Sir. I'm the smartest motherfucker I know. Literally. Mensa. Worked my way thru college. Passed the CPA exam. Radar air traffic controller. And then I started reading you. When I get the email notice, I stop whatever the fuck I am doing and run and read your article. I skim most articles. I READ your articles. Slowly. Kudos. My idiot country should fire the entire fucking NSA and CIA and hire you. Give you a big tittied secretary and a good corner office with a window.
Some people have said that intelligence is practically impossible to define. Well, when a human being observes an animal, say a monkey, or a dog, figure something out for itself, they will remark: "what an intelligent mut." So, that's what intelligence is: the ability to figure things out.
Thanks, this is the first time I've been called daft since the early 70s. What a person looks like or gets up to in the privacy of his own attic is no indicator of his/her/shis etc ability to build a wall, teach children to read or shoot down USbr-Ukronazi missiles.
I just wanted to get this to Simplicius, hope he sees this. You deserve at least a tip; almost certainly more. My problem is that I've become pathologically unable to leave credit or debit card numbers on anyone's data base. It would be unrealistic to expect the Thinker to supply me with a PO box or some method to send cash.
As an aside, there is Mike Adams HHR sites, HealthRangerreports that just recently, this last week or so, initiated a tip system based on crypto. The initial is based on Monero. I'm trying to understand crypto and may someday do that. Meanwhile...
Any thoughts by anybody would be appreciated. Maybe Simplicius could do something on Mikes channels. He cancels nobody unless they try to market porn or advocate illegal activities.
Apologies to Ernest for use of his comment space. I rarely comment anywhere. Although, Adams had fired his comment moderators and by next week, you can clear to comment on one, say brighteon social and it is recognized on every one of his sites. I will set that up next week after everything matures a bit. Again, sorry for seeming like an advertisement for HRR.
Simplicious is on the money..I learn a lot here. The world is full of "military experts" but most of them are liars phony's and or goofballs ..also there are many who think that because they were in gulf war or something they can speak authoritatively on all military matters. .. In US army basic training in 1970 i learned how to answer a drill sergeant how to fold my clothes and make my bed.. I was shown how to strip and clean and load and fire an M16. and given the chance to do so. In infantry school I I was taught to walk, crawl , run slow, run fast and dig holes. .I couldn't tell anyone fvck all about anti ship missiles even if my time in were last month instead of over 50 years ago.
Won't be long before Artificial Intelligence is embedded into these systems to automate and speed up the target identification and target lock not just within one system but networked AD.
I see this as beneficial for Russia, they get to test and adapt their systems to the Storm Shadow missile while the conflict is still contained in Ukraine. In case it escalates, better they have encountered the Western weapon systems already.
The Empire is also learning from this stuff. But given that the Empire is a kakistocracy they may not learn properly or perhaps learn fairly well but implement messily.
Make no mistake they already knew this reality. But saying Russian equipment is good doesn't make Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, and others money.
Turkiye was not tricked by such marketing lies and bought S400s. They are very happy with their choice I am sure, especially considering the alternative was Patriots.
I mean, the crux of the article is not that Russia can adapt their systems to the Storm Shadow........the systems are what they are, here he lays out exactly what it can see and what happens. Same with GMLRS, been a year and Russia hasnt "adapted" to them. So yeah, its plausible Russia can shoot them down, if a system is pretty close(10km) and sees it's comming. pretty hard with a frontline over 1,200 miles long.
Lololol. No they arn't. The height angle and speed they attack from makes them almost impossible with pantsir, buk,. I can send some links to telegram and reddit, daily videos of gmlrs blowing up russian equipment
If some targets are being hit by GMLRS, it doesn't mean all of them are being intercepted. No one is saying that Russian air defence has 100% chance of success.
Also GMLRS rockets are not that fast, can be perfectly detected on the radar (because they are not stealth projectiles and do not fly high) and they do not make evasive maneuvers.
It's always cool to get a close look like this, and I think your breakdown is both thorough and helpful, even if there's always that little voice in the back of my head screaming "But why take a video? Don't you understand how much info that gives your enemy even if you blank out almost everything?!"
