Saturation.

1. A sort of an announcement. Since I signed a contract for the next book and am under contractual obligations to meet a deadline, I may change the pattern of my posting in the blog due to being busy with laying my profundities on paper (MS Word, what have you) for impending publication. In general, the posting should become somewhat limited but it will continue, of course. But don't expect me to react to every international event, plus, thankfully, we all have people such as Andrei Raevsky (The Saker) who does a very good job on many current military-political issues, such as his elaboration on resent Israeli provocations. 

Why is Putin “allowing” Israel to bomb Syria?

So, this is settled. 

2. In the news on real saturation. Izvestia confirms what one may have guessed already that Russia is not going to limit herself just to a heavy 3M22 Zircon anti-shipping missiles on large combatants and submarines, but is going to deploy a smaller, yet still deadly, version of Zircon on each of numerous classes of small missile ships such as pr. 22800 Karakurts and pr. 21631 Buyans (in Russian). Sources in MoD confirmed to Izvestia that it is still same Zircon only in slightly tighter (compact) dimensions to fit UKSK VLS on any ship and that it does have the range of 500+ kilometers with elements of artificial intellect which allow the target distribution and other swarm behavior between missiles in the salvo. Izvestia gives this illustration to the article:

Considering that Russia already deploys or has under construction around 30 of these ships, add here 3 pr. 11356 frigates and already two afloat and more under construction pr. 22350 Admiral Gorshkov-class frigates, one can imagine the weight of the salvo with UKSK VLS having 50% capacity load of Zircons--this is not the contingency any navy in the world is ready for. I am not sure about fairly numerous class of corvettes of pr. 20380. Will they be rearmed with a container version of Zircon? Once submarines are added it becomes patently clear that Russian littoral is a complete exclusion zone by Russian Navy's means only, without shore based aviation that is. Saturation works, especially when it is done by such means as M=8 anti-shipping missiles. I do not foresee any viable defense measure against such a tactical and operational reality any time soon. What are then probabilities of any aggressor's meeting its objectives around Russia's shores? A wild guess--0.05 or 0.005--makes no difference. Those who need to know--they know.