Posted on 10/08/2015 10:28:08 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
On Oct. 7, Russian warships in the Caspian Sea fired 26 high-tech cruise missiles at rebel targets in Syria—a staggering 1,000 miles away.
The missiles in question, which the Pentagon calls SS-N-30s, were mostly unknown to the outside world before the Oct. 7 raid. Even close watchers of the Russian military were surprised to see them. The missile attack was also highly visible. In many ways, it was an announcement to the world, and America in particular, that the once-dilapidated Russian navy is back in action—and that Putin’s missileers are now among the planet’s most advanced.
Planning for the missile attack began on Oct. 5, six days after Moscow’s warplanes conducted their first bombing runs on rebel holdouts in western Syria. Russia is intervening in Syria ostensibly to help the Damascus regime defeat ISIS, but the Russian attacks seem to be hitting ISIS’s enemies more than the terror army itself. What’s more, critics point out, Syria provides Moscow strategic access to the Mediterranean Sea.
“Russian reconnaissance had discovered a number of important objects of militants, which were to be destroyed immediately,” the Russian Defense Ministry explained in a statement. Drones, surveillance satellites, radio interception, and human spies on the ground helped planners select the targets, the ministry added.
“The strikes engaged plants producing ammunition and explosives, command centers, storages of munitions, armament, and [oil], as well as a training camp of terrorists on the territory of Raqqa, Idlib, and Aleppo,” according to the ministry. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the missiles struck all 11 planned targets.
The Russian military celebrated the raid with a press release and an official video, and Shoigu went on national TV to praise the operation. Kurdish militiamen shot video they claimed depicted the missiles flying over northern Iraq. And the U.S. military apparently closely tracked the rocket-powered, guided munitions—and later claimed that several malfunctioned and crashed in Iran.
The media coverage was at least as important as the destruction of the alleged rebel facilities, U.S. defense officials told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “This is Russia demonstrating on a global stage that it has a lot of reach,” one official explained.
Eric Wertheim, an independent U.S. naval analyst and author of the definitive Combat Fleets of the World, a reference guide to warships and their weapons, agrees, saying of the missile volley: “I think it was a demonstration to the world.”
The missiles in question, which the Pentagon calls SS-N-30s, were mostly unknown to the outside world before the Oct. 7 raid. Wertheim and other foreign analysts were familiar with an earlier version of the SS-N-30 called the SS-N-27, but the latter is an anti-ship missile and the analysts assumed it could only fly 150 miles or so— a fraction of the roughly thousand miles the rockets traveled during the recent raid.
The SS-N-30 obviously boasts much a much greater range than its predecessor missiles and can also strike targets on dry land. That makes it broadly similar to the American Tomahawk missile, which the U.S. military traditionally fires in large numbers from ships and submarines in order to wipe out enemy air defenses before conducting aerial bombing campaigns. The U.S. Navy fired Tomahawks to hit the most heavily defended ISIS targets at the beginning of the American-led air war over Syria in September 2014.
Very few countries posses Tomahawks or similar munitions—and only the United States and Great Britain have ever successfully used them in combat. Now Russia has joined that exclusive club of global military powers. And that should worry the Pentagon, Wertheim said: “It should be a wakeup call that we don’t have a monopoly on the capability.”
What’s particularly striking is that Moscow has been able to build this long-range naval strike capability with much smaller vessels than anyone thought possible. In the U.S. Navy, large destroyers, cruisers, and submarines carry Tomahawk cruise missiles—and those vessels are typically at least 500 feet long and displace as many as 9,000 tons of water.
Russia has joined an exclusive club of global military powers. And that should worry the Pentagon. The four brand-new warships that launched the SS-N-30s were much, much smaller—ranging in length from 200 to 330 feet and displacing no more than 1,500 tons. “Small ships, big firepower,” Wertheim commented.
That matters because, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia’s shipbuilding industry suffered a long period of deep decline that the Kremlin lately has struggled to reverse. That has had a profound effect on the Russian navy. “There are relatively few new warships in service at present and the ones that have been commissioned in recent years are all relatively small,” Dmitry Gorenburg, from Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, wrote in a recent analysis.
