Russians move SRBMs to Kaliningrad

[Dill]

(12-16-2016, 01:45 AM)Bengalzona Wrote: They had a problem with them during the First Gulf War. It was a software glitch that affected the timing of the launch, as I recall. If the system was not periodically shut down, the timing would be off by three hundreds of a second or something like that. It doesn't seem that that would cause a serious problem. But with how fast the missiles move, that could cause them to be of by as much as 600 yards.

The Israelis figured it out and tried to tell us about it. But we didn't listen until after that war. And the fix was incredibly simple: you just turn off and restart the system periodically. 

Yes, I remember the "Iron Dome." Ineffective against scuds. Even when the missiles were hit, the warheads didn't always detonate, just fell separately and exploded on impact.

I remember one afternoon one fired accidentally. It was controlled from a site twelve miles away. The story I got was that they were going through a training exercise and procedures weren't followed. Boom. They self destructed it in mid-air, but over an area lightly populated by civilians. No one was hurt, but quite a scandal, though never in the papers.

[Bengalzona]

(12-16-2016, 03:53 AM)Dill Wrote: But we are between presidencies, and between presidents with very different levels of competence. Putin certainly watched the debates.
Can you see HIM in a late night name-calling tweet storm about some celebrity or journalist he didn't like?

He has had open media "battles" with celebrities before. Their were several Russian oligarchs where he wanted them to "donate" their companies to Mother Russia. And the girl band, ***** Riot. But he is not Trump. He is former KGB. In the case of the oligarchs, he seized their companies. In the case of ***** Riot, they ended up in jail. No tweets. Just quiet authoritarian action. 

[quote pid='319389' dateline='1481871236']

Quote:So, if you have time to think this over--two questions. What sort of "toughness" would you LIKE to see here. Beef up NATO? Missiles in Poland to maybe force a Cuban-style evacuation of K-grad? Combined with a punitive cyberattack like our response to N. Korea? More targeted sanctions?

And what sort of toughness are we LIKELY to see. Trump won't be up to speed by Jan. 20. He'll get competing advice from people he has picked, many from the fringes of the foreign policy establishment, and many like him, favor Russian interests. He may still feel he doesn't need his PDBs while looking for major foreign policy resets east, west, and south. If he contests CIA/FBI intel regarding the Russian hack, why would he follow through any retaliation begun by Obama? Especially against someone who says nice things about him.  Personally, I don't think we will see "toughness" at all once Trump is in office, though some of his people may urge him to do something. We may see toughness towards segments of our own populace--against flagburners and the like. Undocumented immigrants.  

[/quote]

It is not easy to answer that question without being fully aware of what we are already up to with Russia (or any other country, for that matter). I'd love to get inside Sen. McCain's brain for a few hours. 

I suspect we have been highly active in cyber-attacks throughout the world during the past decade. Also, I suspect we are probably much more adept at it than almost anyone else, because you don't hear about us getting caught. Something that the CIA has been really good at during the past 55-60 years has been enacting regime changes and fomenting rebellion in other countries. We do it regularly. And in the past couple of decades, we have done it without leaving much of a footprint. I have no doubt we have been supporting Putin-opposition in Russia since the George Dubya Admin. 

Some might ask why should we get to do that and still get mad when other countries do it to us? The answer is simple. Because we are America, damn it. You don't get to pick out leaders for us. I don't wave the flag around blindly often. Other countries picking our leaders will bring that out in me. It is pretty simple: "Screw what we have done. YOU don't get to do that to US."

The previous reference to "footprint" brings up something else in my mind: For a former KGB bigshot, Putin has not been overly concerned about leaving footprints. In fact, it is almost like he wanted publicity for Russia's actions, that he wants a reaction. The Obama Admin generally has not provided that for him. If someone wanted to know what we are doing in response to Russian actions over the past 20 years  (or any other nation, for that matter), what is the answer? We don't know. A common thread throughout successive Administrations is that we don't "kiss and tell". All of our admins since WWII have followed this wisdom. I am hoping the current admin continues that.

