Why They Are Nervous. Short Excurse Into the Modern War. Part 4.

Now to the most important part. Recall what I wrote about ASW and missile attack in the previous three posts? Now forget it all because today it matters only under some extremely limited circumstances. Here is a simple illustration about CBG's relative scale to modern ranges. 

In this case, as you can easily see, it really doesn't matter how you configure your ASW for CBG, we don't even talk about a group of ships on their own, with only MH-60R Seahawks as air ASW assets at their disposal. Those are magnificent and advanced machines but their problem for modern ocean-wide warfare is the fact that they have a speed of 270 kilometers per hour and a maximum range of 830 kilometers, that is the range at which they can fly in ASW configuration in a straight line, but as you can already surmise, ASW is a very energy costly affair (with all this hovering and dipping at the Datum), granted that this Datum is (was) provided by good ol' Soviet Charlie-IIs and Malakhits. 

This time is over. Introduction of P-700 Granit with its range of 600 kilometers and fully networked salvo of these missiles in early 1980s was the thing which finally transferred ocean warfare from a combination of ASW and Air Defense to almost strictly Air Defense problem, granted huge Project 949A (Oscar-IIs) SSGNs could be tracked by the US SSNs at the ranges beyond CBG's ASW ranges. Sometimes they could track Oscars, sometimes they couldn't. But there was one thingy about those pesky P-700 Granits--unlike with Malakhits and other older anti-shipping missiles, there were a significant chances to miss a Flaming Datum when Oscars launched their Grantis. Once they were airborne it was entirely up to E-2 Hawkeyes to detect such a salvo and vector on-duty F-18s and F-14s for an intercept. Let's fast forward a bit, P-800 Onyx emerges and while officially its range is 660 kilometers, it is a much more advanced missile and its latest versions are reported to have a range in excess of 800 kilometers and speeds in excess of Mach=3. Look above at the illustration. What's left then? How to deal with this threat? Right--one needs Aegis and Standard missiles which theoretically can handle a salvo of...P-700 Granits. Theoretically. 

But P-700s are old missiles, what are you going to do against Onyx with submerged start? Welcome to a missile exchange paradigm and welcome to Salvo Equations. But since we discuss a real war not some fanboys' rah-rah bullshit from Popular Mechanics or Forbes, we have to recall that the war is a probabilistic event. So, what are, then, ways both warring sides approach and tackle this problem? Remarkably they are very similar because the same math and physics is used. For a commanding officer of ANY sub in the world carrying anti-shipping (or even TLAM) missiles the first thing which comes to mind is the assessment of Probability of a Success of whatever his sub is going to do, in our particular case--shooting and destroying a surface target(s).  In old times poor lads and their navigator and weps guys would calculate this probability by hand, by calculators etc. Until Combat Informational Control Systems or Battle Management Systems (Computers) which started to appear in their advanced forms precisely starting from the times mentioned many times before Charlies started to deploy, they started to calculate those probabilities based on the fusion of incoming data ranging from targeting to tactical and operational data from many sources (sonar, comms, visual, radar etc.). 

As we all know from the basic probability course, the probability of just about any event is calculated by multiplying probabilities of many related events which must occur in order for us to have a shot at achieving what we set to achieve.    

As you can see yourself a lot has to be done to kill a target. Even if you have a probability of detecting a target Pdetection =0.95, and the reliability of our targeting Ptargeting=0.95 and we have a probability of remaining undetected by enemy equaling 0.9 and whatever other probabilities factor in our probability of killing our target Pn=0.9, we will get: Pkill= 0.95 x 0.95 x 0.9 x 0.9 = 0.731. These are not the best chances but they are solid. We would love our chances to be within 0.9-0.99 (wink, wink) range. So, how do we increase our chances? Range and speed and excellent combat training. 

 

Once tactical characteristics of 3M22 Zircon have been confirmed, a man, who unlike me has an impeccable background in submarine warfare, Captain 1st Rank Igor Kurdin, who is usually very reserved about weapons, went on record: 

«Дальность «Циркона» составляет от 500 до 1000 километров. С такого расстояния никто нашу подлодку не засечет, если только за ней не следят давно и целенаправленно», – рассказал председатель Санкт-Петербургского клуба моряков-подводников ВМФ, капитан 1-го ранга Игорь Курдин. Собеседник напомнил, что задача американских противолодочных сил – засечь нашу АПЛ до того, как она произведет ракетные пуски. «Гиперзвуковая скорость предполагает, что после пуска «Циркон» практически невозможно уничтожить», – добавил он. 

Translation: “The range of the Zircon is from 500 to 1000 kilometers. From such a distance, no one will spot our submarine, unless they have been tracking it for a long time and purposefully, "said the chairman of the St. Petersburg Navy Submariners' Club, Captain 1st Rank Igor Kurdin. The interlocutor recalled that the task of the American anti-submarine forces is to detect our nuclear submarine before it launches missile launches. “The hypersonic speed suggests that once the Zircon is launched it is almost impossible to destroy,” he added.

We look again at the illustration in the beginning of this post and take in the range of 800 km. If such a range is viewed for regular Onyx with its varying speed on the flight path in excess of Mach=1.5-2.0 with acceleration to M=3.0 at the terminal, we are looking at the average velocity of M=2.0, which gives us Time = 800 km/2450 km/hr = 0.32 of an hour or roughly 19-20 minutes. With Zircon and its average of Mach=9 we are looking at 800/11025= 0.072 of an hour, which is around 4 minutes. No system can react to this, nor there are any air defense means which can intercept such a missile in any quarters, be it head on or, let alone, in pursuit, granted it is even detected, not to speak of a Datum which may stop being a Flaming one. This is for only one 3M22, when they fly in salvo of 2 or more...take a guess.  It comes down to merely reliability of missile itself, its ability to perform strictly on its technical merit which defines the probability of a kill. Here is what I wrote three years ago in my book:

A going and reasonable assumption today in regard to the latest anti-shipping hyper-sonic weapons is that the probability of intercept of such weapons, capable of Mach=9+, well in excess of any existing anti-missile weapons, even without maneuvering on terminal approach, is statistically insignificant. That is, in a basic Salvo Model for the losses of attacked force:

Where b1 is staying power of ships in enemy force B, which is the number of the missiles required to take out of action those respective ships. It takes a single missile of such a class to put any large combatant, with the possible exception of a nuclear aircraft carrier, completely out of action, thus making b1 =1. Coefficient b3 denotes a defensive power of the ships in B, which is the number of good enemy shots which will be destroyed or deflected by the defender—there is really no objective evidence of modern AD systems being capable of intercepting hyper sonic missiles. This makes b3 = 0 and, consequently, makes the multiple of b3 B = 0 ; this is a definition of a turkey shoot, in which the attrition ΔB of the opposing force, depends strictly on a number of hyper sonic missiles in A’s salvo at B. In other words, the equation is reduced to:

because  b1 =1 Alpha (α ) denotes the striking power of A, which is the number of missiles which would hit the target if there were no defense. There is no defense currently and this effectively eliminates B as a player in case of a missile exchange with A, thus making the exchange mostly a matter of reliability of missiles themselves. 

