Here comes Russia

[c1ue]

Re: Here comes Russia

My comments about Russia's military speak mainly to the topic of Russia projecting power and influence beyond its borders.

Russia's ability to project power is different than that of the United States.

Russia isn't particularly interested in bombing 2nd and 3rd world nations; unsurprisingly they haven't built carrier strike groups.

Russia has, however, built a significant capability to provide cheap and reasonably effective arms against 1st world military technology - primarily aircraft.

To date the United States has not come up against Russia's '1st team' of technology.

It may well be that this '1st team' of technology is not up to the challenge, but then again it might be. As I've noted many times before, the export models of even the theoretically 1st line Russian military equipment is significantly degraded from what is used by the actual Russian armed forces. This applies equally to satellite nations like the ex-Eastern European nations, and to a significant extent 'little brother' nations like the Ukraine and Belarus.

Note that Russia has never done what the US did in Afghanistan in the '80s: provide 1st line anti-aircraft equipment to insurgents.

there's a reason why the poles are very nervous and would love to have nato forward anti-missile stations on its soil- nothing like the presence of evan just a few real nato troops as a tripwire.

The other reason is the nightmare scenario of Germany and Russia hooking up strategic interests. Poland and Russia have been antagonists for centuries.

[jk]

Re: Here comes Russia

heard a story on the radio today of attempts to round up the thousands of shoulder fired anti-aircraft weapons now floating around libya. i wonder whose they were? and i wonder who's obtained them already.

[c1ue]

Re: Here comes Russia

heard a story on the radio today of attempts to round up the thousands of shoulder fired anti-aircraft weapons now floating around libya. i wonder whose they were? and i wonder who's obtained them already.

We'll know when resupply cargo aircraft and helicopters in Afghanistan start going down with metronomic regularity.

[jk]

Re: Here comes Russia

We'll know when resupply cargo aircraft and helicopters in Afghanistan start going down with metronomic regularity.

wouldn't it have more effect to randomly take down commercial aircraft in europe and north america?

[c1ue]

Re: Here comes Russia

wouldn't it have more effect to randomly take down commercial aircraft in europe and north america?

It depends on which party is involved.

Al Qaeda no doubt would like to show that it still has fangs, but the people with the most interest (and immediate benefit) from anti-aircraft capability are the ones fighting foreign occupation troops in Afghanistan. Picking off military cargo planes and helicopters is far better bang for the buck - both militarily and in pure economic terms - than commercial aircraft, much as a seriously wounded soldier is much better than a dead one. Iraq is less of a destination because the main shooting is against other Iraqis.

In general, a 'terror act' of shooting down a civilian airliner, especially a passenger one, is hardly one which benefits any group these days outside of AQ. In particular, lending reason for the EU to strengthen or even just continue its support of the Afghan conflict is hardly a benefit.

On the other hand, if the opportunity arose to take down Karzai in 'Afghan Air Force One', that would no doubt be juicy.

[jk]

Re: Here comes Russia

It depends on which party is involved.

Al Qaeda no doubt would like to show that it still has fangs, but the people with the most interest (and immediate benefit) from anti-aircraft capability are the ones fighting foreign occupation troops in Afghanistan. Picking off military cargo planes and helicopters is far better bang for the buck - both militarily and in pure economic terms - than commercial aircraft, much as a seriously wounded soldier is much better than a dead one. Iraq is less of a destination because the main shooting is against other Iraqis.

In general, a 'terror act' of shooting down a civilian airliner, especially a passenger one, is hardly one which benefits any group these days outside of AQ. In particular, lending reason for the EU to strengthen or even just continue its support of the Afghan conflict is hardly a benefit.

On the other hand, if the opportunity arose to take down Karzai in 'Afghan Air Force One', that would no doubt be juicy.

a few random civilian airliners, taken down over several weeks, would destroy the airline industry and have huge economic consequence.

[c1ue]

Re: Here comes Russia

a few random civilian airliners, taken down over several weeks, would destroy the airline industry and have huge economic consequence.

Destroying the airline industry would have all sorts of positive economic impacts.

The entire history of commercial aviation is a net loss in business terms.

An airline as a business is like a mine: a hole you shovel money into.

Plus it would make all the Anthropogenic CO2 Climate Catastrophists really happy.

[jk]

Re: Here comes Russia

the airline industry itself has not made any money over its history. however, travel and tourism is a major industry in many places, and its effective end would cause severe dislocations. business travel would mostly be replaced by video, i suppose. sharp contractions at boeing, airbus, bombadier, embraer, etc, would have some repercussions.

[GRG55]

Re: Here comes Russia

The Ukraine isn't Russia. For one thing, it doesn't have the energy nor did the Ukraine have much of the technological development, manufacturing, or anything else. The Ukraine was/is farmland and pipelines.

How much of a military do you think Kansas would have were it split off from the rest of the United States?

The Antonov AN 225. Larger than a 747, the C5 Galaxy and the Airbus A380. From the Antonov Design Bureau in...Ukraine.

