... it sounded for us in 1980s. Bravo was a quintessential Soviet rockabilly band.
Showing posts with label USSR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label USSR. Show all posts
Monday, September 1, 2025
Thursday, May 16, 2024
No, It Is Not "Soviet Ways"...
... if anything else it is very American, and not bad at all, law.
Soon people around the world, if not already, will begin to vomit when hearing term "democracy" from war criminals such as Lindsey Graham or bimbos from FOX or CNN. "Democracy" is a euphemism for the US NGOs running amok in any nation the US deems "useful" and making sure those countries are enslaved and their development is arrested. One of such people yesterday shot the Prime Minister of Slovakia. Generally, US NGOs are "foreign agents", as are native people who work for them. Considering the fact that Georgia is underdeveloped and poor country (they wanted out of Soviet Union--good riddance), its only utility for the US is being a ram against Russia. For that purpose the US needs corrupt government of lapdogs and young unemployed imbeciles in Tbilisi, who could be promised all kinds of West's mythical "benefits", such as "high standard of living" or free reign of LGBTQ+++ , all of it due to economic and military incompetence of American "strategists" who live in alternative universe.
Georgia is not going anywhere but into utter oblivion under the US "cooperation", as did 404, because chaos and misery is the only product the US peddles. So, they now are afraid to "lose" Georgia because once the law passes all real foreign agents and their sources of "income" will be exposed. As I am on record--US elites are utterly geopolitically incompetent, because they do not understand strategy and resources which are required for achieving strategic goals. Many people in Georgia who experienced "American support" in 2008 understand that if Georgia wants to survive as a nation, the only way to do it is to build pragmatic relations with Russia. Plus, they also see where the whole BRICS thing is going and some really want the part. In Soviet Union, Georgia and Georgians were the richest people, they looked at Russians with contempt. Boy, things changed in 35 years. Tbilisi is a shithole and many Georgians recall the blessed Soviet days with nostalgia, when they travel today to Russia and experience immense wealth and glitz of Russian cities. Plus... (in Russian) Putin and Xi are doing a very good business.
Monday, May 8, 2023
"We liberated them... and they will never forgive us for it..."(c)
This famous Zhukov's quip was prescient. It all came true. Germans hate Russians because they sustained a crushing defeat in 1945. Western "democracies" hate Russia, Soviet Union being a historic Russia, because they know who actually defeated Axis forces, and because West's military mythology has its roots in stolen valor claims that it was the US who defeated Nazism. They continue to rewrite history, today, on the eve of May 9 Victory Day. Here is Konrad Adenauer's fund. Some Ph.D. from Germany writes:
Translation: On May 8, 1945, not only the whole of Europe, but also the Germans in particular were liberated from the tyranny of National Socialism. The Soviet Union was also involved in the liberation, but unlike the Western Allies, it did not bring liberalism with it, but a new totalitarianism. In view of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is now clear that even the supposed victory of liberalism in 1989/90 was not to last. The foreign and security policy failures of the West and especially Germany since then can no longer be brushed aside.
Ah, yes, those side-show Rooskies subhumans who ALSO took part in "liberation" by destroying 80% of creme de la creme Axis power and demolishing German National-Socialism nightmarish slave and death machine. But who cares. You can read this pseudo-academic schizophrenic piece by this Ph.D. Matthias Oppermann and it will give you a good understanding why there is nothing to discuss with the West. What can one possibly discuss with people influenced by "history" from Anthony Beavor, Anne Applebaum or this German "defender" of liberalism. That is why the desire to spoil for Russians the Victory Day Parade at the Red Square is so irresistible--the combined West is sustaining, as I type this, the handing of its ass on the platter in Ukraine, it happens in Syria (US pilots now turn their targeting complexes on trying to spook Russian pilots with "lock on" in Syria) and elsewhere and the desperation is palpable.
But it is the Victory Day Parade at the Red Square which hurts them the most, because it is the day when Russia demonstrates and states unequivocally who and how defeated German National-Socialism and why this is being done for the second time on a global scale, this time defeating yet another iteration of the totalitarian ideology known as globalism and its concentrated expression through Pax Americana much of whose mythology is built around stealing the credit for the defeat of Hitler. This time, however, it is different--never again the foot of Russian soldier should step on the European soil, even when they will scream, and they will, for help--let them deal with what's coming themselves. If they die, Europe was dead already for decades spiritually, physical death will be the only natural outcome.
Meanwhile, I congratulate you all with Victory Day and want to remind you that the history of WW II in the West is not a history, with some notable exceptions, but primarily a field for falsifications in order to justify on-going ugly mutations of modern "liberalism". In the end, there is very little difference between war criminals in Washington in 2023 and war criminals in Berlin of 1941.
Thursday, April 6, 2023
Victory Has Many Fathers...