We will review those salvo transformations later, but for now a juicy piece of math with formula for a salvo by a group of subs, or missile carriers on the surface, just tweak some coefficients.

Pay attention to both Qs. You can easily find the textbook The Submarine Tactics by Captain 1st Rank Khvosh in Russian and, of course, intellectual tour-de-force by legendary late Captain Wayne Hughes and his Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat. 

 

To be continued...

Why They Hate....

Before I start, here is the guy who is a big honcho at CNN on "climate and inequality".  

Drew is a writer and producer for CNN Digital covering the climate crisis, inequality and much more. He joined CNN in January 2014.

His educational (lack of) "credentials" are impeccable and fit perfectly for a work in such a sewer as CNN since he knows how to push keyboards and has a substantial experience, and I quote, such as: Wrote, produced and edited text and video stories for CNN.com’s reader empowerment-focused Impact Your World initiative. Pitched original story ideas for sponsored series. Produced and edited obituary packages for air on CNN networks... Helped launch and co-wrote “The Good Stuff,” CNN’s newsletter focused on reader empowerment and “feel good” stories. So, the guy is like really powerful and has all the required background, like Greta Thunberg, for discussing a BS modelling which is known in the West as "climate science" fraud. But this guy, who, I assume, holds also Ph.D in golf and table games, has no problem writing this:

Scientists say the Arctic is a bellwether for the global climate. As the planet heats up due to human emissions of greenhouse gases, the effects of that warming are felt here first -- and foreshadow the changes to come in lower latitude climates.

Well, it is CNN, alright. But here is a strange twist.  Just follow my train of thought, OK? Drew Kann is an epitome of the modern day Western "expert" pushing an ultimate BS of the anthropogenic origin of the climate change, which, of course, changes (no one argues against that) all the time, and since this guy wouldn't know the difference between exponential and differential equations, he wouldn't know the difference between mathematical model predicting next bowel movement by the average patient in the hospital and climate change. Here is the another guy: 

He is Chung Rae Kwang, he is a former graduate of Georgetown University with degree in... in... drum roll... in... drum is still rolling... in, of course, Foreign Relations, and he is Korea's 2007 Nobel Prize winner for pushing Green Agenda and anthropogenic climate change theory because he is utterly "qualified" to pass the judgement on the methods of concocting stochastic models based on shitty data, also known as GIGO (Garbage In--Garbage Out). This dude spoke recently in Moscow (see his lecture here) on this climate thing and on the subject he is very, in fact disastrously, competent, as any dumbed down holder of degrees in various home economics and political "science" fields and he really went on an intellectual tour-de-force when proposed in this lecture that humanity needs "new science" which, in his view, should be driven by social sciences, because it is how he feels, you know, quoting him:"For me, they are the most important sciences." 

 

Well, obviously our Nobel winner doesn't understand the difference between real science and humanities and economic BS which is taught in the West as viable "educational" courses, but I pray for this man's good health and long years of life, because, God forbids, he will need a heart surgery or any other surgery, because he will need a Doctor of Medicine (a precise science, BTW, STEM really), not a doctor in Political Sciences, and he will need X-Ray, CT Scan, anesthesia and precision machine making technology, created by people with degrees in engineering, physics, chemistry, applied mathematics, software design and computer technologies and other NON-social sciences "educated" people who, actually,  together with labor force which extracts and processes raw materials at mines, manufacturing floors and assembly plants, are the main engines behind this simple fact that his chest cavity will be cut by a precision produced scalpel (or laser) not some barely honed stone, and he will not feel a thing instead of screaming in agony as had happened often even 100 years ago.  Same goes for this CNN dude who wouldn't know shit from shinola and will continue to parrot any kind of illiterate BS having circulation in the Western Goebbelsonean main-stream propaganda machine.     

Now to the point. West hates Russia and Russians for many reasons, but one of the major ones is because of Russia's real power. As with anything else, Russia's power rises then ebbs, but for the last 70 years Russians demonstrated several fields in human activity in which they are not just good, but damn good, in fact the best in history. Among few of those fields two stand out: space exploration and Arctic. If in space exploration even today there is a great deal of both competition and cooperation between the United States and Russia, the rest of the world remains still far behind (no, I don't mean this fraud and figure-head for NASA Elon Musk) these two; in Arctic, altogether, Russians simply have no rivals, period, not even close. And here we go back to CNN. Even this Ministry of Truth couldn't ignore this:

(CNN)Russia launched its space satellite Arktika-M on Sunday on a mission to monitor the climate and environment in the Arctic amid a push by the Kremlin to expand the country's activities in the region.The Arctic has warmed more than twice as fast as the global average over the last three decades and Moscow is seeking to develop the energy-rich region, investing in the Northern Sea Route for shipping across its long northern flank as ice melts.The satellite successfully reached its intended orbit after being launched from Kazakhstan's Baikonur cosmodrome by a Soyuz rocket, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia's Roscosmos space agency, said in a post on Twitter.Russia plans to send up a second satellite in 2023 and, combined, the two will offer round-the-clock, all-weather monitoring of the Arctic Ocean and the surface of the Earth, Roscosmos said.