Now this mother will lift a lot of wheat. Or joints of pipe for one of those pipelines ;-)

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Here comes Russia

heard a story on the radio today of attempts to round up the thousands of shoulder fired anti-aircraft weapons now floating around libya. i wonder whose they were? and i wonder who's obtained them already.

I wonder why we don't build these things with a watchdog timer so they die after a year or so. Maybe a feature in the micro or code. Maybe a critical piece known to corrode or degrade at a predictable rate.

[oddlots]

Re: Here comes Russia

That little thing? They had greater ambitions once:



Or this:

Incidentally and even more OT, anyone long airships?



Airships may soon soar in the cold skies of northern Canada and Alaska, bringing supplies to remote mining communities where planes can’t always fly and roads are cost-prohibitive.

British airship manufacturer Hybrid Air Vehicles has announced a major contract with Canada’s Discovery Air Innovations to build airships capable of lifting as much as 50 tons, delivering freight at one-quarter the cost of other alternatives. Though various militaries have expressed interest in airships, this is HAV’s first commercial contract. The first ship is expected by 2014.

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/09...in-the-arctic/

Airships may soon soar in the cold skies of northern Canada and Alaska, bringing supplies to remote mining communities where planes can’t always fly and roads are cost-prohibitive.

British airship manufacturer Hybrid Air Vehicles has announced a major contract with Canada’s Discovery Air Innovations to build airships capable of lifting as much as 50 tons, delivering freight at one-quarter the cost of other alternatives. Though various militaries have expressed interest in airships, this is HAV’s first commercial contract. The first ship is expected by 2014.

[jpatter666]

Re: Here comes Russia

I wonder why we don't build these things with a watchdog timer so they die after a year or so. Maybe a feature in the micro or code. Maybe a critical piece known to corrode or degrade at a predictable rate.

*We* very well may -- other manufacturers and countries perhaps not so much. And of course, because of that, maybe we don't either -- after all, what country wants to be dependent on the good will of the US/arms industry to suddenly disable much of their military hardware.

Reminds me of a side-story I once read in the "War against the Chtorr" series where US weaponry *did* have kill-circuitry in it which could be remotely enabled. When various third-world countries attempted to invade the US using such weaponry, a funny thing happened. Their ships sank, the planes crashed, their rifles blew up....weren't many survivors.

[c1ue]

Re: Here comes Russia

The Antonov AN 225. Larger than a 747, the C5 Galaxy and the Airbus A380. From the Antonov Design Bureau in...Ukraine.

Sure, and the AN 225 was built for...the Soviet Space Program. All 1.5 of them.

The engines for the AN225 are also Ukrainian - do you feel confident that Pratt & Whitney and GE have something to worry about?

I wonder why we don't build these things with a watchdog timer so they die after a year or so. Maybe a feature in the micro or code. Maybe a critical piece known to corrode or degrade at a predictable rate.

At a guess, it is because military equipment already fails at a spectacular rate, not least due to highly stressful environment/situations and highly stressed users.

Adding in extra failure points probably doesn't help.

Airships may soon soar in the cold skies of northern Canada and Alaska, bringing supplies to remote mining communities where planes can’t always fly and roads are cost-prohibitive.

I'd suggest looking at this first before considering investing in airships:

http://www.ingenia.org.uk/ingenia/is...2/imperial.pdf

This is an update for von Karman's original analysis of this issue.

A chart with various forms of transport:

The point being - heavier than air plane travel exists because the speed is worth the vastly higher cost in some instances.

Lighter than air seems has all the cost issues of heavier than air travel, but no other benefits besides not needing runways.

For the applications noted in the article above, the airships may make sense - because the transitory nature of the destinations don't warrant building railroads or roads and the Arctic isn't particularly suited for heavier than air travel.

Very hard to see it for any other general applications.

[lektrode]

Re: Here comes Russia

them antonov's are something tho - we have em show up out here every once in awhile - actually got aboard one back in the 90's - for the kenwood cup sailboat race/series - a couple of the teams had decided that they needed to do the (near) impossible and enter both the newport (RI) to bermuda race, as well as do the k-cup, and just cuz the 2 venues are nearly 6000 miles apart? no problem - and hey! its only money, brah - they loaded up 2 maxi's (about 80footers) side by side in the antonov and flew the buggahs to HNL to get here on time for the race - talk about yer air freight bills - anyway - standing inside one of these things is quite the trip, its like being inside a subway tunnel and looking outside - HUGE is an understatement.

[ASH]

Re: Here comes Russia

heard a story on the radio today of attempts to round up the thousands of shoulder fired anti-aircraft weapons now floating around libya. i wonder whose they were? and i wonder who's obtained them already.

At 1:10 -- "Maybe we shouldn't play with them... they're missiles!"

Sort of hilarious.

One of the comments from the original Youtube post is interesting:

"Without the cooling\firing block+target acquisition panel they are harmless. And if the seeker moves- the battery will eventually run out of power.Also, they are way too old. Even in Chechnya terrorists had to fire 5-7 of them simultaneously to shoot down old 70s made helicopters. Just some junk. People will be taking it for gold\platinum\silver from the seekers."

Also, the SA-7 is already in the hands of insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan through other routes.