When Your Expertise Is ...

 ... in writing all kinds of pseudo-military BS. I stress, again--you cannot explain to average journo anywhere in the wolrd what this thing is. They simply will have difficulties grasping it. Let's start with "nodes" (or nexuses):

PI/L and PH/I are those probabilities (nexuses) where the whole thing collapses on itself even in the "single shot", especially when you consider what highlighted in yellow "engaged in the fire control solution" means. It literally means that your AD complex received this "firing solution" and is capable to perform intercept of anti-shipping cruise missile (ASCM). That is in the fairy tales, of course, and is useless against genuine hypersonic missiles such as 3M22 Zircon or Kinzhal. In this case your kill chain begins to dissolve already at PH--Susceptibility segment. 

So, what then is this news about from the neocon central?

United States destroyers recently received upgrades in hardware and training for defense as China is set to unveil new missiles designed to sink enemy warships. China's Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a written request for comment. U.S. defense contractor Raytheon announced on Tuesday that the AN/SPY-6(V)4 radar recently completed its first live test in a maritime environment at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii, successfully tracking air and surface targets under various conditions. The AN/SPY-6(V)4 is one of four variants in the SPY-6 radar family for U.S. naval vessels, capable of simultaneously defending against ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, as well as anti-surface and anti-air threats, and countering jamming and electronic warfare. Unlike ballistic missiles that follow a predictable trajectory, hypersonic missiles—capable of flying over five times the speed of sound—can maneuver during flight, making them difficult to intercept. Three of China's new anti-ship weapons could be hypersonic missiles.

It is impossible to explain to any US media maroon that AN/SPY-6(V)4 is just a better, more sensitive radar of the venerable Spy-1D line into AESA variant, whose task is not "to defend" (radar cannot "defend"--it is merely a part of a complex which actually defends) but provide all it can BEFORE the Engagement phase (see the picture of Kill Chain above) before the actual engagement happens which IS the launch of AD missiles which will be now guided before their Active Radar Seeker captures the anti-shipping missile by means of these guys which "pulse" until the AD missile seeker captures the target and now is in shoot-and-forget mode:  

And here they are: AN/SPG-62 fire control radar. I will omit here discussing Chinese hypersonic missiles such as (for now only claims) YJ-21. If the data about this missile is correct and it does reach terminal while maneuvering at M=10, the US Navy simply has no KINETIC means, yes those AD missiles, to do anything about it, period. Whether the US Navy has SPY 6, or 10, or hell knows what--the Air Defense contour of ANY US Navy's Arleigh Burke-class DDG is simply a weapon complex for XX century threats, it is not designed to engage a single, forget a 2-4-6 etc. salvo of hypersonic weapons, and survive. SM-6, SM-3--these are all weapons conceived and designed in 1990s against the "enemy" which fits into the description of decrepit and backward "opponents" like Iraq or Libya. The US Navy ran into the brick wall of Houthis recently, we all know the result. 

Remember the guy? 

He ripped a new ass-hole to all those "strategists" at the Millennium Challenge 2002. Read it, read it--there is a lesson there, Van Riper used salvos of slow subsonic "Iranian" missiles similar to US Harpoons against the "best fighting force in history". They couldn't handle it. They never could, and we saw the "quality" of the US-made air defense systems in SMO. If you think that adding new radar, however capable, without having kinetic means to defend oneself is awesome--I have a bridge to sell you. Prepayment, I'll give the account number in private. Any takers?

But sheer idiocy of the US "experts" doesn't stop there. Neocons' propaganda machine is hurting. Good, this filth must be removed from positions of power and influence if the US is to survive. 

Russia to reject US and EU offer of security guarantees to Ukraine – ISW report.

Yes, one of a very few times the Institute for Sinecures for War Amateurs such as Keane or Petraeus landed anything reminiscent of the truth is this. Russia can continue with SMO as long as she wants to and convulsions of EU regimes are of no concern to Russians. Why Russia needs to talk to the US I explained so many times that it becomes ridiculous repeating it ad nauseam. Europe is over, the US? Will see. 

Why They Are Not Bright.

The US is a fractured nation (or using Huntington's lingo--a torn one) and against the background of a precipitous (always not very high) decline of cognitive abilities of the best of the best the US "elite machine" produces, be them politicians or military, one has to question motives of those so called "elites". Going back to this NYT piece (of shit), Larry did a good write up about it yesterday: 

I can summarize the massive story in one sentence — Ukraine would have destroyed the weak, incompetent Russians if only the Ukrainian generals had followed the guidance from the US military. If you’re looking for a signal that the war in Ukraine is on its last legs, this article is it. This is a ridiculous attempt to burnish the image of the Pentagon and US European Command as strategic and tactical geniuses who could have beaten the Russians if only those damn Ukrainians had followed their advice.