It is in this piece that CNN gives the link to the article about warming by introduced above Mr. Kann. But many may not understand a gigantic significance of this launch until one gets to talk to a Senior Designer of corporation Russian Space Systems which developed, launched and successfully operates Arktika-M, his name is Yuri Gektin (in Russian). This poor soul who designs cutting edge, in fact the most advanced, monitoring space systems in the world, obviously somehow missed on his "social sciences" thingy, concentrating instead on Physics and Engineering, and surely is barely qualified to speak on the issue of climate change because he lacks skills in "writing obituaries" and doesn't know how to "empower" people, he surely is not Nobel Prize winner for concocting a BS pseudo-scientific crap as this Korean dude, he surely is no Greta Thunberg. He just designs and builds, and operates satellites and their incredible scientific tools to monitor the actual climate change. This is where the problem for woke West is. 

Unlike climate "intellectuals", some of who I already described above, Russians know how mathematical models are created and they know that the data which goes into the Western "anthropogenic" climate change models is mostly BS. Plus, there is simply not enough of it and here is the wowser (in Russian) which IS NOT going to be delivered in the "free" West. 

In the issue #351 of Roskosmos popular broadcast of Space Environment, Yuri Gektin, starting at 8:30 mark, speaks in broadsides about stupidity of present "anthropogenic" models in a view of overwhelming data supporting Sun-driven climate change and a minuscule role humanity plays in this process. But also about Arktika-M (operational) and future satellites of this family providing a treasure trove of data which, as you might expect, is a clear and present danger to the whole "anthropogenic" climate change fraudulent pseudo-scientific Ponzi scheme in the West. This is all happening against the background of European imbeciles driving themselves into the energy insolvency and economic and cultural decline. Today, Russia is the only nation in the world (no, China is not it) with the economic, military and scientific wherewithal to stop this anti-scientific, degenerate and inhuman insanity being perpetuated by West's ignorant and illiterate elites. 

I know, it may sound too harsh, but let the actual science give answers and give competent forecasts, with totally corrupt Western STEM and a "science" of opinions by illiterate hacks with humanities degrees. It is about time somebody started to think about consequences, such as EU is facing now, and this is just the beginning. Gektin, especially through such a powerful platform as Roskosmos, is unequivocal about the necessity to provide new data which already is streaming and is being made available through the international network of hydro-meteorological information. You can sell obvious bullshit of anthropogenic climate change to Western public school students who are busy discovering new genders, rejecting their white privilege and reciting main postulates of Critical Race Theory, you cannot sell this shit in Russia to people who actually know the real science and how models are created. Russia has all the tools necessary to prove a complete corruption and cowardice of West's "science" which long ago lost any integrity and honor. Here is what modern Western "science" is busy with. That is why they hate Russia so much.

P.S. There is a lot of interesting Rogozin is presenting on Zevs in Dubai. Guess what? Right, environmental "scientists" are already screaming bloody murder because Zevs is nuclear-driven and they are concerned with space pollution. Do those cretins even know that the Sun, one of trillions of stars in our galaxy alone, is nothing more than one gigantic nuclear reactor. You cannot reason with a person who received degree in sociology from any Western university, they are know-it-all types because they are not educated. They are running the West today.   

Update: I will be pissed off severely if anyone will even think that this is in any way a schadenfreude on my part--it is not. In fact I wish with all my heart for guys a safe and healthy return. But it is what it is--space is a no fvcking joke and a PR stunt. It is dangerous and it starts--read my lips--with Life Support Systems which work. You don't have those, don't go there.

The next astronauts to return to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon won't be able use a crucial system on their trip home next month: the space potty. SpaceX's toilet on its Crew Dragon Endeavour will be off limits for the four Crew-2 mission astronauts once they leave the International Space Station in early November, NASA officials said late Friday (Oct. 29). That's because of a possible urine leak in the toilet like one seen on SpaceX's all-civilian Inspiration4 flight in September. SpaceX has since redesigned its toilet to avoid leaks on future flights.

Redesigned? Really? 

Don't Tell Me I Didn't Warn You.

I am sure Tucker has his by far more impressive sources but his narrative, a correct one, is awfully similar to what I preach for years and, especially so, in my latest book. 

As much as I abhor democrats and their policies of utter ignorance, not to mention some outright criminal ones, GOPers are not much better--neither party is capable of competent governing, because neither is capable of correcting catastrophic disproportions and distortions of the American economy. Most of those people do not understand physical economy--they know how to trade, to "invest" at the Wall Street, what model of iPhone is better and believe that monetarism is the answer. This is the extent of their skills. All of them are very good at theories, never mind that those theories from economy, to military, to foreign policy or culture do not work and never worked, and never will work.  

They have theories, but very little in terms of practical creation of value, which IS goods, ranging from ore, lumber and cement to food, refrigerators and cars. Look at who IS in charge--most of them are lawyers or white board economists or people directly from finances. This is a vast majority of the US political class and primarily white board academe. They literally do not know shit from shinola. And the situation gets worse, once one looks at the labor force and, especially, new generation, which soon will not be able to organize their own trip from their parents basement to the crapper on ground floor, least of all get on the manufacturing floor running CNC machining center or fixing a ship' diesel. 

I warned about it. For years. It is just that it finally came and we are experiencing it as I type it. Want to see US "foreign policy" (foreign--because it is totally foreign to the interests of the majority of Americans), here it is:

Same goes for everything US "elites" do to the only class of people who still keep the US going--its working class of professionals, from truck drivers, to electricians, to commercial jet pilots and flight attendants, to laborers, to nurses, to dock people in ports, to CNC operators and engineers.  Remove them and the country collapses. But honestly, I was struck with Tucker's rhetoric which I use myself often. The United States, in the end, is my country too, we live here and we can see what the country is turning to. Not only it is becoming a totalitarian society, its economic agenda is suicidal. Everything else follows. These are deep, tectonic processes which matter in the end, once the tinsel BS fake agenda of the US mainstream media is torn down. But, I guess it is a struggle to make people aware about the real situation. Good that many voices are now being raised. This is not some passing cyclic crisis, no--it is an existential one which begins to make Great Depression look like a stroll in the park. Wait until it hits in full force--it will change the face of the United States, if it survives. So, buckle up, because it is not a "supply chain" issue, it is much more fundamental.

Why They Are Nervous. Short Excurse Into the Modern War. Part 3.

