Italy Must Oblige...

No matter what Italy does, and her ridiculous proposals for being a "mediator" between Russia and 404 have been flatly rejected by Russia, she will remain the US lap-dog and will do as ordered. As la Repubblica reports:

Washington chiama Roma: "Mandate a Kiev lo scudo anti-missile”. Il consigliere per la sicurezza nazionale Sullivan telefona a Palazzo Chigi e sollecita l'approvazione del sesto decreto di aiuti militari. 

Translation: Washington calls Rome: "Send the anti-missile shield to Kiev". National security adviser Sullivan telephones Palazzo Chigi and requests the approval of the sixth military aid decree.

Sullivan wants Rome to send SAMP/T air-defense complexes to 404. Well, SAMP/T is an Aster missile family complex which in its tactical characteristics is somewhat similar to Patriot PAC2/3, with a slightly shorter range but with a fully vertical start, and demands to Rome to send it are just another manifestation of the US reluctance to satisfy mom's basement dwelling community of military porn masturbators to see further NATO technology being obliterated in 404 by Russia. But the trend on increasing NATO involvement by supply of what passes for "top of the line" technology in NATO is obvious and the US continues to exert pressure on its NATO vassals "to do something". 

To demonstrate the way brainwashed Western public is "engaged" in the narrative, here is one of many fanboys' "military analysis" UTube channels which states this: 

This fits very well with my long-standing contention that the field of ANY military analysis anywhere, Russia including, has been completely hollowed out by military and geopolitical illiteracy and pure "monetization" greed. That applies top-bottom. That is why it becomes difficult sometimes to point out pretty evident to any attentive observer things which are the real drivers and impetuses behind one or another action of Washington. 

Here, we come back to Gorshkov's deployment which, of course, serves as a PR action too, which in military circles means Demonstration of Flag. But even in Russia, the sixth column (per Saker's definition) begins to rear its ugly head and begins to sing beaten to death false song about... and you may have guessed it--targeting. Obviously, this song is heard from quarters of old farts who long ago lost any touch with modern technology and the way contemporary targeting systems and data fusion and probabilistic analysis are done in modern Combat Informational Control Systems. Not to mention the fact that Liana has large enough constellation to provide both signint and active radar and optical picture for Russian Navy, and I don't even talk about over-the-horizon capabilities of such things as "navalized" RLK 34K1 Monolit on Gorshkov-class, which has full both active (250 km under super-refraction and natural wave-guide) and passive (400 km) over-the-horizon capability. 

But this is what happens to people, who graduated Nakhimov's naval academy in Sevastopol in mid-1970s, having experience only with already then obsolete AD complex Volna, and not having any experience with gaining steam computerization of the Soviet Navy and then almost immediately "transferred" to "serve" in the Black Sea Fleet's newspaper "The Flag of the Motherland" and doing so became Captain of the 1st Rank. No wonder, people like that continue to repeat outdated baloney (in Russian), especially in the sixth column rag. Yet, here we are. This will continue because military "journalism" is a sort of mental illness which cannot be addressed until people study the subject thoroughly and have enough moral fortitude to beat back the temptation of false hype, which, sadly, nowadays often translates in money and 15 minutes of fame. Warhol was prescient about that.