But back to the "footprint". Putin is acting out more because of the sanctions. They are having an impact. Therefore, they should stay until we get what what we want. 

We already have a Patriot battery in Poland, as I understand. And it really irks Putin. We just keep it there.

As for NATO, I actually agree with Trump on one thing: the European nations need to do more. It needs to be beefed up, but not necessarily with our troops and money. Some suspect that his overtures to have the U.S. leave NATO is just a whip to get the European countries to do more for their own defense. If so, I'm behind it. 

[Bengalzona]

(12-16-2016, 04:05 AM)Dill Wrote: Yes, I remember the "Iron Dome." Ineffective against scuds. Even when the missiles were hit, the warheads didn't always detonate, just fell separately and exploded on impact.

I remember one afternoon one fired accidentally. It was controlled from a site twelve miles away. The story I got was that they were going through a training exercise and procedures weren't followed. Boom. They self destructed it in mid-air, but over an area lightly populated by civilians. No one was hurt, but quite a scandal, though never in the papers.

Trying to intercept a hypersonic missile in flight is dam complicated stuff. The average bullet from a gun flies at Mach 2.2. Hypersonic missiles travel at speeds in excess of Mach 5 or 6. Ballistic missiles (tactical, short-range, intermediate-range or strategic) reach hypersonic speeds upon re-entry. A Patriot missile battery can take out a combat aircraft (Mach 1-2) with relative ease. Intercepting hypersonic missiles is a whole other ballgame. We can do this, but we can't do it regularly. This is one of the reasons why countries like Iran and North Korea work feverishly on developing ballistic missiles. It is easier to build the missile than the anti-missile. If someone shoots 100 ballistic missiles at us and we shoot down 50, 50 still got through. 

(As you may be aware, Yemen has been firing SCUD missiles into Saudi Arabia. I've been meaning to post a thread about the Yemen Civil War, but just haven't had time.) 

This is one of the reasons why I mentioned taking the hype about anti-missile systems with a grain of salt. The hype serves some purposes, however. It helps to sell weapon systems to other countries, it makes people feel safe so they can carry on life, it intimidates enemies, etc. We have reasons for producing the hype. It is just that the technology still does not generally support all of the claims.

[*michaelsean*]

(12-15-2016, 08:22 PM)Bengalzona Wrote: Hopefully.

But consider this. During the late 1970's, the British Navy was highly concerned about their ships' vulnerability to the increasing number of anti-ship missiles. They developed two ship-board weapon systems to counter these: the Sea Dart missile defense system and the Abbey Hill electronic warfare system. They conducted trials of these systems and eventually incorporated them into their most modern destroyer class, the HMS Sheffield class. The Royal Navy boasted that no missile could penetrate the combined systems.

In 1982, the HMS Sheffield itself was sent along with the fleet to fight in the Falklands. On May 4, 1982, Sheffield was struck by a single Exocet missile carried by an Argentine Super Etendard aircraft. Six days later it foundered and sank due to the damage.

And then there was the story of the M247 Sgt. York air defense weapon system in the 1980's. Testing reports of the system were grossly exaggerated and faults in the system were covered up by contractors and Army procurement officials. Fortunately, this was discovered just before the weapon was actually fielded with the troops.

There was a lot of debate about whether the "Star Wars" anti-ballistic missile system would work back in the 80's (as well as debate about the legality of developing since it violated the terms of our START reaty with the Soviets). This was proposed as a multi-layered missile defense system. Parts of it (Aegis and Sprint ABM defense missiles) worked to a reasonable degree (reasonable being somewhat less than 100%). Orbiting satellite laser defense systems did not (and still do not) work. They were, however, useful as hype to intimidate the Soviets.