This is a first Soviet submarine launched (submerged, mind you) anti-shipping missile P-70 Amethyst (Ametist):

It was a further development of a venerable P-15 Styx. P-70 had a maximum range of 80 kilometers (Wiki as always is full of shit) and was subsonic at M=0.9. This was 1968. In 1972 more advanced anti-shipping missile P-120 Malakhit started to be procured both on surface ships and submarines.

Malakhit, with its range (launched from submerged SSGN) of 120 kilometers and traditionally massive (500 kilograms) conventional warhead (it could also be a nuclear one) presented a new challenge to the US Navy. A single Charlie-class (pr. 670) SSGN could carry 8 of Ametists for this sub first versions, or 8 Malakhits for Charlie II (pr. 670M). 

While the problem of Flaming Datum (recall, it is when sub is detected while launching its weapons) for all navies was well known before. It was one thing when a submarine launched a salvo of even long-range torpedoes, thus creating a Flaming Datum, a swarm of 40 kilometers range and around 40 knots torpedoes was bad enough problem in and of itself (especially when armed with nuclear warheads), but it was a completely different situation when there was a salvo of missiles, flying with the speed of a fast commercial jet, and which created a datum in a very respectable distance from target. That was a whole new game.  

As you already know, something like P-120 Malakhit was creating the necessity for, say Carrier Battle Group, to be on alert constantly and have enough ASW capability to sweep a moving area of A=3.14 x 120^2= 45,216 sq. kilometers practically non-stop. In general, any CBG always looks like a floating ASW and Air Defense theme park. This is how CBG looked in 1970s and continues to look with some "adjustments" (some of them inspiring awe in their recklessness) even today. 

Theoretically, for any Charlie SSGN in order to kill a carrier, it needed to get in between the Zone of Close and Remote ASW, granted this Charlie (or Charlies) could sneak pass the ASW aviation in the Zone of Remote ASW (patrolled by S-3 Vikings from carrier and P-3 Orion "on call" if need be). Vikings were no joke and, of course, provided a very good operational sweep (I know someone whose heart will be filled with nostalgia and joy), but if that zone was overcome and targeting was received it absolutely didn't mean that this Charlie was out of the woods. Far from it--not only those Vikings were still on station, now Charlie had to face those pesky SH-3 Sea King ASW helos. All in all, it was an extremely hazardous undertaking for those Soviet SSGNs but the real clusterfuck would have unfolded once the salvo was launched from beneath the waves. 

This meant an immediate giving up of own position and creation of a Flaming Datum in most cases (not all). Not only launched missiles would leave a lot of "clues" on the surface, including the registration of a salvo by the E-2 Hawkeye's Radar but the launch would be a significant acoustic event. So, here we are--enter the Flaming Datum. What happens next? Easy: CBG has around 120 kilometers : 1100 (around M=0.9) kilometers per hour by Malakhit = roughly 0.11 of an hour, or about 7 minutes before missiles arrive. So, the Air Defense gets all excited, all those Sea Sparrows air-defense complexes on Spruance DDGs in carrier's escort, as well as Talos (Later, Terrier) AD complexes on USS Long Beach (remember these are early to late 1970s we are talking about) all go on-line. Those airborne F-14 Tomcats start their supersonic dash towards the assumed route of those Malakhits, hoping to intercept them using their AIM-9 Sidewinders, AIM-7 Sparrow or AIM-54 Phoenix missiles. So, whatever it takes and the ballet ensues. 

Meanwhile, those Sea-Kings they already know fairly accurately where the hell broke loose and what do they do? Right, they go for jugular of the Flaming Datum and rush there to do their thing, depending on the range from Flaming Datum and with their maximum speed of 260 kilometers per hour, they can reach datum in anywhere between 20 to 5 minutes. Let's be reasonable and say 15 minutes--this is our Time of Delay or proverbial Tau. As you might expect, Charlie which just launched is now in a full break-off mode and CO and the crew of Charlie know damn well that they need to rush and each minute of Tau increases their chances, especially since Sea Kings do not have MAD and everybody on board Charlie prays that S-3 Vikings will be held at their stations because of the tactical assumption that this salvo could be merely a distraction and even bigger game expects CBG down the road. Like this:

So, for anyone who wants to experience all the "beauty" of operating a dipping sonar, they can get a kick out of ASW by reading this:

Where to Dip? Search Pattern for an Antisubmarine Helicopter Using a Dipping Sensor. 

Or get the load of joy by looking into the theory of sonobuoy barriers, believe me--it is a lot of "fun". I know, my graduation thesis had a lot to do with ASW and those dippings. But as the thesis by Yoash, Atkinson and Kress states: 

A perfect cookie-cutter sensor is a significant simplification. In reality the dynamics of sonar detection are quite complicated and depend upon the acoustic properties of the environment, which impact the transmission loss between the target and sensor (Lee and Kim, 2012). However, cookie-cutter sensors are commonly used in many maritime search and detection applications to generate insight. Random search, the cornerstone model for many search analyses, is based on a cookie-cutter sensor (see Chapter 2 of Washburn (2002)) and often provides similar results to more complicated and realistic detection dynamics (Lee and Kim, 2012). Furthermore, many ASW models use cookie-cutter sensors, including Danskin (1968), Shephard, et al., (1988), Baston and Bostock (1989), and Washburn (2002).

Read attentively, especially highlighted in yellow--this is where in real life tactical acumen of submarine's CO and his crew, training and technical parameters of a sub begin to play a huge role and often draw the line between life and death, between triumph and failure of the hunter and the hunted, who often exchange roles in an instance.  here is a food for thought to you. Think about it, wink, wink. 

FOC (Furthest On the Circle). We will need this reference when we will talk about our times, in 2020s. 

To Be Continued...

This Is Why Navies Exist.

Marines from Vice-Admiral Kulakov Large ASW Ship (read my lips--IT IS NOT a destroyer) dealt with pirates in the Gulf of Guinea and left some video from KA-27PS. Western media say that Russians "say that they drove pirates away" from the container-carrier Lucia. 20 Ukrainians, 1 Romanian  and 1 Russian constituting the crew were found in the vessel's innards and were OK. I wonder what language Ukrainians greeted Russians with, LOL. I know there were hugs. 