... defeat is always an orphan. In related news: LOL)))
This is, my friends, how political and governing institutions cease functioning being preoccupied with own "survival". Boy, how I recognize this from 35 years ago, but in a different country and under different circumstances. Still, a total recall, and a coward and impotent, surrounded by a coterie of sycophants and agents of influence, as a head of the nation, while having no clue and blaming the others before him. While the alcoholic and power-hungry low life waits in the wings. Comparison is warranted.
Thursday, June 23, 2022
Larry On WW II...
Excellent and extremely important point--we are living out the last days of the world whose crucible was World War Two.
Read the whole thing at Larry's blog. Public should be educated on real events which gave birth to the world which is ending only now and public opinion is important in shaping what is coming.
Friday, August 13, 2021
OK, I Might As Well Say It.
After reading the discussion in the other thread and learning that Taliban now is in half-an-hour drive from Kabul, and we are observing America's defeat in a real time, I might as well tell what is this all about. I'll explain. During US 1990s "high" from self-proclaimed "victory" in the Cold War 1.0 to a turkey shoot of a third-rate Arab army of Iraq, there were many TV shows about Soviet war in Afghanistan, including on what used to be then the "Wings Channel" and in one of the shows about Soviet Air Force in Afghanistan this dude, brigadier general Rahmatullah Safi, you can see him in this video about Stingers:
Was waxing all "strategic" and "general staffish" and spoke about how Russians didn't care about losses and gave an example of...Stalingrad. It has to be considered that the dude was a brigadier general in Afghan Royal Army (yes, that thing existed, alright) and his whatever military "education" wasn't necessarily that of a officer with broad enough view to assess ratios of losses of the Axis and the Red Army in combined arms operations which dwarf anything in world's military, not to speak of Afghan Royal Army, history.
The United States, fresh from 1980s-1990s successes, didn't hesitate to write and narrate an alternative military history regarding the Soviet Union, including the Soviet war in Afghanistan. The United States was content with the narrative that some Quran carrying, sandals wearing, Stinger shooting mujaheddin "defeated" the superpower. Of course, reality was vastly different but the United States didn't grasp then what Russians grasped from the git go and talked about it non-stop. Recall this 11 years ago:
Do you need me to repeat it? OK, in bold:
In fact, we were the first to defend Western civilization against the attacks of Muslim fanatics.
OK, one more time:
to defend Western civilization against the attacks of Muslim fanatics.
How about learning this simple fact, that everything what was happening since 1979 was about stopping Islamization and from the get go the war had a distinct religious flavor. Try to explain this to some D.C. political general who would shit his pants when forced to speak in operational and strategic broadsides and call things their own name. It was the United States which set the precedent, even if the virtual one, in convincing the Islamic world, especially US Gulfie satrapies, that these medieval backward regimes could challenge real superpowers militarily and, in fact, have a political Islam as a viable instrument on the way to blowing up World Trade Center, to committing atrocity in Chechnya, culminating in a bestiality worthy of Nazi death camps in Beslan. All that with cheering and support from the combined West which couldn't see that bestowing some "victory" on Jihadists allegedly against the Soviet Union--a complete propaganda BS--the combined West was writing a scenario for own real humiliation.
OK, it is a Saigon Moment, alright. Iraq is going not much better and in Russia it is a payback time, because Russians didn't run from Afghanistan, combined West is running. Lester Grau was prophetic, as was anyone with proper military background, where they teach you about political objectives and tactical and operational levels of war. I will repeat it again:
But the United States out of "exceptionalist" expediency was ready to listen to fairy tales of its mujaheddin clientele rather than to Russians whose experience with real wars is immense, Russians DID offer advice on Afghanistan and, in a dramatic contrast with American actions in 1980s, helped. All in vain. Now, the United States needs and is undergoing a military-political humiliation, which unlike Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, does bear all hallmarks of fleeing a battlefield, leaving after itself one gigantic clusterfuck, which Russians (and Chinese) would need to clean up and put it under some sort of a control. And here is the morale of that all, that good ol' Noblese Oblige between superpowers I was talking about--you do not rush to diminish and insult other superpowers in such affairs, when at stake is not some loss of battle or a campaign, but the effort to stop a Jihadist Internationale from forming, not least based on the American-produced myth that some head-choppers can defeat a superpower. But then again, the United States just proved that they can. As I always say, Karma is a bitch, and as one of the greats once said--if you spit into history, it may respond with a cannons' salvo. It seems like it did... In the end, present West is not even worth saving.
Simply Came To Mind...
These two events are connected directly, despite the fact that USSR and the United States fought two very different wars in Afghanistan. Not to mention the fact that of all post-WW II American wars, war in Afghanistan was the only one I supported until I didn't, when it became clear closer to mid-2000s that it had nothing to do with the tragedy of 9/11. So, here we are today:
Also today (in Russian) Sergei Shoigu is in China at SIBU 2021 exercises, after inspecting joint exercises of Russian, Tajik and Uzbek troops at Afghanistan border.
But strangely, this song still plays in my mind non-stop, as if it is still 1989 and the country is still intact and the West is not yet in full lie and propaganda mode, celebrating the defeat which never occurred, and many Russians today listen to this and have a strange feelings and associations.