We might not find out whether the Allies are able to do anything about the US air and space reconnaissance umbrella but if I was in the Russian air force, I'd have aircraft taking off and landing and decoy missiles launching all the time.
The SS is not produced in quantities to make any difference in the battlefield. They have been in play for 2-3 months and made no difference. Ukraine is using them to shoot at bridges amd undefended civilian targets. Whoopie. Russia is not concerned.
Yeah, that's a random guess based on no direct knowledge and no quantified estimates. Ask the 2 generals and last count about 20 Colonels and Majors that have been taken out if the SS made a difference.
You buried the lede. Last two paragraphs illuminate the significance of this event. ‘“ . . . the importance of these videos is that they are one of—if not the—first ever looks of a modern air defense system attempting to track and engage a low observable or stealth target.” Old reporter here. To draw people into the story I would have set this up near the beginning of the piece. Which indicates the west has overinvested in “stealth.” Heaven forbid, but it would be interesting to match up an F-22 or F-35 against Russian AD.
Russian AD vs. American "stealth" aircraft would be an almost literal turkey shoot. Just ask the Serbs about how difficult it was to shoot down a "stealth" F-117 Nighthawk with an ancient (even by '90s standards) S-125 Neva from 1961. It was so easy the Serbs made a turbofolk song about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=333OVHhpK5c
There's literally a Serbian National Assembly member of Hungarian descent (Zoltán Dani) who commanded the unit and explained it in multiple documentaries and books written about him, including why and how it was done. We know exactly what happened.
Wait a minute.. Isn’t insisting that the Serbs must had blind luck in order to be able to shoot down an F1117 itself, an overconfident arrogance in the performance of the F1117? In my opinion, all US military equipment are overhyped, overpriced and none can perform even properly, not to mention perform as they are sold to be.
It wasnt blind luck, but the same flight paths that the F117s used. Which allowed serbs to set up a "trap" for it. They pulsed low frequency radars to get a lock and shot it down. Now, look up everything you can about the F35, about its Aesa radar. In passive mode, the F35 would detect and triangulate ANY russian AD instantly. The S3-400s have to use massive energy requirements to try to scan the sky. The Aesa would lock up, jam, spoof and basically blind the radar in any situation. This would happen long before the Russians would be able to lock on or attempt to shoow down any F35. Yes, they can be detected, even best russian estimates are 20-30km away, by that time that radar would be long gone, along with any launch battery.
Lol, the F117 was flying the same routes, and known to be detectable at low frequencies. And also is not in service anymore. An F35s Aesa passive mode radar will have any Russian AD site identified/located and destroyed farrrrr beyond any range that S400 would be able to lock on, target and fire at the F35.
Mind you, this is a simple van-born radar about on par with a Russian Pantsir-S1 in power, so imagine what an actually capable multi-band radar such as the S-400's radar or the Su-35's Irbis-E could do.
Even if the F-35 had as much of a reduced radar cross section as, say, Su-35 (which isn't a "stealth" aircraft by any means) the F-35 still can't carry missiles with a long enough range to stay outside of the S-400's 400km range.
I've seen and read the article years ago. 1. It wasn't a "van born" radar, its a passive accoustic sensor system. 2. The F35s had their transponders active and pinging AND had lundburg lenses attached to them, if you dont know what those are look them up.
Lol listen, nowhere did i say its undectetable. Any in depth analysis will tell you 20-30 kilometers is the max detection and lock range. Again, by that time the Aesa radar and ew of the F35 will have located and either killed it itself, or transferred it down the kill chain to himars/cruise missile/artillery.
Finally, dude, no S400 is shooting at targets 400km away. Hell the one in crimea yesterday didnt even shoot the shark drone that ended up directing himars on it.
My takeaway is that if Russia is already detecting them, then more efficient solutions are already in the pipeline. If I was asked to describe the Russian military during this conflict, i say evolving, learning and adaptable.
Max Blumenthal has just made a speech to the UN documenting grey-zones audit into Ukrainian aid, a very interesting quote came up " Our audit also revealed the Pentagons 4.5 million contract with a company called Atlantic diving supply to provide Ukraine with unspecified explosive equipment"
The Greyzone (for whom Mr. Blumenthal works) has done outstanding work on actually visiting the Nordstream explosions and documenting the lies told by Western governments. I recommend you read their full series on the matter.