But the October barrage proves that even the small warships that Russia is building can strike hard and far—something that, once upon a time, only the United States and its closest allies could do. Moscow’s missile raid helps re-establish Russia as a global military power. “They’re very serious about this,” Wertheim said.
“Clearly a minority opinion. So how much safer would you feel if the USA had no A/C carriers? Why I every other country trying to develop and build blue water aviation capabilities? “
Every military starts a conflict ready to fight and win the last war. Technology has moved on to smaller, cheaper, automated and disposable. The entire Navy (minus some of the submarines) is oriented to protect the carriers. Once they get hit the rest of the Navy might as well go home.
With satellites and satellite weapons, precisely targeted ICBM’s and Mach 3+ cruise missiles a carrier will never find safe haven. If there is some small probability of hitting it with a relatively inexpensive weapon then the enemy will build and launch enough that the probability will always be one. The asymmetry of the cost alone ensures the carriers will be destroyed.
As for why every country is trying to build them; status. The French continued making heavier and more elaborate armor long after they understood knights so equipped were dead meat to the cheap longbow.
Carriers are wonderful so long as you aren’t fighting a first world opponent.
Article neglects that they can be 200kt+ loaded.
Sorry, but our LGBTs can take out ANY cruise missile battery that the Russians can throw at us.
SERIOUSLY - what do YOU IDIOTS think the Russians have been doing with their oil wealth and open access to Western Technology for the past 20 years, designing video games? Just because we GUTTED OUR MILITARY does not mean the rest of the world did nothing.
YOU IDIOTS calling for war with Russia over Ukraine (and here now), BETTER UNDERSTAND that this is not the only surprise they have in store for us, there will be PLENTY MORE if we decide it’s time for WW3.
No doubt it’s the same with China. So how about a compromise, WE BUILD UP OUR MILITARY before running around the world trying to start WW3 - at least we’ll have a chance then.
Your attention to this thread, please.
Also note that we’re almost out of Tomahawks and we don’t have more coming in the production pipeline for a few years. The Russians don’t have this problem.
Putin’s foray into Syria is or should be taken as a sales presentation
he is putting his wares on display for all the tinpot’s wanting weapons to salivate over.
I'm going to guess that larger ships can deal with rough seas better (like the Atlantic in winter), can travel further before needing more fuel/supplies, and can stay at sea for longer periods of time.
A multitude of smaller ships seems more survivable than a small number of big ships. Particularly if they can coordinate air defense.
Clearly you are no naval expert.
Well it took Ronald Reagan, Maggie Thatcher, and Pope JPII to break the Soviet Union.
It only took One idiot, Obama, to give it all back to them. Hand that man a second Nobel Peace Prize.
...after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia's shipbuilding industry suffered a long period of deep decline that the Kremlin lately has struggled to reverse. That has had a profound effect on the Russian navy. "There are relatively few new warships in service at present and the ones that have been commissioned in recent years are all relatively small," Dmitry Gorenburg, from Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, wrote in a recent analysis. But the October barrage proves that even the small warships that Russia is building can strike hard and far...
That ship sailed in 1998
“...according to the ministry. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the missiles struck all 11 planned targets.”
So they say...
Trust but verify...
As for the concern about Tomahawk stores being depleted, I cannot imagine why they would, since ordinance procurement, advancement, testing is at an all time low...
I would say the stock we do have is for deployment purposes only, and that when launch platforms come back they make haste to the depots like Seal Beach, Indian Island and the East coast depots as soon as they can to offload so the other rotating ships can go there to take on those weapons...
Calls to congress-critters go ignored, regardless of your affiliations...Even to ask reasonable non-classified questions like are we even building new weapons??? No need to give numbers, or where they are going...
Anyone with kids in the service doing live fire exercises???
There’s lots of ways to see if anything is even alive and functioning in our armed services, equipment-wise...
Now, as far as the Russians and their systems go...I say, “Welcome to the party fellas!”
So they developed a VLS system...
Considering all the exhaust blast debris coming out of those canisters in the videos I saw...Looks pretty kludgy to me...But if is works, it works...
I would venture to say some cooking of the BDA data is possible...You can say all 11 planned targets were hit...
How bad???
o\Or was it a conventional strike hitting something that you assigned to a missile, and the missile took a dive on the way and you just want to claim all of them worked as planned...