Vice-Admiral Kulakov has been in the ocean for 4 month now, and I am sure whoever those pirates were, they didn't want to face really pissed off Russian marines, who, at this stage, want to be home and wouldn't mind shooting a couple of jerks for the sake of stress-relief. I kid, I kid--Russians are not blood-thirsty monsters, they will just blow your kneecaps off, but you'll live. 

Becoming Estonians.

Russians are stereotyped globally as drunks and hot shots (Irish might contest that), English--as pompous and having bad teeth, in Russia Estonians are stereotyped as slow. Consider this: what is infinity? It is when Estonians count Chinese. Evidently, most of the American geopolitical pseudo-intellectuals are Estonians, otherwise how can you explain this. Kofman and Kendall-Taylor write in this petty cash rag for STEM-challenged "thinkers", Foreign Affairs, about the myth of Russian decline:

The problem is that the case for Russian decline is overstated. Much of the evidence for it, such as Russia’s shrinking population and its resource-dependent economy, is not as consequential for the Kremlin as many in Washington assume. Nor should the United States expect that Russia will automatically abandon its course of confrontation once President Vladimir Putin leaves office. Putin’s foreign policy enjoys widespread support among the country’s ruling elite, and his legacy will include a thicket of unresolved disputes, chief among them that over the annexation of Crimea. Any disagreements with the United States are here to stay.

As I am on record for many years, the Russia Study field in the West is a fraud and the crop of current Russia "experts" is a prefect reflection of the overall decline of the Western intellectual elites, of which I warned since the inception of this blog and am contemplating writing the book on precisely how this all occurred. Most importantly, majority of the so called "experts" in the West are highly uncultured people despite their many a Ph.D degrees in such subjects as "history", political "science" etc. Why they are uncultured is a separate issue, but it is a fact that they have a very skewed understanding of ethics and the extreme manifestation of such "ethics" one may easily find in the US media and in "Let's Go Brandon". People with actual ethics approach life with the assumption that they do not know much, in the modern West it is exactly the other way around, hence a dominance of clueless "experts" and onset of radical ideologies as a main tool for inquiry. Ideologies are much easier than actual study--as electric current, they take the path of the least resistance. Pontification increasingly becomes the only way of "intellectual exchange".

At this stage, it really doesn't matter what any of US "experts" think or project. Kofman and his co-writer are no exception. They state:

Expectations of Russian decline contain important truths. The country’s economy is stagnant, with few sources of value other than the extraction and export of natural resources. The entire system is rife with corruption and dominated by inefficient state-owned or state-controlled enterprises, and international sanctions limit access to capital and technology. Russia struggles to develop, retain, and attract talent; the state chronically underfunds scientific research; and bureaucratic mismanagement hinders technological innovation. As a result, Russia lags considerably behind the United States and China in most metrics of scientific and technological development.

Kofman, being a proud product of the US "humanities" degree-mill, writes on matters in which he precisely has zero expertise but what can you do? This is how US think-tankdom operates. But then again, you cannot teach the old dog new tricks because Kofman, obviously, has a very vague understanding of what real "metrics of scientific and technological developments" are, because he has degree in political "science" and the only "metric" he knows is that of iPhone. It is understandable in a way, it is difficult to resign oneself to the realities of the West's in general, and American in particular, decline, especially in the field of STEM in which Russia produces almost equal with the US number of graduates (two times more per capita than in the US). But then again, can you explain the difference between Russian public school Physics text book for the 10th grade and the same in the US, ah...wait, I forgot. In related news, Rosatom is a "state-controlled" company, as is most of Russian MIC, which produces weapons (and not only) the United States can only dream about. Well, never mind. 

Kofman's ego is hurt. He is not completely dumb, he feels that things do not go his way, he knows his grasp of Russia and her affairs, from military to economic ones, is at best tenuous. He doesn't understand Russia, he cannot, because he needs to study real history of the 20th century and of Russia's history--he is not able to. He still lives in La La Land of America's hegemony handed to her by providence and a series of historic events of unimaginable magnitude but he is afraid to recognize that. Hence, same beaten to death mantras trying to ignore such facts that today the third of Americans are forced to skip a meal to make their ends meet. 

Our survey results reaffirmed troubling data relating to food insecurity and food prices. The Zogby Poll® found food insecurity is being experienced by almost a third (29%) of respondents, while two thirds said no, and 5% were not sure. It's quite astounding to think nearly three in ten likely voters said they had or family members missed meals due to food price inflation.

Boy, talk about delusion. But then again, this is modern American expertdom for ya. But why being Estonian? Because the slow realization of truth is creeping in as is understanding of a fraudulent nature of any "metrics" by which modern West committed suicide. Kofman finally admits:

Washington must move past the myth that Russia is a beleaguered or cornered state, lashing out in recognition of its own demise. In truth, there is little evidence that Russia’s leaders see their country in this way—on the contrary, they consider Russia to be the center of power in its own region and an assertive player globally. Events such as the bungled U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan only reinforce Moscow’s perception that it is rather the United States that is in decline. Ignoring that view will create false expectations for Russia’s behavior, leaving the United States and its allies poorly positioned to anticipate Russian actions.

Mr Kofman, "perceptions", really? For a man claiming to be an expert in "military affairs" it is about time to start learning about warfare, not from BS propaganda but face a hard cold fact of the United States losing, or not winning, all its wars (with the exception of invasion of mighty Grenada) since 1945 (and even then, in 1945, defeat of Nazi Germany was not exactly to the America's credit as it is claimed often) and escape from Afghanistan was not a "perception" but a solid forecast very many years prior to this embarrassment in Kabul. Many people warned about it. But it is what it is, US geopolitical "elites" continue to fail in finding their own asses with their both hands in a brightly lit room and refuse to recognize that the United States today is at the mercy of global forces which it cannot recognize nor accept as objective laws of real economy, warfare, politics and culture and continue to delude themselves with "garrulous patriotism", as noted by both Alexis de Tocqueville and, later, in different words, by Mencken, in feeble attempts to avoid facing a reality of a multi-polar world in which the US is but one of few global powers and is impotent militarily when facing real militaries and real economies.  

UPDATE: speak of the devil. Putin at Valdai on WW II history. 

It is totally pertinent to this piece above and this is very important. I, however, have an issue with Putin's statement that "they know". Not anymore, many of them are true believers in the Allies defeating Nazism, with some minor help from USSR. They have a completely distorted picture of the events of the 20th century and a defining role (crucible really) of WW II in creating conditions for what we have today--a systemic crisis of liberalism. None of them have any clue on the real price of peace.