But here is the critical point which is very interesting for Russian General Staff and military academies where, now confirmed by the NYT, intellectual impotence of Pentagon will be studied in astonishment for years to come. Here is this phrase. 

One European intelligence chief recalled being taken aback to learn how deeply enmeshed his N.A.T.O. counterparts had become in Ukrainian operations. “They are part of the kill chain now,” he said.

Let me translate it to you: using one of many definitions (all of them very similar) we define the Kill Chain as: kill chain is the ability of an organization to rapidly and accurately execute all the steps from locating to killing an enemy target. It represents the essential contest in modern warfare. In other words, cretins from NYT confirmed what Russians knew all along--the US was in full command and control of VSU top-bottom. Well, apart from the moral aspect of the story that the US military excelled primarily in attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure, the conclusion is not only warranted but inescapable--US military knows very little about modern warfare, especially in the C2 (Command and Control) field where even modern Comms, Computers and ISR are no match to a much more experienced and technologically advanced opponent with an immense advantage in kinetic means. 

For those who still do not understand the depth of this loss for--now we can openly state it--the US Armed Forces in 404, I want to remind you one thing which has been repeated by Russian military non-stop--Russian Army never lost operational initiative. American generals, however, have been looking, as it is now a pattern, in all the wrong places for planning and, as is always the case, descended into the tactical minutiae and PR-based assessment of the battlefield. The fact that they also bought 404's propaganda about casualties also tells everything you need to know about Pentagon. By the time they started to suspect something--it was too late. And then there was a "counter-offensive". It was planned by the US generals and, naturally, it ended in catastrophe for them and those unlucky 160,000+ VSU who have never reached even the first line of Russian defense and have been slaughtered in the forefield (security zone). This is what I wrote about this disaster for NATO and, naturally, strategic victory for Russia. 

The most stunning factor in this whole situation was the fact of not classifying the so-called “counter-offensive” by AFU, while classifying the assessment which, correctly, forecasted some serious issues for the AFU. This assessment was definitely driven by a common military sense and basic understanding of what is called the Correlation of Forces and Means (COFM). Of course, the problem for the West was that the Russian side was preparing to turn those “shortfalls” into unmitigated military catastrophe for Ukraine and the Biden Administration, who had pushed for this amateurishly planned adventure. But even this “classified” assessment—a marked departure from the Biden administration’s public pronouncements about the vitality of Ukraine’s army—should have given the planners in the White House, State Department and Pentagon a serious pause. But it didn’t. The reason it didn’t lies in both the U.S. military’s lack of expertise with real modern warfare of the 21st century across the board and in a precipitous intellectual decline of the fully “echo-chambered” Washington elite, whose insulation from reality and lack of serious competencies in any matters of military strategies and national governance reached grotesque and deadly proportions for both the remnants of Ukraine and for the United States itself. 

I can go off on a tangent of sorts here (again) while describing a dramatic cultural and institutional difference between American "way" of war and Russian one, but that is just the part of problem--the problem is in incompetence of American elites who are the products of a completely confabulated history and of fragile insecure view of themselves. The US is not the "finest fighting force" and it never has been and because of that, as Michael Brenner astutely noted:

Americanism provides a Unified Field Theory of self-identity, collective enterprise, and the Republic’s enduring meaning. When one element is felt to be in jeopardy, the integrity of the whole edifice becomes vulnerable. In the past, American mythology energized the country in ways that helped it to thrive. Today, it is a dangerous hallucinogen that traps Americans in a time warp more and more distant from reality. There is a muted reflection of this strained condition in the evident truth that Americans have become an insecure people. They grow increasingly anxious about who they are, what they are worth and what life will be like down the road. 

By getting involved with 404 and trying to destroy Russia, the US and its chihuahuas from European NATO collapsed this edifice and exposed a rather unimpressive structure which convinced itself that it can fight and win a conventional war against military superpower of Russia which has been such a superpower longer than the United States existed as a nation. A few good (and competent) men cannot fix the mechanism which was broken for decades and the SMO confirmed it fully. NYT, however, gave us an ample confirmation that the US ran the whole damn thing from military standpoint, and this is a critical admission. Or as they say on the street--FAFO. I thank you, NYT, for not being bright and exposing, accidently, the truth.