The second system detected it farther out because it wasn't head on to the flight path. Your numbers at the beginning were for the frontal cross section. The lateral cross section is likely much bigger, so the angle of detection likely makes a big difference. Having multiple systems will apparently cover a great deal of air space.
Another thing that could be going on is target sharing - if the systems are informed as to where their kin are, it's conceivable they're sharing target data as well.
In which case a target noted at 15km from a machine that's set up 10km from another machine which did the actual detection at 5km - that adds up. Netcentric af, as Martyanov would say.
These shoot downs of extremely stealthy missiles by the lowest-tier Russian AD is a grave intimation for what would happen should an American "stealth" aircraft such as a B-2 Spirit, F-22 Raptor, or F-35 Lightning II go up against Russian AD. Though, the Serbs' success with shooting down an F-117 Nighthawk "stealth" fighter-bomber back in 1999 with an ancient (by '90s standards) S-125 Neva from 1961 already made the outcome of such a confrontation clear. It was so easy the Serbs made a turbofolk song to gloat about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=333OVHhpK5c
I don't think calling it lowest-tier gives it justice. Russia have very different philosophy of arms. They take narrow area of deployment, then they create very specialised weapon to do one thing good. Then they create dozens of systems to cover every nook and cranny. And then they make them talk to each other. That's why they have so many types of everything.
Contrast it to US approach - making "elite" overly expensive, non-working jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none Bradleys/Patriots/F35 etc.
TORs/Pantsirs are not lowest tier, they are best-in-world SHORADs.
What options West have? Truck based battery of Stingers and ancient German Gepards? You gotta be kidding me...
USSR was grandfather of stealth technology. They knew it's development will be inferior to RADAR development. Same with planes vs AD. They knew AD is superior to aviation. Rock-paper-scissors of sorts.
I'm a retired Engineering Research Mathematician with work for the Military, Industry and Academia. One summer some years I took my oldest son to a week-long soccer camp at Notre Dame University. While he was practicing, I visited the Mathematics Library that had a treasure of the works of Russian Pure and Applied Mathematicians. In a word, it was stunning as I was watching the pioneers of my discipline not having, at the time, the ability to use the latest super computers which weren't close to development. These Russian giants did it all by hand which was absolutely staggering! Think where they are now. This article tells you in no uncertain terms!
Unfortunately (?), in the progressive West there are countless stereotypes about the Russian people, somehow Nikita Khrushchev is always in front of them as he beats the table with his shoes at the UN conference ! :)
Meanwhile, while they make disparaging remarks about the stupid "Russkis", the majority of them have never been to a ballet performance or the Opera, now I'm not even mentioning classical music ! In the meantime, we should take a look at the number of chess grandmasters in which country ! The result is clear, isn't it, the "stupid" Russians are the kings of chess ! Isn't it also obvious that the average American has no idea that Khrushchev was Ukrainian, by the way, he was the Soviet Party General Secretary who gave Crimea to the Ukrainians !
Anyway, the other day I saw a news about an American university mathematics competition, so let's see a miracle, all the (really :)) featured winners were Asian, I would bet a lot that they were Chinese ! :) Where are the descendants of the Mayflower ?
According to the news, three times as many engineers are being trained in the Russian Federation (no, not in the gender field) as in the USA, which is almost three times as many. For those who are well versed in the sciences, this number says a lot, and I don't even want to mention the lower and middle level studies in the USA with a grin. profile.
Most of my family are US and Canadian citizens, I see the level of knowledge their children acquire , I can only pity them !
to be fair, Khruchev was Russian from Kursk region, bordering Malorussia (Ukraine). he always described himself as a russan, and prior to became a leader of Ukraine SSR never actually spoke ukranian. Doesnt make him any better / smarter, but still.
Ghe Soviet Union had several weird historical anomalies. Usually history is written by the victor, but after the USSR defeated the Nazis the western world wrote the narrative. That narrative was that the Soviet military gear had simplistic engineering and shoddy manufacturing.
The problem was that the Soviets were incredibly secretive. We used NATO reporting names for Soviet hardware because we often didn't even know what the Soviets called it.