Why They Are Nervous. Short Excurse Into the Modern War. Part 2.

Now, since there was a consensus on me continuing with this ASW thingy, immediately--THE clarification. On the illustration with circles-ranges of Russian subs along the Atlantic coast of the United States (in the previous post) we view the situation from the point of view of the known position (and even Flaming Datum, which IS discovering sub's position by it blowing its cover) and immediately can draw circle-ranges and, in reality, this is how those aggressive humanity-hating, vodka-drinking Russkies will see the map. Not so in Pentagon. Before ANY salvo and, consequently, Flaming Datum (and even this must be discussed with some huge caveats), what American ASW people will see before the hostilities start will be this ugly picture. 

No circles here but only green shaded areas limited by a range of 500 nautical miles. I believe CBO from where the template is taken meant 500 regular miles, but let's assume that these are nautical miles which gives us 1.852 x 500 = 926 kilometers, precisely the range at which 3M22 could be launched in case of (God forbids) war. So, you may continue to mentally fill all those ranges with green thus reaching, eventually 2,000 miles range and beyond where latest mods of 3M14M with the range of 4,500 kilometers could be launched. 

So, looking at this green mess one has to asks a question of how many and where those Zircon-carriers are. If there is no war, but it already begins to smell funny in the air, the only thing you can do is to "pack" these green areas with all available ASW assets without losing readiness for war. Well, while ships in ASW role are fine and dandy, they really are not that great if it comes down to a colossal area such as shown on both coasts. Modern submarine will hear those guys way earlier than they will be able to detect them, and, considering today astonishing advancements in quieting and an "open" water theater both at the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, the sub will simply avoid detection by maneuvering. So, call Jacksonville (VP-8) and also request additional Virginias to run the "perimeter" in hope to run into those pesky Yasens or Oscar-IIMs to prevent them from launching. Well, the big game starts. 

The US Navy is a proud and, despite its problems, still very powerful force. And although a number of credible ASW scholars warned for decades that ASW of the US Navy is a "soft spot", even the ensign fresh from USNA knows that you need to guard US Navy's most important installations and bases. Like Norfolk. So, what do those people do? They take the compass and start choosing the places with the highest Probability Density for the hostile sub's position. I omit for now this rather not difficult issue because at this stage of the warfare we are talking about not tens or even hundreds of kilometers of ranges, no, we are talking about thousands.  This is unprecedented in history. Mind you, Russia has already Zircon with the range of 1,500 kilometers and speeds in excess of Mach=12-13 in works. So. You get this (simplified)--you draw the baseline and then draw (with Norfolk in center) a semi-circle which matters a great deal, especially its shaded ocean part, which stretches (has radius) 1,000 kilometers into the Atlantic. 

This is where your aggressive, democracy-hating, Russian Yasen or Oscar-II M SSGNs will be, probably. Yes, a good term to use in this particular case--probably. How much is this "probably"--later. Now everything gets easy, not. The area of this probable Russkies' "station" is just one half of this circle: A=0.5 x 3.14 x 1000^2= some measly 1.57 million square kilometers. Easy-Peasy (I kid, I kid). Now, once ASW/Patrol aviation enters the picture--mind you, we are still not shooting at each other--we can start calculations in earnest. 

1. What is an Operational Sweep (rate) for a single, say, P-8 Poseidon, or rather a drone, using its main initial detection instrument of MAD--Magnetic Anomaly Detector. As we assumed previously, we give the width of Poseidon's MAD of 2 kilometers, we also assume for Poseidon a slightly higher than venerable P-3 Orion's search speed (P-3 flies at 360 kilometers per hour while "sweeping"), just for the sake of experiment, let it be 400 kilometers per hour. That makes Poseidon's sweep rate, while it will be conducting a Random Search, or SR = 2 kilometers x 400 kilometers per hour = 800 square kilometers per hour. Now we are on our way. 

2. For a single P-8 Poseidon to sweep these "measly" 1.57 million square kilometers area thus requires: 1.57 million sq.km : 800 = only 1,962 hours or about 82 days. I told you--easy, right? Of course, common sense tells us that more than one Poseidon will get involved, but as you already saw previously, unless we are talking about a Flaming Datum (that is either actual detection or sub giving its position up) we are facing Probability of Detection of such sub for a theoretical single P-8 Poseidon as:

In this simple formula our C is just the ratio of our effective search rate or sweep rate (800 sq.kilometers per hour) to the Area to be searched. Which in itself is not a probability of detecting a sub in the area but only a probability of our sensor (MAD) to detect it if it is there. 

We start with an easy example: let's say our Poseidon needs to search the area of 800 sq.kilometers. Our C thus is 800:800 =1, so:

Second sweep over the same area then gives us: 

                POD=1-0.37*0.37= 1- 0.1369 = 0.8631 (Respectable)

The problem, of course, is that once the Area of search increases two fold, to 1,600 sq. km (C=0.5), our POD drops in a single sweep to 0.39. And once we get Poseidon on station sweeping the Area of 4,000 sq.km (C=800/4000=0.2) we will get only POD of 0.18 after 5 hours of sweeping. So, imagine now that in our case we are talking about the area which is THREE orders of magnitude larger. Of course, naturally, it will be assumed that those Russian subs will be abusing the relative safety of farthest edges of this circle. Possible? Possible, but then again--they may simply sneak in and out, or just close in for a launch at 500 kilometer range. What one has to remember, that even from the range of 950 kilometers it takes a salvo of Zircons flying at M=8 to reach the target only 5.5 minutes. And this simple fact throws all modern ASW tactics into a full blown chaos, because any carrier of 3M22 can afford to make a gift of a flaming datum to an enemy, without much risk for itself. Why it is so--later. 

Update: thanks to readers--US used P-8 Poseidon, unlike those of India's Navy, doesn't have built-in MAD and "theoretically" is supposed to operate MAD carrying drone. Well, good luck with that. In the same time, good ol' P-3 Orion still has some life left. You can recalculate for P-3 with its sweep speed, at 60 meters altitude, of 360 kilometers per hour.   

To Be Continued...     

Quote of the Week.

