... when your qualifications are "honed" around military whose understanding of air defense is rather ... from the last century. Starting with this drivel author's CV.
Vladimir Putin’s greatest vulnerability in Moscow was never the building everyone is watching. A Ukrainian weapon striking the Kremlin, even by accident, would be the most dramatic image this war has produced. It would not be the most dangerous one, and that distinction matters more now than it did a month ago, because Ukraine just told the world it is building a weapon that would leave Moscow far less time to figure out what was actually happening.
Latham's excitement oozes from his deep military thoughts and he doesn't understand that he merely confirms what I speak about for years--NATO's wars are primarily about PR and image, not about real war and here is what betrays in him a sheer amateur.
A ballistic missile compresses the warning window to minutes, compared with the extended tracking and engagement window even a large drone raid gives Russian air defense.
This is because he wasted his life on all kinds of pseudo-scientific and fraudulent academic endeavors and doesn't know this simple fact that this imaginary 404 ballistic missile represents no bigger threat than drones and, in fact, is EASIER target not because of the "warning window" but because of a ballistic trajectory and its visibility for early warning systems of Russia, ranging from space-based Kupol controlling Northern Hemisphere 24/7 in visible, infrared and UV diapasons to a networked anti-missile early warning system such as Container and Resonance which, depending on what in Latham's phantasy world passes for the "ballistic missile", can detect the launch OVER and beyond horizon and have track shared with such things like S-500, S-300V4 and other funny Russia AD systems which are designed specifically for dealing with such ballistic targets.
Should Latham have learned from real professionals he would have learned that overwhelming majority of the 404 ballistic systems, starting from notorious Tochka-U to ATACMS have been intercepted not even by those fancy Russian Anti-missile systems, but even by such rather common AD systems as Buk-M2 and Tor-M2. But, of course, Latham wants the strike on Kremlin so badly that he forgets that:
1. 404 has to produce such a missile in the first place.
2. In case of highly unlikely, but let's say for the sake of argument, successful hit on Kremlin by this non-existent missile, Kiev will cease to exist. While in the process, most of "elites" in Europe will soil themselves.
So, what's left? Well, how about Mr. Latham goes back to school (high school) and learns basics of Earth curvature and, for example, why even fairly sophisticated Trident II D-5 SLBM had to be armed with a new trigger, because even for these highly evolved missiles launching at suppressed trajectories (to shorten the flight time) reduces their counter-force accuracy tremendously. Even when carrying nuclear MIRVs--they simply lose destructive effect.
The rest of his mangled word salad of a military amateur is merely a wet dream by a guy who senses that NATO is utterly defeated; he is a sore loser who cannot accept the fact of NATO being a backward military paper tiger incapable of serious combined arms operations (it doesn't have TOE, sustainment capability and is operationally and strategically illiterate), which also lost the arms race by being knocked out of the ring. So, he listens to 404 and Pentagon fairy tales and publishes a kindergarten level "military" fantasies. His elaborations on Russia's nuclear triad and 404 "operations" ... well, that is why the US loses its wars.