I had the privilege of sitting down with an F18 super hornet pilot from Canada. He also taught the Australians how to fly the super hornet. He had several missions in the Middle East and later finished his career off in Qatar as an instructor.
After listening to his stories, dog fights and missions, I asked him about stealth.
I asked him what he knew about russias s400 AD system. He said he couldn’t comment on it as it’s classifies but did say it’s very, very, very good.
Here's little old me skulking around the internet waiting for the next Simplicious to drop, and then BOOM. Cheers Simplicious you just made my day !
Sir. I'm the smartest motherfucker I know. Literally. Mensa. Worked my way thru college. Passed the CPA exam. Radar air traffic controller. And then I started reading you. When I get the email notice, I stop whatever the fuck I am doing and run and read your article. I skim most articles. I READ your articles. Slowly. Kudos. My idiot country should fire the entire fucking NSA and CIA and hire you. Give you a big tittied secretary and a good corner office with a window.
"Intelligence is not measured by how much you know, but by how much you have the capacity to learn." - Francesca Zappia.
Simplicius the Teacher has a good ring to it :)
Some people have said that intelligence is practically impossible to define. Well, when a human being observes an animal, say a monkey, or a dog, figure something out for itself, they will remark: "what an intelligent mut." So, that's what intelligence is: the ability to figure things out.
Given that pattern recognition is the underlying ability Spinford-Binet IQ tests are measuring, that... tracks.
Given that most people need someone else to tell them what has been figured out, the mutt example trumps the quote I shared.
SImplicius is a straight white man, your country only hires women, blacks, brownies, lgbt and transpeople.
You're funny, knob head. ;O)
aye aye, dafty
Thanks, this is the first time I've been called daft since the early 70s. What a person looks like or gets up to in the privacy of his own attic is no indicator of his/her/shis etc ability to build a wall, teach children to read or shoot down USbr-Ukronazi missiles.
This comment just came out of nowhere, wtf.
Were you just having a white supremacist hard-on?
Just rub one out please. I don't come here to read comments from frustrated lesser men.
return to reddit then.
*face palm*
Ivan is part of the Roland not-a-Slav-sky-ski-skee talk shop - may be he knows him personally, may be intimately........
It's tautology to write "lgbt and transpeople" which betrays your ignorance on this topic.
pardonne moi, mademoiselle. I am no expert in perversions.
"I stop whatever the fuck I am doing" - I just hope that you do not stop controlling the air traffic midair to read Simplicius :)
I am happily retired from all my endeavors lol.
I just wanted to get this to Simplicius, hope he sees this. You deserve at least a tip; almost certainly more. My problem is that I've become pathologically unable to leave credit or debit card numbers on anyone's data base. It would be unrealistic to expect the Thinker to supply me with a PO box or some method to send cash.
As an aside, there is Mike Adams HHR sites, HealthRangerreports that just recently, this last week or so, initiated a tip system based on crypto. The initial is based on Monero. I'm trying to understand crypto and may someday do that. Meanwhile...
Any thoughts by anybody would be appreciated. Maybe Simplicius could do something on Mikes channels. He cancels nobody unless they try to market porn or advocate illegal activities.
Apologies to Ernest for use of his comment space. I rarely comment anywhere. Although, Adams had fired his comment moderators and by next week, you can clear to comment on one, say brighteon social and it is recognized on every one of his sites. I will set that up next week after everything matures a bit. Again, sorry for seeming like an advertisement for HRR.
I’m the dumbest person I know, and damn proud of it!
Simplicious is on the money..I learn a lot here. The world is full of "military experts" but most of them are liars phony's and or goofballs ..also there are many who think that because they were in gulf war or something they can speak authoritatively on all military matters. .. In US army basic training in 1970 i learned how to answer a drill sergeant how to fold my clothes and make my bed.. I was shown how to strip and clean and load and fire an M16. and given the chance to do so. In infantry school I I was taught to walk, crawl , run slow, run fast and dig holes. .I couldn't tell anyone fvck all about anti ship missiles even if my time in were last month instead of over 50 years ago.
funny how this is the most heavily liked comment I've ever seen on one of Simplicius's posts
Veteran Intelligence Professionas expose the Duplicity and Stupidity of Department of State and Pentagon OxyMorons’.
