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To: CutePuppy
"Thirdly, the agreement does not touch upon non-nuclear forces, the development of which may minimize Russia's possession of strategic arms. It goes about cruise missiles - hypersonic arms, first and foremost. Hypersonic missiles will make it possible to solve the goals, for which nuclear arms were built, albeit without the use of nuclear arms. A greater number of carriers, which Russia achieved, will not play any role at all. Hypersonic missiles with the range of 5,000 kilometers and flight speed of 3 kilometers per second will be capable of striking enemy's targets in mere minutes. The enemy will not even have time to make any decisions. Russia does not have such weapons, because all those programs were scrapped during Yeltsin's presidency. Russia lags far behind the United States at this point.

It's interesting that they would bring this up about the hypersonic cruise missile part and its supposed cancellation. Last I remember the Russians where still working in this area and already based on their strategic outlook. Hell they may already have something. I smell some misdirection going on here.
60 posted on 12/25/2010 6:19:19 AM PST by DarkWaters ("Deception is a state of mind --- and the mind of the state" --- James Jesus Angleton)
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To: DarkWaters
I smell some misdirection going on here.

Not without foundation - the interview was by Pravda (though unlike NY Times, they have much more open forum for wide range of views) with the [ostensibly paranoid] Russian military expert.

However, he is correct that despite having certain successes (e.g, Sukhoi 4G/5G fighters program) overall, in the pace of their developments, Russia has lagged far behind not only the U.S. but is also being overtaken by the Chinese, who successfully clone / "shan-zhai" some of the better ideas of Russian and U.S. weapons programs.

Hell they may already have something.

They have had big problems with their delivery systems. Bulava-30 / SS-NX-32 has had only a couple of successful trials in the span of last five years and will be unreliable if / when actually deployed (with correspondingly great fanfare, I am sure) in relatively small numbers. In either case, they have no illusions about winning a direct confrontation with the [even weakened by her own government] U.S., and this is not something one supplies to the proxies (like Iran, Venezuela, formerly Cuba etc.)

All in all, it gives both sides another excuse / incentive to recycle and sell / purchase the material in the old warheads while doing nothing to preclude the U.S. developing and deploying the new missile defense systems - that's where Republicans played important role.

Ramifications here are mostly political, not defense-related - unnecessary "win" for Obama, singles out and raises importance of Russia as if they still matter as a direct and the only (by nature of bilateral agreement) military opponent while ignoring the "new world order" where rogue regimes are "independent" players.

62 posted on 12/25/2010 4:37:13 PM PST by CutePuppy (If you don't ask the right questions you may not get the right answers)
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