International Sports Is Dead.

Olympic "principles" are fiction and I spoke many times about International Olympic Committee being utterly corrupt. There is no better supporter of my long standing position than Mr. Putin himself.

«В результате политизации международных спортивных структур и дальнейшей коммерциализации международного олимпийского движения, к сожалению, там, мы видим, определенная деградация наступает… Это неизбежно просто повлечет за собой создание параллельных структур с сфере международного спорта», – приводит его слова ТАСС. Путин также добавил, что «нужно создавать достойные условия для наших атлетов, в том числе это касается и материального поощрения, это касается премий, грантов».

Translation: "As a result of the politicization of international sports structures and the further commercialization of the international Olympic movement, unfortunately, there, we see a certain degradation is coming ... This will inevitably simply entail the creation of parallel structures with the sphere of international sports. Putin also added that it is necessary to create decent conditions for our athletes, including this also concerns material incentives, this applies to premiums and grants.

Simple as that. It is about time.

New Olympic Sports.

By now, after doping scandals from WADA and hackers' revelations about massive "officially allowed" medical exceptions for full-blown doping for sportsmen from some "exceptional" nations, after political atrocity against Russian, absolutely clean, para-Olympians,  I hope the modern Olympic movement goes the same way the horse buggy went. It is totally corrupted and ideologically-driven. But not before that:

Pole dancing at the Olympics? Federation seeks IOC recognition.

Hey, if Bob Dylan can get Nobel Prize for Literature (nothing personal against Bob per se and he does have some awesome songs) why not pole-dancing? No, really, this could be an awesome Olympic "sport", it certainly will attract vast TV audience of males around the globe. I also would suggest in this case to add to Olympics: "threesomes with obstacles", "lap dance relays" and "track and field masturbation"--that sure as hell will make steadily declining Olympic Games audiences explode and will provide TV ratings which will finally beat those of soccer's World Cup. Think about it. I would love to see the faces of feminists. But this is just me.

Armata, Costs And Reality. Again....

When Main Battle Tank T-14 Armata debuted at Moscow's Victory Day Parade in 2015, let's be honest, it created a global media furor. No doubt, together with praises, a truck load of doubts was also dumped on Armata and the main of them all was the issue of costs. Few people argued with the fact that it is the most advanced tank in the world today, but what price? Initial speculations were that the cost will be so high that Russia as a whole may go bankrupt and dissolve after producing 5, 6....8 Armatas tops. Of course, how could it be any other way when "Russian scholars" (mostly from uber-liberal think-tanks, a euphemism for NATO shills) said so.  

Well, realities on the ground, however, are such that 20 Armatas are already serving with Russian Army's regular tank units and undergo what is called "troop trials", a term somewhat related to IOC: Initial Operational Capability. This is after a year since debut at the Red Square. To add insult to injury, or rub the salt into the wounds, of all kinds of Western Russia's ever ignorant "military experts", the CEO of famed Ural Vagon Zavod (Ural Train Cars Factory--yes, Russians love their military technologies pass as train cars or baby food) Oleg Sienko in his recent interview to National Defense magazine confirmed what many suspected all along, that Armata is exactly three times less expensive to produce than Abrams. That means only one thing: if to believe Abrams' (or Leopard's) cost to be $8.62 million, then Armata is $2,87 million. So, does it mean that Russian Army will receive planned 2300 Armatas by 2025 (initially it was stated to be 2020)? It sure as hell looks like it.      

               

Will there be delays, rescheduling, adjustments etc.? Absolutely! It already happened due to economic and geopolitical circumstances.  No state-of-the-art technology ever was procured without that and it is quite normal. But there is no doubt that Russia, yet again, was able to complete a full cycle--from R&D to procurement--of the cutting edge military technology which in the West would have cost....cough...F-35. This technological gap with the West will continue to grow, especially so if Putin will finally make a decision which a whole nation waits from him now. If not, somebody else, not Putin, will be making those decisions but that is a separate matter and a discussion. Meanwhile, Sukhoi T-50 (aka PAK FA) is getting ready to hit serial production in 2017, with new T-50 specific engines to be installed starting from 2018. 

It is not only inevitable but warranted to observe a somewhat peculiar reaction of Western MSM on a stream of real news from Russia. Behind this reaction (Russophrenia) is their never realized but, oh so palpable, "secret" desire to see Russia implode economically and Russians starve and crawl to the West on their knees. Yet, Russia somehow makes more money exporting grain than she does exporting weapons and now is world's leading exporter of wheat, still builds nuclear and diesel ice-breakers, produces micro-processors, launches satellites, builds nuclear power stations and, generally, is not willing to get scared. I guess this costs factor and ability to produce one of, if not the world's best weapons in quantities that deter any aggression is a huge part of the answer. In Russia it is always Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum and rightly so--this is reality of Russia's history.

S-500 Prometei (Prometheus) Has Arrived.

According to Superintendent Of Air Defense of Russia's Air Space Forces, Lieutenant-General Victor Gumennyi, first batteries of S-500 Prometheus Air Defense complex will be procured shortly, if not already, as I write this. That means IOC. I am no big fan of expensive military toys but this one is a real game changer. Very little is known about this S-500, but what is known is impressive, to put it mildly. One small detail--the speed of S-500's missile is 3600 meters per second, this is 3.6 kilometers or roughly 2.25 miles per second. These are M=10+ missiles capable of killing anything very low (such as hyper-sonic cruise missiles, when they will appear)  and very high, including low orbit satellites and strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles and their MIRVs with speeds up to 7,000 meters per second. It is capable to also detect and kill any so called "Stealth" targets. Considering the range of S-500 (40Н6М missile) for aerodynamic targets of 600 kilometers it changes the air-space battlefield dramatically, since S-500 is capable to "reach" even AWACS platforms. Integration of S-500 into the Russian national early warning system makes Russia's air space basically impenetrable.

This partially explains why Russia agreed to sell S-400, a monster of air defense in its own right, to China. It also tells a bit about the state of Russia's development of hyper-sonic weapons but it was clear already, once Zircon was included into the weapons' suite of modernizing project 1144 nuclear cruisers. The interesting question here, however, is this--will S-500 have its navalized version. This will completely reshape carrier force, which already is going through operational and strategic crisis. Will naval versions of S-500s appear on the future Russian DDG? Who knows, but the impact of this system deployed to sea will be massive, not that navalized S-400  or updated S-300 are bad. Considering massive ECM and ECCM capability S-500 can, indeed, change a warfare profoundly. But if there is anything constant about warfare it is changing of its technological dimension, which later causes massive changes on tactical, operational and strategic levels.