Won't be long before Artificial Intelligence is embedded into these systems to automate and speed up the target identification and target lock not just within one system but networked AD.
It's already on: this year Russian AD (S-350 if I recall correctly) announced the first air interception purely controlled by AI.
Was not aware of that. Technology is indeed moving fast.
I see this as beneficial for Russia, they get to test and adapt their systems to the Storm Shadow missile while the conflict is still contained in Ukraine. In case it escalates, better they have encountered the Western weapon systems already.
The Empire is also learning from this stuff. But given that the Empire is a kakistocracy they may not learn properly or perhaps learn fairly well but implement messily.
Make no mistake they already knew this reality. But saying Russian equipment is good doesn't make Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, and others money.
Turkiye was not tricked by such marketing lies and bought S400s. They are very happy with their choice I am sure, especially considering the alternative was Patriots.
I mean, the crux of the article is not that Russia can adapt their systems to the Storm Shadow........the systems are what they are, here he lays out exactly what it can see and what happens. Same with GMLRS, been a year and Russia hasnt "adapted" to them. So yeah, its plausible Russia can shoot them down, if a system is pretty close(10km) and sees it's comming. pretty hard with a frontline over 1,200 miles long.
What? HIMARS GMLRS rockets are being shot down almost daily.
Lololol. No they arn't. The height angle and speed they attack from makes them almost impossible with pantsir, buk,. I can send some links to telegram and reddit, daily videos of gmlrs blowing up russian equipment
If some targets are being hit by GMLRS, it doesn't mean all of them are being intercepted. No one is saying that Russian air defence has 100% chance of success.
Also GMLRS rockets are not that fast, can be perfectly detected on the radar (because they are not stealth projectiles and do not fly high) and they do not make evasive maneuvers.
It's always cool to get a close look like this, and I think your breakdown is both thorough and helpful, even if there's always that little voice in the back of my head screaming "But why take a video? Don't you understand how much info that gives your enemy even if you blank out almost everything?!"
We might not find out whether the Allies are able to do anything about the US air and space reconnaissance umbrella but if I was in the Russian air force, I'd have aircraft taking off and landing and decoy missiles launching all the time.
The SS is not produced in quantities to make any difference in the battlefield. They have been in play for 2-3 months and made no difference. Ukraine is using them to shoot at bridges amd undefended civilian targets. Whoopie. Russia is not concerned.
Russia's most likely neutralised most of the SS inventory before it left the regional distribution hubs. So yeah, not concerned.
Yeah, that's a random guess based on no direct knowledge and no quantified estimates. Ask the 2 generals and last count about 20 Colonels and Majors that have been taken out if the SS made a difference.
Your source is Ukrainian mod? How do you know that?
You buried the lede. Last two paragraphs illuminate the significance of this event. ‘“ . . . the importance of these videos is that they are one of—if not the—first ever looks of a modern air defense system attempting to track and engage a low observable or stealth target.” Old reporter here. To draw people into the story I would have set this up near the beginning of the piece. Which indicates the west has overinvested in “stealth.” Heaven forbid, but it would be interesting to match up an F-22 or F-35 against Russian AD.
Russian AD vs. American "stealth" aircraft would be an almost literal turkey shoot. Just ask the Serbs about how difficult it was to shoot down a "stealth" F-117 Nighthawk with an ancient (even by '90s standards) S-125 Neva from 1961. It was so easy the Serbs made a turbofolk song about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=333OVHhpK5c
I don’t doubt it. And great tune!
The F1117 shoot down was really blind luck and overconfident arrogance in deciding the route.
It wasn't blind luck. They knew exactly what they were doing and they were executing a plan that was specifically aimed to bring down an F-117.
This recent analysis will explain it better than I can: https://youtu.be/8dqqrJPaS1k
There's literally a Serbian National Assembly member of Hungarian descent (Zoltán Dani) who commanded the unit and explained it in multiple documentaries and books written about him, including why and how it was done. We know exactly what happened.
Catificator?