I am stealing Patrick Armstrong's (and part of Bernhard of MoA) tradition to post quotes as separate posts. Let's say "Quote of the Week". First entry is Pepe Escobar with his  classic sarcasm and wit: 

"No one ever lost money underestimating NATO’s capacity to reach the depths of inconsequential stupidity."

Read the whole thing following the link:

Moscow does not even bother to talk to these clowns anymore: as Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has pointed out, “Russia will no longer pretend that some changes in relations with NATO are possible in the near future.” 

This is the quote of the week. Red color means awesome quote. I will find the color for stupid quotes.

Why They Are Nervous. Short Excurse Into the Modern War. Part 1.

Patrick Armstrong thinks that they simply ran out of options in terms of color revolutions and he justifiably mentions this: 

Former successes – in recent times, Ukraine twice, Georgia – are becoming failures: Hong Kong, Venezuela and Belarus. The targets have learned how to counter the attacks.

Read the whole thing--it is excellent, as is usual for Armstrong. Then, there is a good piece by Tim Kirby on current US foreign policy, which he calls "surprising" because it is, in many important respects, repeats that of the Trump Admin. As Kirby astutely concludes:

In this sense, it could be that ultimately, both Biden and Trump were tasked with managing a crumbling global empire, trying to keep the sinking ship afloat as long as possible waiting for something to change. Thus, their reactions to events and plans could look similar because of the similar causes that underlie them, even if the spirit behind the actions are radically different. Like it or not NATO may just be obsolete, Afghanistan may have just been too expensive, China may just be too powerful. The reactions to these situations could wind up being similar out of necessity or a lack of options. Both Trump and Biden faced these same realities.

And then, there is this, which brings us to the main point: 

German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has been one of the most active backers of NATO's new master plan to counter Russia in case a military conflict breaks out between the sides. The strategy, which was agreed on Thursday, envisages the military alliance’s troops fighting Russian forces in the Baltic region and across the Black Sea, while also calling for non-conventional warfare, including nuclear weapons, cyber-attacks, and space military technology, to be employed.

Here is THE main point, as any Western politico with degree in political "science" (or politics), she cannot have a faintest idea what she supports or doesn't whenever it relates to any issue of warfare. And I mean zero, zilch--you cannot, you simply cannot, explain even in the most comprehensive briefings to any person with degree in "politics" and experiences with running basic fiscal-political "protocols" of the West's regional and national election pipelines, how tactical translates into operational, and how operational translates into strategic and, essentially, into the political level when war is involved. You could do this in 1914 and 1945, you still could do it in 1955, however barely, and then "something" happened--it became very hard, and by mid-1960s it all became an alien language to the main shakers and movers of Western politics--people whose only skill in life is how to re-elect oneself or how to navigate regional and national bureaucracies. Don't take it from me, take it from the US armed forces general with Ph.D in physics. These two pages written by a man who knows what he is talking about should be made mandatory for reading by 100% politicos and by about 99% of the  so called military "experts". 

In other words, no contemporary Western politician can have any sound idea on matters which, actually, are the main drivers behind global affairs, because they do not understand modern warfare. They cannot, you need a solid math, physics, engineering and tactical-operational experience as an officer to be able to grasp a profound connection between foreign policies of nations and the global power balance. Latiff laments that "serious scholarly books are written about war and its consequences, but the vast majority ignores them." Tell me about it. Can you imagine trying to explain to Rachel Maddow or this Germany's "defense minister" how the Probability Theory and Theory of Operations applies to modern politics in the times of hyper-sonic weapons, netcentric warfare, AI elements and over-the-horizon surveillance and anti-satellite weapons. Good luck with that, I heard some "political science" courses even include such things, of course, as Game Theory and... and... here is John Mearsheimer of University of Chicago and, allegedly, "realist" teaches this course:

Seminar on Nuclear Weapons and International Politics. 100 Units. The aim of this course is to examine how nuclear weapons have affected the conduct of international relations. Special attention will be paid to subjects like: 1) nuclear deterrence, 2) the causes of nuclear proliferation, 3) the consequences of nuclear proliferation, 4) strategies for employing nuclear weapons, 4) the role of nuclear weapons in the Cold War, 5) how nuclear weapons will affect relations among the great powers in the emerging multipolar world, and 6) whether there has been a "nuclear revolution."    

The issue here is not that Mearsheimer can hold those seminars, it is the fact that despite him being a graduate of the USMA at West-Point, class of 1970, he hardly qualifies for any serious  military input because his record of "conclusions" regarding the only country which can wipe the US off the map, Russia, in the last decade demonstrates his complete detachment from the geopolitical reality in so far as the global balance of power and technological revolution goes. Which his latest disastrous and empty treatise proves without a shade of a doubt. A nauseating meandering dabbling into the pile of contemporary Western political and foreign relations theories none of which ever predicted anything. Not to mention the fact that few in the West really know how things work precisely because the only thing they know is how to obfuscate facts to fit narratives. We are not like that, we have some clue and there is no reason to produce a pile of BS for the sake of own academic sinecure, no matter how risible this doctrine-mongering is. In 99% of the cases it is preposterous. 

Now, that we have re-established the fact that Western politicos do not have a clue beyond general political, primarily media-driven, issues and that they can like or dislike anything related to warfare only based on how they are briefed and are told by people with a clue, let's explain now how even knowledge of basic facts of say Search Theory, ASW and physics and math of the modern warfare, namely Salvo model (missile exchange) gives us immediately an exceptionally clear glimpse of this capricious animal of strategy. You see, you need to know not only what to do, you need to know HOW things work and, especially, WHY they work. No course in history, political "science" or social sciences, supported by studying the statistics of GIGO (Garbage In-Garbage Out) can answer this. 

Enter delivery systems and Washburn's classic equation for the so called Random Search in case the "flaming" datum (in our case the position of the submarine) is obtained because... how about the sub launches its anti-shipping missiles and gives itself away. Here we have to review two scenarios. 

a) the war breaks out with a very short escalation (threatening period) phase which sees a "moderate" ASW/Patrol aircraft presence in the area;

b) the breakout of hostilities is preceded by a fairly lengthy escalation (threatening period) phase which sees gradual but fairly fast increase of the ASW forces in the area. 

