It May Seem Premature, But...

... I think some  summary is in order regarding Russian Armed Forces hardware. It is absolutely on-time, when considering this:

The immediate thought in all that view of a rather spectacular burning of ARAMCO facilities is the fact that they are guarded by, and you have guessed it by now, US Patriot and the collection of other European air-defense/anti-missile systems. This is not the first time those systems can do nothing about cottage industry Houthi drones with explosives and ancient Soviet/Iranian SCUDs and their local derivatives such as Burkan. These are fairly slow (max M=4) ballistic missiles which should be an easy prey for advanced air defense. As should be all kinds of drones, but, evidently, they are not. And this is not the first time Houthies score spectacular hits on Saudi oil targets. 

Comparison is in order, and we will start with a serious, I would say even dramatic, death of the reputation of Turkey's grossly oversold Bayraktar drones, which faced once a really angry Syrian Air Defense near Idlib and the acquaintance didn't go as planned for Bayraktars. Enter Russian operation in 404 and consider the fact that Russian troops (voiskovaya) and PVO air/missile defense faced with a force much better equipped than some Syrian ISIS and other groups, and here some context is in order. VSU, unlike ISIS or other Islamic terror groups, DID have an actual air force and a vast arsenal of tactical and tactical-operational ballistic missiles. You can take a look at Ukie Air Force here, not forgetting to factor in a constant flow of Turkish Bayraktars to Kiev regime as late as two days ago.

You can also take a gander at what Ukie did to good ol' Tochka U and consider the fact that this OTR-21 is a hypersonic, however barely, M=5.3 missile and that Ukraine had 90+ launchers for it and we may only guess how many of those missiles VSU had. And here is the deal, with the exception of the criminal lashing out at Donetsk civilians with cassette warhead (and even that missile was hit by Russian AD), overwhelming majority of the  Ukrainian Tochka-Us aimed at the Russian and LDNR troops and objects have been intercepted, while Bayraktars performed well only in video games and fake news propagated by Kiev and its supporters in Western media. Reality, of course, is that AD of battlefield by Russia performed a stunning feat of defending own forces against a huge variety of enemy weapons ranging from combat aircraft to missiles. Now look up and take a look at ARAMCO facilities. Comparison is not only warranted but is irresistible.

And here comes this second part about which I write books and speak into the camera for many years. NATO (and US) simply has nothing to defend against previous generation of Russia's stand off weapons, especially of such variety as Iskander of P-800 capable to strike to operational depth (500-700 kilometers) and it will not have anything for many years to come to deal with hyper-sonic weapons, which saw 2000-kilometer range Kinzhal doing its thing to the deep underground facility, which used to be a storage of the Soviet tactical nukes near Ivano-Frankovsk, and then repeating the performance in other places with a devastating result for VSU. 

Generally speaking the butt-hurt of all kinds of fanboys and military porn purveyors, who pass here for "military analysts" is understandable. One has to change the narrative on the fly and, of course, it has been changed in a sense that Russians are so short on weapons that they are using state-of-the art weapon systems which West doesn't have and is not going to have for some time. My guess will be, that when the USAF uses state-of-the-art $2 billion a pop B-2 Spirit bomber against some third world shithole, it does it because it is poor and has shortage of ammo, right? That's the logic, or, rather, lack of it, but as I say all the time--desperate times, desperate measures. So, know now, if you see me driving around in your neighborhood in a brand new Ferrari 296 GTB for $320, 000 and fully paid off (or bought for cash):

Know then, I do it because I am fvcking broke and receive food-stumps in the nearest DSHS office, because my multi-million dollar mansion (also paid off) which everyone wants to buy, makes me poor. Together with my cheap, paid-off, multi-million 52 meter long Westport yacht:

You see, I do it all because I am running out of money and is desperate. That is the "logic" of fraudsters in Western media, including alleged "military professionals", who need to wake up to the reality, that in case of real war with Russia NATO's C4ISR will be collapsed within first 24-48 hours and Russians may reconsider their humanitarian instincts, like trying to limit civilian casualties. If NATO attacks Russia all bets are off, it is simple like that and somebody has huge issues reconciling oneself to this reality of which I warned in 2017 and 2018. 

And these are just first impressions, I guarantee you those to be correct ones, of the performance of Russia's AD and stand-off weaponry and it did produce shock and awe, suddenly bunkers in London, Brussels or D.C. do not feel so safe. It is really an old truism, when your sparring partners are 7-year old kids from the sand-box you are bound to lose qualifications and skills. When it is aggravated by the blind and illiterate geopolitical planning and doctrine-mongering--it becomes a recipe for the loss of situational awareness and a disaster. The United States may not have produced world-class strategists with the exception of Mahan, but operationally, come on--everyone uses Boyd's OODA Loop, Net- Centric Warfare is a routine today in Russian Armed Forces, so why such a catastrophic failure to learn from themselves, forget about learning it from those who defeated time after time best fighting forces in history? 

The answer is clear as a day: Wehrmacht couldn't conceive that Slavic subhumans can produce T-34 and excellent fighter-planes, not to speak of a superb artillery. They also miscalculated with the level of education and adaptability of the Red Army, and in terms of Soviet industry. The US repeats here Nazi Germany's path--US "elites" are afflicted by the genocidal, racial hatred towards Russians and they cannot conceive, especially through the "labor" of Soviet and Russian dissidents who sold BS about USSR and Russia for decades, that the US simply doesn't know or understand Russia. That what it "knows" about her and her people is a complete bunk conceived in the dark recesses of ideological imperatives of the Cold War 1.0. 

Stalin was once asked who he is by nationality, his response is well-documented: "I am Russian of Georgian origin", was his response. One of the Omsk MMA groups(Storm)  made a video yesterday and posted it today: 

Vladimir Putin is saying: I am Laketz, I am Chechen, I am Ingush, I am Jew, I am Tatar, I am Russian, I am Mordvin, I am Ossetian. The guys in the club start with: I am German and I am Russian, I am Dagestanets and I am Russian, I am Armenian and I am Russian, I am Kazakh and I am Russian, I am Azerbaijani and I am Russian, I am Russian, we are Russians, we are one people. 

More than 7 years ago I warned about this, I will remind it again:

So, the events must run the course. But it is already clear that by failing to achieve any sensible political objectives in Ukraine and in Russia, and, by this, starting a massive global re-alignment, the United States sustained a defeat. What will be the consequences of this defeat? I hate to speculate, I just know that they are already big and that the moment of facing the reality is coming. 

The forces the United States unleashed in 2014 it doesn't understand nor can it handle them because of the factors I describe for 8 years in this blog and in my books and interviews. Those in charge should merely recall this line in the song which is sacred in Russia and in many places of the former Soviet Union:

         Пусть ярость благородная вскипает как волна

         Идёт война народная, священная война

          Let noble wrath
          Boil over like a wave!
          This is the people's war,
          a Sacred war!

 They don't teach that in Ivy League. Too bad for them.