Wait a minute.. Isn’t insisting that the Serbs must had blind luck in order to be able to shoot down an F1117 itself, an overconfident arrogance in the performance of the F1117? In my opinion, all US military equipment are overhyped, overpriced and none can perform even properly, not to mention perform as they are sold to be.
It wasnt blind luck, but the same flight paths that the F117s used. Which allowed serbs to set up a "trap" for it. They pulsed low frequency radars to get a lock and shot it down. Now, look up everything you can about the F35, about its Aesa radar. In passive mode, the F35 would detect and triangulate ANY russian AD instantly. The S3-400s have to use massive energy requirements to try to scan the sky. The Aesa would lock up, jam, spoof and basically blind the radar in any situation. This would happen long before the Russians would be able to lock on or attempt to shoow down any F35. Yes, they can be detected, even best russian estimates are 20-30km away, by that time that radar would be long gone, along with any launch battery.
Lol, the F117 was flying the same routes, and known to be detectable at low frequencies. And also is not in service anymore. An F35s Aesa passive mode radar will have any Russian AD site identified/located and destroyed farrrrr beyond any range that S400 would be able to lock on, target and fire at the F35.
God damn, dude, what I wouldn't give to live in your world for like 10 minutes. Unfortunately in the real world, F-35 is anything but stealthy: https://www.c4isrnet.com/intel-geoint/sensors/2019/09/30/stealthy-no-more-a-german-radar-vendor-says-it-tracked-the-f-35-jet-in-2018-from-a-pony-farm/
Mind you, this is a simple van-born radar about on par with a Russian Pantsir-S1 in power, so imagine what an actually capable multi-band radar such as the S-400's radar or the Su-35's Irbis-E could do.
Even if the F-35 had as much of a reduced radar cross section as, say, Su-35 (which isn't a "stealth" aircraft by any means) the F-35 still can't carry missiles with a long enough range to stay outside of the S-400's 400km range.
I've seen and read the article years ago. 1. It wasn't a "van born" radar, its a passive accoustic sensor system. 2. The F35s had their transponders active and pinging AND had lundburg lenses attached to them, if you dont know what those are look them up.
Lol listen, nowhere did i say its undectetable. Any in depth analysis will tell you 20-30 kilometers is the max detection and lock range. Again, by that time the Aesa radar and ew of the F35 will have located and either killed it itself, or transferred it down the kill chain to himars/cruise missile/artillery.
Finally, dude, no S400 is shooting at targets 400km away. Hell the one in crimea yesterday didnt even shoot the shark drone that ended up directing himars on it.
My takeaway is that if Russia is already detecting them, then more efficient solutions are already in the pipeline. If I was asked to describe the Russian military during this conflict, i say evolving, learning and adaptable.
Russia is a young Bruce Lee, the West is John Candy.
Max Blumenthal has just made a speech to the UN documenting grey-zones audit into Ukrainian aid, a very interesting quote came up " Our audit also revealed the Pentagons 4.5 million contract with a company called Atlantic diving supply to provide Ukraine with unspecified explosive equipment"
Nordstream smoking gun?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=15xAv0zsgB0
The Greyzone (for whom Mr. Blumenthal works) has done outstanding work on actually visiting the Nordstream explosions and documenting the lies told by Western governments. I recommend you read their full series on the matter.
Grayzone, not greyzone.
grey is gray in British spelling
The second system detected it farther out because it wasn't head on to the flight path. Your numbers at the beginning were for the frontal cross section. The lateral cross section is likely much bigger, so the angle of detection likely makes a big difference. Having multiple systems will apparently cover a great deal of air space.
Solid thought.
Another thing that could be going on is target sharing - if the systems are informed as to where their kin are, it's conceivable they're sharing target data as well.
In which case a target noted at 15km from a machine that's set up 10km from another machine which did the actual detection at 5km - that adds up. Netcentric af, as Martyanov would say.
