Posted on 04/24/2018 8:08:30 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The past few days have revealed yet more evidence of the failure of one of Vladimir Putin’s world-beating whiz-bangs – the S-400 Triumf antiaircraft system.
The S-400 is a supposedly state-of-the-art SAM system capable of knocking down either aircraft or missiles from treetop level to high altitude. It’s a multilayered system featuring four distinct missile types with a maximum range of nearly 250 miles, which means that it dominates airspace of the eastern Mediterranean littoral. It is considered to be best in its class, the missile system to beat. Some observers have gone so far to assert that the S-400 threatens to eliminate use of air power over the battlefield.
Russia deployed two S-400s to Syria, the first in late 2015 after a Turkish fighter shot down a Russian SU-24, the second in January of this year. This was generally interpreted as Moscow laying down a marker as to how seriously in took its Syrian alliance. The Russians played this to the hilt, periodically threatening to unleash the S-400 on all comers while utilizing the system as a shield for the activities of forces loyal to Bashar Assad.
The deployment of the S-400 led to serious misgivings and sleepless nights among Western nations, particularly in Israel. This ended with the April 13 strike against Assad’s nerve gas industry, when the U.S., Britain, and France fired 105 missiles against targets in Syria. Every last missile hit its target while the mighty S-400, Slayer of Missiles, failed to launch so much as a single SAM in response. (The Syrians fired a number of missiles – perhaps as few as two – after the strike occurred. They hit nothing.)
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I remember it too. I will never buy Toshiba.
Tell that to all the Turks that Russian Konkurs missiles are killing in their ex-German Army frontline Leopard 2s in Syria. I wouldn’t be so secure in your assumption.
It is not a case of a S-400 failure, but a case of being ordered to stand down. No Russian assets were targeted, no Russian was harmed. it would not be a surprise if the Russians were informed of the targets before the strike.
Target Russian bases and assets and watch the S-400 batteries linked to S-300x batteries come up and take names.
This writer i off in left field. Or just plain left out.
How much does a SAM cost?
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Unlike western Anti-Access system the S-300x and S-400 system comes with several choices of missile depending on the target, distance and so on.
Those were obsolescent Buk, Tor, and S-200 systems. They were launched after the strike. The count is not believable.
I agree. Why waste your assets when you know you are safe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-400_missile_system
Not surprisingly, cost numbers per shot are not available. But, having spent an entire career in the military industrial complex I’d be stunned if the cost was under, say, 1.5 million US dollars per missile. It’s not just the cost of each shot, it’s the electronics that has to be unaffected by all sorts of electronic jammers that run up the cost.
Also, costs of military equipment is always inflated by unrelated social costs that are tagged to each piece. Things here like diversity training, defined benefit retirement plans, 401k’s, insurance probably have their analog in the Russian system. Here, we are also burdened by ridiculous “green” requirements. They probably have something like that as well.
Alas! I did NOT know.
Mr. KAHANER: Basically, it's the anti-Western cache of it. And we all sort want to be a little bit outside but not too far outside, so it reminds us of terrorists. And you know, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, so we all sort of think, oh boy, we've got a little bit of Che Guevara in us. And this accounts for the popularity of the weapon.
Plus I think that in the United States it's considered counterculture, which is always something that citizens in this country always kind of like. We see it in out t-shirts, we see it in our greeting cards, we see it on our TV programs. It's kind of sticking a finger in the eye of the man, if you will.
One thing they have in common. They’re very anti-Jewish and anti-Israel. At least a couple of them are members of antisemitic organizations.
Heck, even the launch of Sputnik, probably the closest the Soviets have ever come to truly matching our capabilities by beating us into space, only happened because then-President Dwight Eisenhower deliberately allowed them to do so, thinking that if America actually did launch a spy satellite into space first, because it technically contradicted elements of international law, the Soviets would have exploited that to essentially throw a massive temper tantrum across the world via Soviet-orchestrated international protests. Eisenhower even went as far as to prevent Werner von Braun from launching such a satellite on January 1957 (well ahead of Sputnik in other words). In other words, the Soviets only got that far due to America essentially granting the USSR a handicap. In fact, the U-2 spy flights verified that we were well ahead of military satellites, rockets, and ICBMs. We had such a huge lead, in fact, that Eisenhower saw absolutely no need to expand the space program at all. Too bad the media seemed to think otherwise and engaged in hysterics, which ultimately led to those who were running for President after Eisenhower, even Nixon, pushing it for political gain (particularly LBJ, who darkly warned that the Soviets would bomb us “like kids dropping rocks onto cars from freeway overpasses”). And here’s another thing not known about Sputnik: Most of its legacy and Soviet footholds involved putting small dogs into squat metal containers and then shooting them into a high altitude, sometimes killing them in the process.
On a related note, during that same time, we had developed various intricate weather tracking systems and maritime global positioning systems, and in fact, by August 24, 1960, one of our satellites yielded pictures that covered over 1.5 million square feet of Soviet territory, which included detailed photographs of “64 airfields, 26 surface-to air missile sites, and a major rocket launch facility,” and within days of this managed to pick up more information than had been gained with the earlier U2 flights, with the Soviets having no comparable surveillance capabilities.
Now, if it were Tsarist Russia, I’ll admit that they might have us beat regarding at least high quality photographs. But the USSR being a serious military or even technological threat is a bit laughable. Don’t get me wrong, the Soviets were definitely a grave threat overall, especially in terms of the espionage field and sphere of influences (after all, they had taken over Hollywood, the State Department, labor unions, and other high places via subterfuge, and besides which, Soviet spies were the reason why the Soviets had access to nuclear weapons, which inferior to our own or not are STILL a pretty grave threat especially regarding the Western Powers), but militarily or even technologically, they’re not even that big of a threat.
“Too bad the media seemed to think otherwise and engaged in hysterics”
They were doing a good job in their primary mission: that of agents of the USSR in the Cold War.
Yeah, agreed. Though I’m honestly surprised that they’d go that far, considering that, technically, ensuring the enemy won would require ruining any attempt at building up any armaments on our end, which ultimately would include the space program.
They had no vision.
Let's not forget the role the Norwegian company Kongsberg played in the incident. They're not as high profile as Toshiba, but were no less culpable. What is also galling about it was that neither company suffered any serious long-term consequences.
Note: this topic is from . Thanks SeekAndFind.
“The Japanese ruined that for us when Toshiba gave our non-cavatating propellers to the USSR.”
Nah. that didn’t ruin anything. We still could track their subs in real-time.
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