Posted on 04/24/2018 8:08:30 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Russians are what they have been since the late ‘80’s, a paper tiger. If Trump truly wanted to take the Russians down a peg or two, just simply initiate a new arms race, they’d hang on a little longer than they did with Reagan, but eventually go bankrupt.
Not even a miss? Did the Russians turn it off after we assured them none of their forces were being targeted?
RE: Not even a miss? Did the Russians turn it off after we assured them none of their forces were being targeted?
I suspected that when I heard that Trump actually gave the Ruskies a heads up as to his intentions.
Anti-air is becoming an economics game. How much does a SAM cost? What is its effectiveness? Could you potentially use your entire inventory to counter a drone strike and then get hit by a manned air strike?
Iron Dome missiles cost $45000 each. The missiles they are shooting down average $1000-1500?
That's called 'holding your cards close to your chest.'
Before I make an assumption that the S-400 is junk I too would want to look a little deeper into the subject. See if Ivan turned it off, or the Syrians were busy at a Goat Orgy first.
I suspect they did not attempt to fire the weapons.
They knew they would give away the actual abilities of the weapon, would not stop US from destroying the target and they knew the target was illicit weapons.
They were warned we were about to, they chose to let it happen.
Might have been a very smart move.
We would have been listening very carefully for the signatures of their system.
Far better for it to be untried and unproven than to become a known quantity with countermeasures in place.
Another possibility is that someone found a software vulnerability and inserted a virus into the C-cubed-I system causing them to not fire anything. (The Israelis did this about eight or nine years ago.) The Russians certainly would not say anything as it would confirm a system vulnerability to countermeasures. We would not say anything either.
So no missiles are fired and no one admits anything. Sounds like a system failure but could be much more specific than “lousy system”.
Matthius Rust, IIRC.
After he was released from a Soviet prison, he went home and stabbed some girl.
T?he Russians claimed to have shot down over 70 missiles.
Based on what I read in the European media after the attack it appears that the Russians did not activate or turn on the S-400 system. The claims by some that this missile system is so advanced that it could clear the skies of aircraft is simply stupid in the extreme. Throughout the history of warfare for every great thing there is a countermeasure - often surprisingly cheap.
I imagine the future (in the short term) of anti-aircraft suppression lies in drones and stealth technology. There is no way to hide the transmission of radar - it announces its presence loudly and it makes the most essential part of the system very vulnerable. Once it activates if there are drones in the area the radar is toast. There is also no evidence that the S-400 reliably detects our stealth aircraft.
Despite the bluster from Putin, there was no upside to them employing the S-400 to protect facilities that Assad had already evacuated so they can continue to tout their system and we can continue to speculate on its effectiveness, but without a doubt drones have changed and will change the threat and countermeasure game in ways we cannot imagine.
“The Russians are what they have been since the late 80s, a paper tiger.”
The USSR was *always* a paper tiger. Some people called them “a third-world country with first-world weapons,” but even that was overestimating them.
Our intel agencies consistently overstated Soviet capabilities throughout the Cold War.
One of the major reasons there was no nuclear war was that their weapons were not accurate enough to take out our response capability, while we could drop a warhead on the podium in the Supreme Soviet.
We were also able to track their missile subs and take them out at will. The Japanese ruined that for us when Toshiba gave our non-cavatating propellers to the USSR.
I think you are right. I think the Russians knew what buildings would be destroyed in Syria, and maybe they figured the loss of a few buildings, was acceptable.
“Throughout the history of warfare for every great thing there is a countermeasure - often surprisingly cheap.”
I wonder how the S-400 would do against the Wild Weasel.
the list of the various changing russian claims of the S-400 from shooting down to 70 allied missiles to “well, we didn’t use them at all on purpose” and everything in between, OUGHT to be powerful lessons to Freepers here who lap up every word of russian propaganda posted here.
OTOH, it looks to me like much of the russian propaganda here is posted by repeat offenders who i suspect are actual russian trolls themselves ... something else Freepers should keep in mind when they chime in on how great the russians are ...
Well, they hit something ...
Israel did something similar when it took out the Bushear plant back in the 00’s. Syria went dark, the Israeli’s took out the plant, and they came home and had lunch.
My guess is the systems were a) not on line, b) not ready for prime time - potemkin village style, or c) disabled through something clever.
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