range missiles, Israel has several other systems and is looking to deploy a new model based on the Patriot.
As for the record of Patriot systems defending the Saudis, antimissile defense protocols are to the effect that not all incoming missiles are worth shooting down, only those projected to hit where they would do harm. This spares interceptors when attacking missiles are so badly aimed as to not present a threat. Knowing the true score, the Saudis and other Arab states continue to seek more Patriot systems.
Most of all, logically, if Patriot is so bad, then why is Putin so upset about it being sent to Ukraine? In truth, Patriot missiles and radars stationed in Ukraine would help not just Ukraine but would also help block Russian missiles and bombers from menacing NATO's eastern flank. Take that, Vlad, you idiot loser.
My observation about them is that they appear to be stuck in the pre-Soviet collapse Cold War, and are just itching for a fight with “the Russkis.” Meanwhile, back in the realm of reality, Vladimir Putin, while certainly a corrupt dictator doing a lot of bad things, is inarguably the most rational player in the whole thing. There’s no mystery to why he’s doing what he’s doing: Putin rightly views the “woke” globalist West as both a military and cultural threat. I think his internal war within his country against the LGBTQ…blah…blah…blah agenda and other degenerate cultural influences is 100% genuine, and every one of us would do the same if we had the power. He knows how the “woke” cultural rot can destroy a country from within, and he’s determined to not only fight it within Russia but to prevent neighboring Ukraine from cozying up to fully degenerate Europe and importing it. Second, he knows that Europe, and increasingly the U.S., is run by a globalist cabal intent upon destroying any remaining national sovereignty in the world in subservience to the “new global order.” He will never allow that, nor will he allow Ukraine to become a neighboring outpost of globalist military power. Again, were the tables reversed we would react in a similar way to an effort by Russia or maybe China were it to occur on our borders (well, at least we would have reacted back when we had actual American leaders and not Communists in charge).
Yes, Putin is using absolutely brutal tactics to get what he wants, as has been Russia’s SOP for a long time. However, I can’t fault any of his reasons for doing so. The western globalist cabal has become a MUCH more dangerous enemy than Russia, and we’ve got to seriously ask if the U.S. hasn’t joined the wrong side in this war. This time, WE might be the bad guys.
Meanwhile, China sits quietly on the sidelines plotting their global hegemony and none of the fools all wound up over Russia invading Ukraine pay one bit of attention to them.
This is ironic, because they now form a coalition with the super woke libtards, who hate Putin because the Russians are resisting Global Homogenization, aka, Globo Homo.
Of course. This is WWIII. Russia is being forced to retaliate against their real opposition.
When Russia retaliates against the United States of America, it will be on our soil.
I worked for Martin Marietta in the early 80s and saw first-hand what happens when a contract is let on a “cost plus” basis. These are contracts that have no fixed budget, but simply pay the contractor whatever its costs are (or are claimed to be) plus a “reasonable” profit on top. The MX missile (which was a great weapons system otherwise) was built on a cost-plus basis. As a result, whenever work on some other contract (a fixed cost contract) was bumping up against its total authorized amount the company would instruct everyone to instead bill work on that contract against the MX contract. This was obviously outright fraud and caused spending on MX to balloon out of control, but remember, MX was “cost plus”, so for years no one paid any attention. Eventually though, the government caught on and it became a massive scandal.
Seeing how a cost plus contract could so easily become a cash cow for a defense contractor, I never harbored any illusions that the practice had entirely been cleaned up. And now, these contracts for Ukraine appear to be even more lucrative than cost plus, because the contractors don’t even have to pretend to be documenting actual costs. I guarantee that every other program at these companies will also be feeding off the Ukraine contracts, just as occurred with the MX contract at Martin Marietta.
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