As you may have guessed it already, we are viewing possible (hopefully, impossible) conflict between NATO and Russia. Assume that in both scenarios you have this operational situation--it is not "strategic" yet, it will become soon. 

The five red circles (circumferences, really) are theoretical positions (done to be best of my ability to a real scale) of Russian Navy's SSGNs all carrying both 3M22 Zircon and 3M14 Kalibrs with P-800 Onyx. The range of roughly 950 kilometers (red circumferences) is given for 3M22. The area of each such circle is roughly 2,000,000 square kilometers (which is about the area of Greenland) and submarines, of course, are located at the centers of those circles. Small blue circumferences, however, in each of the circle are not related to subs, they merely show the scale (of around 50 kilometers) of the range of detection and main caliber gun battles between battleships of the closing period of WW II and they are there for comparison. 

The blue line which splits in two with the arrows at the ends are general routes of the US convoys to deliver reinforcements to NATO allies in case of the war getting (let's assume) into the more-or-less protracted mode, for now without nuclear weapons and the US navy is forced to fight yet another "Battle of the Atlantic". The straight green dashed line and two green rectangles (absolutely NOT to scale) are coverage at the ranges and hours on station (that is conducting some sort of ASW search) by a single P-8 Poseidon. As you might expect, the United States can fast increase the number of the ASW/Patrol aircraft in the area and we will talk about this too, but at this stage ANY scenario, even seemingly most realistic, is viewed ONLY for given the frame of reference, which Western decision-makers lack completely. What also has to be understood--those circumferences and rectangles they are not static, in real life they move, sometimes very actively, especially against the background of such advances in submarine quieting which allows dramatically increase "silent" velocities while being able to use acoustic detection capabilities without much interference. We discount here weather and hydrology factors for now. 

So, enter flaming datum formula. You can see the thesis by the officer of Chilean Navy Alberto Soto for Master of Science Degree in Operational Research (he had Bachelor of Science in Weapons Engineering) in US Naval Post-Graduate School, under the guidance of Dr. Washburn (page. 24, just in case). 

Average number of detections with the time z(t):

I once elaborated on this formula which is applicable to the so called Random Search (which also is applicable to a Parallel Search) and there is literally nothing complex in this formula despite the integral sign. As we already established z(t) is a number of detections by whatever (ASW Helo, ASW/Patrol aircraft etc.). So: 

R--is a detection range of our "cookie cutter" sensor. You may ask what the hell a kitchen device has anything to do with submarine hunting. The answer is very simple--all cookie cutters have sharp and well defined edges which are unchanged. In real life, of course, the detection ranges of any sensor, be that radar, sonar or FLIR are subjects to change due to weather conditions, radio-permeability for radar, hydrology for sonar and as a result, for our theoretical calculations we have to assume that ranges do not change and are as sharp and well-defined as the edges of a cookie cutter. (Hint: ASW is the most complex and daunting task in naval warfare). One of my favorite sketches. 

Ranges, of course, vary--if radar range is influenced, among many other things, by the elevation of its antenna and under some conditions could either lose or gain up to 20-30% of its range and its "cookie cutter" shape is circle, the range of, say, MAD, Magnetic Anomaly Detector is a "strip" whose width is the double range and it is not that huge (which will matter later) and varies say between 500 meters to 2 kilometers. Let's assume that it is one kilometer for the ease of calculations, so, in this case MAD's range will be 1 kilometer x 2 = 2 kilometers. It is all simplified, of course.

V--of course is velocity because our sensors move: radar on ship moves with the speed of a ship and leaves behind itself a "strip" with the area of V x 2R, because any sensor looks on "both sides" thus doubling its range (see above about MAD's range). If our radar detection range on the ship is 40 kilometers and the ship moves with the speed of 20 kilometers per hour, that means in one hour it will "cover" the area of 40 x 2 x 20 x 1= 1, 600 square kilometers. If the double width (2R) of our MAD is 2 kilometers, then P-8 Poseidon, flying with speed of (roughly) 400 kilometers per hour, will cover the area of 2 x 400 = 800 square kilometers. 

This "scary" Pi x y(t)^2 is nothing more than the formula of the area of the circle you know from the middle school and it is nothing more than 3.14 x r^2, where our r in this case is an expanding radius of a search circle (with the center of datum) at any given time (t) which is velocity of submarine time time at any given moment starting from the moment Tau (a funny lower case letter at the lower limit of integration of our integral) and it is nothing more than the delay time, between the time of datum--the sub blows its own cover by a missile launch--and the moment helicopter or P-8 Poseidon (or P-3 Orion) arrives at the circle to start its search, or hunt. Say, the sub launched missiles and was detected (Flaming Datum) at noon, 12:00, Poseidon arrives at the expanding circle at 12:30, our tau (delay) thus is 0.5 hours. If the submarine was moving all this time with "let's save our asses" speed (velocity) of 20 kilometers per hour (roughly 12 knots) then the radius of the circle in which Poseidon will have to search is y(t) = 20 x 0.5 = 10 kilometers, thus the area of this circle is Pi x y(t)^2 = 3.14 x 10^2=3.14 x 100 =314 square kilometers.  

This is all tactics but it becomes a serious operation with enormous strategic ramifications once the search (hunt) starts because at this stage a truckload of factors begins to affect all this chaos and we get to see the numbers which today can make any serious American military professional feel very uncomfortable, because once the latest anti-shipping cruise missiles such as 3M22 or Onyx get involved, mathematics becomes insane and ASW operations begin to look daunting, to put it mildly. Because Probability of Detection (POD) of the enemy (Russian) submarine, which is calculated like this:   

Is the major reason behind many recent statements and actions on NATO's part, because it is difficult to fight a war, when you know that you will get defeated badly. But about this later. Waiting for your feedback if I need to continue with this, because real analysis has to have some numerical framework, which is also comprehensible to a well educated layman, who can do basic calculations. 

To Be Continued (maybe?)...

P.S. Someone may say that I gave John Mearsheimer a bad rap, I don't know how anyone who for the last 10 years was on record about "mediocre" Russian Armed Forces and who obviously lacks understanding of physics and mathematics of delivery systems, which ARE the foundation of a nuclear deterrence (anyone can make warhead today), can teach and hold any seminars on nuclear deterrence. Can he answer the question if Kinzhal is a deterrent?