My skeptism is healthy, based upon a lot of study into Soviet/Russian engineering and weapon design philosophy...I know there are folks out there with better data now than I’ll ever have, but the history doesn’t really deviate very much with Russians...Sure they try to look like us in the night launches of their stuff, kinda like what we have been doing for years...
They wanna look cool to the world as well...And that IS a big part of how Putin and his military want to look...
Yo Soy Mue Macho!!!
Just my initial take on these events...
“A/C carriers”
What’s that??? Air-Conditioned carriers???
Looks fellas, if yer gonna go back and forth on the keyboards, try to use a vernacular/nomenclature that doesn’t give potentially different interpretations of what you are trying to say...
One thing is for sure, our overall ability to project power has shifted, and nothing has been developed, politically, diplomatically, mechanically, or even tested to adjust our ability to conduct that global policy...
Other than to reduce its ability at its current capability...
An Aircraft Carrier is still a pretty hot ticket to have where you need it...But as some may understand it is a big target, yep, and our missions to keep it floating hasn’t changed...
the days of saturation attacks by multiple flights of bombers and ALCM’s, SLCM’s and other surface to surface systems is reduced globally, the tech has improved where that may no longer be necessary...
We countered those saturation attack plans with those nice AEGIS cruisers and destroyers back in the day...They did well to be able to handle that mission...Now our shields have new, higher traveling targets...And they are handling that mission...
I believe we can match the threat with weapons system upgrades to our existing stand-off weaponry, but its got to be actively pursued...
FReeper “Spktyr” brought up some good points as usual...
Our stors of deployable weapons may be down to a very low level, and with reloads being scare, what do we need to do???
Build more??? Sure...Build better, develop better??? You betcha...
How do we do that??? Congress, a NCA who knows how to get this tenant of governments purpose back in gear...That will probably not happen for a few years...
Also, lets not forget how you defend against systems that are not as good as your stuff??? You design your defense around how you defeat our stuff...Because lets face it, our stuff is better than theirs...
Spktyr may argue about that, and I’m cool with that disagreement, but my experience is we do practice that...And have for a long time...
Sure, the Russian stuff looks cool, they claim it works...The Chinese have Carrier busters...That’s important to know...
Do we just hope they don’t use it on us??? Sure...
But do you really think the ChiComs are gonna get in a shooting war with us, their bestus economic friend in this day and age???
Same thing with the Russians???
No, both sides are gonna duke it out with proxy conflicts and spats all over the place...
The only thing going on is a re-arranging of the chess board...
And not a lot is “not” known, or off the table...
Just another opinion of mine...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M-54_Klub#/media/File:Club-K002.jpg
A quick reference picture...
Do you notice “how” the launching system is packaged???
Imagine someone buying it looking like that, and maybe integrating a nice “special” warhead on one or more launching out of that???
When you are trained to notice stuff like that
That’s the “rocket” system the Russians were shooting out of their ships VLS the other day...
This display caused me to think outside that box...
Just sayin’...
http://www.islamicinvitationturkey.com/2013/03/19/russian-frigates-to-get-advanced-kalibr-missiles/
Whether it is true or not, my next search may reveal Iran’s “Order Of Battle” and if they are receiving these upgrades...
Lets see what Iran still has floating around these days...
BRB...
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iran/ships.htm
Nahhhh, not much moving and shaking here...
For the record, all information found and posted is suspect, I make no claims to its authenticity or accuracy...
What it does do is give a little bit of context to where the threats “trend”, not where they may actually go, or lead us...
Given the multimission nature of our shipa, In many respects it’s the other way around.
There are plenty of scenarios where the job of the carriers is to provide the air cover necessary to protect the other ships as they conduct things like land attack (using Tomahawks) or ASW.
Even providing air cover for USAF assets, like strategic bombers, in areas where the USAF can’t reach with it’s own fighters.
The USN operates holisticlly, as those ships then protect the carrier in turn. It’s very much a symbiotic relationship.
Russia can’t do that. What they’re doing is only possible because we allow them to do it. Or at least dont stand in their way.
Those little SSM ships would be ducks in a shooting gallery the minute we decided to go after them.
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