These shoot downs of extremely stealthy missiles by the lowest-tier Russian AD is a grave intimation for what would happen should an American "stealth" aircraft such as a B-2 Spirit, F-22 Raptor, or F-35 Lightning II go up against Russian AD. Though, the Serbs' success with shooting down an F-117 Nighthawk "stealth" fighter-bomber back in 1999 with an ancient (by '90s standards) S-125 Neva from 1961 already made the outcome of such a confrontation clear. It was so easy the Serbs made a turbofolk song to gloat about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=333OVHhpK5c
This is a good analysis of the F117 shoot down there was a lot of luck and bad choice in fought path https://youtu.be/8dqqrJPaS1k
The song is older than the F-117 shootdown. Unless we consider it as more evidence of time travel, it can't be about the event.
I don't think calling it lowest-tier gives it justice. Russia have very different philosophy of arms. They take narrow area of deployment, then they create very specialised weapon to do one thing good. Then they create dozens of systems to cover every nook and cranny. And then they make them talk to each other. That's why they have so many types of everything.
Contrast it to US approach - making "elite" overly expensive, non-working jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none Bradleys/Patriots/F35 etc.
TORs/Pantsirs are not lowest tier, they are best-in-world SHORADs.
What options West have? Truck based battery of Stingers and ancient German Gepards? You gotta be kidding me...
Nice one. I didn't predict it but wondered some years ago if Russia would come up with a way counter stealth. The US's trillions vs Russia's millions.
USSR was grandfather of stealth technology. They knew it's development will be inferior to RADAR development. Same with planes vs AD. They knew AD is superior to aviation. Rock-paper-scissors of sorts.
I'm a retired Engineering Research Mathematician with work for the Military, Industry and Academia. One summer some years I took my oldest son to a week-long soccer camp at Notre Dame University. While he was practicing, I visited the Mathematics Library that had a treasure of the works of Russian Pure and Applied Mathematicians. In a word, it was stunning as I was watching the pioneers of my discipline not having, at the time, the ability to use the latest super computers which weren't close to development. These Russian giants did it all by hand which was absolutely staggering! Think where they are now. This article tells you in no uncertain terms!
Unfortunately (?), in the progressive West there are countless stereotypes about the Russian people, somehow Nikita Khrushchev is always in front of them as he beats the table with his shoes at the UN conference ! :)
Meanwhile, while they make disparaging remarks about the stupid "Russkis", the majority of them have never been to a ballet performance or the Opera, now I'm not even mentioning classical music ! In the meantime, we should take a look at the number of chess grandmasters in which country ! The result is clear, isn't it, the "stupid" Russians are the kings of chess ! Isn't it also obvious that the average American has no idea that Khrushchev was Ukrainian, by the way, he was the Soviet Party General Secretary who gave Crimea to the Ukrainians !
Anyway, the other day I saw a news about an American university mathematics competition, so let's see a miracle, all the (really :)) featured winners were Asian, I would bet a lot that they were Chinese ! :) Where are the descendants of the Mayflower ?
According to the news, three times as many engineers are being trained in the Russian Federation (no, not in the gender field) as in the USA, which is almost three times as many. For those who are well versed in the sciences, this number says a lot, and I don't even want to mention the lower and middle level studies in the USA with a grin. profile.
Most of my family are US and Canadian citizens, I see the level of knowledge their children acquire , I can only pity them !
to be fair, Khruchev was Russian from Kursk region, bordering Malorussia (Ukraine). he always described himself as a russan, and prior to became a leader of Ukraine SSR never actually spoke ukranian. Doesnt make him any better / smarter, but still.
Ghe Soviet Union had several weird historical anomalies. Usually history is written by the victor, but after the USSR defeated the Nazis the western world wrote the narrative. That narrative was that the Soviet military gear had simplistic engineering and shoddy manufacturing.
The problem was that the Soviets were incredibly secretive. We used NATO reporting names for Soviet hardware because we often didn't even know what the Soviets called it.
I thought there was a red line drawn for attacking crimea? Russia just needs to stop these SS before they get to ukraine, whatever that takes
I had the privilege of sitting down with an F18 super hornet pilot from Canada. He also taught the Australians how to fly the super hornet. He had several missions in the Middle East and later finished his career off in Qatar as an instructor.
After listening to his stories, dog fights and missions, I asked him about stealth.
I asked him what he knew about russias s400 AD system. He said he couldn’t comment on it as it’s classifies but did say it’s very, very, very good.
Take that as you will.