The Patriot system has been the land-based workhorse of the Army for the past 25 years (and is planned to stay until 2040 with upgrades). But it didn't start out well. The House Government Operations Subcommittee on Legislation and National Security concluded:



We stuck with the Patriot system, however, choosing to upgrade it (with the help of the Israelis). In Operation Iraqi Freedom, we used them to intercept some Iraqi made tactical ballistic missiles. We also used them to shoot down a Royal Air Force Tornado and a US Navy F-18.

Apparently, it works better now. At least it has for the Israelis, who have used them to shoot down two Hamas made UAVs and a Syrian Su-24.

My point in posting all of this is that we probably should take the hype about anti-missile weapons systems with a grain of salt.

Oh I don't even know that this one would work on the Russian thing.  Two completely different things I'd imagine.  But I always figure we have something in the works against anything they come up with before they come up with it.

[Dill]

(12-16-2016, 09:15 AM)Bengalzona Wrote: I suspect we have been highly active in cyber-attacks throughout the world during the past decade. Also, I suspect we are probably much more adept at it than almost anyone else, because you don't hear about us getting caught. Something that the CIA has been really good at during the past 55-60 years has been enacting regime changes and fomenting rebellion in other countries. We do it regularly. And in the past couple of decades, we have done it without leaving much of a footprint. I have no doubt we have been supporting Putin-opposition in Russia since the George Dubya Admin. 

Some might ask why should we get to do that and still get mad when other countries do it to us? The answer is simple. Because we are America, damn it. You don't get to pick out leaders for us. I don't wave the flag around blindly often. Other countries picking our leaders will bring that out in me. It is pretty simple: "Screw what we have done. YOU don't get to do that to US."

The previous reference to "footprint" brings up something else in my mind: For a former KGB bigshot, Putin has not been overly concerned about leaving footprints. In fact, it is almost like he wanted publicity for Russia's actions, that he wants a reaction. The Obama Admin generally has not provided that for him. If someone wanted to know what we are doing in response to Russian actions over the past 20 years  (or any other nation, for that matter), what is the answer? We don't know. A common thread throughout successive Administrations is that we don't "kiss and tell". All of our admins since WWII have followed this wisdom. I am hoping the current admin continues that.

But back to the "footprint". Putin is acting out more because of the sanctions. They are having an impact. Therefore, they should stay until we get what what we want. 

We already have a Patriot battery in Poland, as I understand. And it really irks Putin. We just keep it there.

As for NATO, I actually agree with Trump on one thing: the European nations need to do more. It needs to be beefed up, but not necessarily with our troops and money. Some suspect that his overtures to have the U.S. leave NATO is just a whip to get the European countries to do more for their own defense. If so, I'm behind it. 

Thanks for taking a stab at this. I hadn't thought the sanctions might be pushing Putin out there.

I don't think Patriots balance scuds. Patriots just shoot stuff out of the air. SRBMs carry payloads. 

But sanctions and "irky" Patriots might help explain Putin's aggressive behavior. In a funny way he kind of reminds me of Trump now, more ready to break  precedent and protocol now than 15 years ago, angry and feeling slighted. I guess the trick is to try and understand how all this looks from Putin's side.

As far as NATO goes, the Germans, Czechs and British went all the way to Afghanistan with the US and stayed the distance. That was not easy for them to do.  They paid a price in blood.  When our NATO partners signed on, they expected protection from an aggressive neighbor, not traveling to the other side of the world to fight in service of the last remaining super power.

As far as Nato allies paying more, I 'd like to know better how paying or not paying affects US leverage over European politics.  I do agree a stronger Putin strengthens NATO, and makes it indispensable now. Many Europeans DID NOT like supporting the US in Afghanistan, but do see Putin as a direct or potential threat.

I am not sure Trump thinks NATO indispensable, though. He has said such crazy things about our Pacific Alliances. But since he didn't know what he was talking about then, I imagine he'll listen to Maddog or someone he respects from now on. I see an interval between his saying crazy things which disturb our allies and then actually implementing policies which distress them. In that interval some advisors have the power to dissuade him from really dangerous moves.  But I fear this may only work in some areas--East Asia yes, Israel-Palestine Mexico no.