This stunning song by Kaskad (a band of combat veterans) contains in its piercing lyrics such lines:
Прощайте, горы, вам видней,
Какую цену здесь платили,
Врага какого не добили,
Каких оставили друзей.
Farewell mountains, you know better
What price we were paying here
What kind of enemy we didn't finish off
What kind of friends we left here.
I knew and know very many Soviet Afghan veterans, some were my friends, others I met in hospitals, from enlisted to officers, and while opinions differed, there was a general understanding that insidious islamization will continue if not stopped into the then Soviet Middle Asia and further. The USSR simply could not run from Afghanistan and it didn't, if not for Yeltsin's betrayal of Najibullah the history of Afghanistan may have been different. But it isn't. Guys from Kaskad sang "farewell" and had these lines:
Биографии наши в полдюжины строк
Социологи втиснут, сейчас они в моде.
Только разве подвластен науке восток?
Мы уходим с востока, уходим, уходим.
Our biographies, a half a dozen lines,
Sociologists, they are fashionable today, will fit in
But is Orient subordinate to science
We are leaving Orient, we are leaving, we are leaving.
Well, evidently Russia is not leaving--she simply doesn't have a choice. Uzbekistan and Tajikistan suddenly "GOT IT".
Truth is, Russia was getting ready for this for the last decade. Now, observing the accelerating collapse and yet another Saigon Moment for the United States, it becomes clear, that it falls on Russia to handle the border with Afghanistan without going in, and clean this mess. Right? Right? Well, Chinese also have some designs for this place and as long as Taliban doesn't cross the border, let them live.
Sunday, August 8, 2021
Getting The Time Scale Right-I
For us, humans, our time zone, or horizon, if one wishes, within which we live with the illusion of understanding this world, is usually 40-50 years, not counting roughly first 20 years of our youth, the time when we generally don't give a damn. After those 40-50 years, the march to wisdom and profundity is usually interrupted by the breaks for taking Metamucil, visits to general surgeons, colonoscopies and trying to remember some inconsequential shit, like what was the name of your political economy professor in naval academy or what is the fucking password to your credit card on-line account, which seemed so easy to remember first 5-6 hours and which mysteriously evaporated into the vastness of your brain's neurons without a trace after a couple of weeks. But that is us, humans. States and nations have different time scales and those are measured in many decades, centuries and even millennia. Reconciling our personal human times scales with those of the nations is, realistically, a tall order. Our experiences simply oscillate with different frequencies.
Why it is important. Paul Robinson wrote a piece on Gorbachev and collapse of the USSR.
Gorbachev, as usual, lies in describing the reasons for Soviet collapse and to Robinson's greatest credit he challenges this assertion.
In short, the ex-leader is right that the Soviet Union was in need of reform, but wrong to say that the country’s collapse was not his fault. Reform could have taken many directions. The one he chose was catastrophic. At the same time, Gorbachev isn’t wrong to blame others, either.
Read the whole piece by Robinson, especially a short expose' of Gorbachev's classlessness and vapidity. In general, the Soviet collapse was an enormously complex phenomenon, in which the nationalism issue and Soviet elite's large segment desire to integrate with the combined West played one of the most important roles in disintegration of the USSR. Yet, after 30 years since the Soviet collapse one has to accept the fact, that Putin's assertion, that those who do not miss the USSR have no heart, those who want to restore it have no brains, is spot on. The reason I bring it up is because I always knew, since the early childhood, that Russia, as the core of the Soviet Union was a main donor of Soviet national fringes, from highly developed Ukraine to paying bills for Trans-Caucasus republics with the exception of oil-rich Azerbaijan, but especially so for the whole of Middle Asia, where major programs of industrialization and agricultural development have been implemented in post-WW II period. Needless to say, much of those efforts were at the expense of historic Russia.
Very few Russian localities embodied this Russia's "sponsorship" of national Soviet fringes better than the famous "city of brides" (it had also, other, much less appropriate handle) and center of Soviet textile industry, the city of Ivanovo. My late father hailed from that locality and till recently, Ivanovo served as an Exhibit A of Central Soviet Russia's problems in which gray drabness, dirt, worn out infrastructure, lack of investment, social ills were a direct result of Russia working hard to maintain USSR in the working order. Today, however, very few people in Russia want any kind of "union" with former Soviet republics and explanation for this attitude is extremely simple--investments got reoriented inside Russia and even such, frankly, a shithole of a city as Ivanovo was, started to get, no, no, don't expect from me beaten to death cliche about a "facelift", this is not a "facelift", this is a deep surgery to save the patient's life. Believe me, if Ivanovo looked bad in 2011, I can tell you that it looked even worse in 1985, let alone 1995. But here we are in 2020 (the time of video shoot).
You can see how life reclaims this 16th century Russian city and how it turns into a place where it is pleasant to be. Ivanovo together with many central Russian cities and towns simply stopped being shitholes. Some of them, like ancient Ryazan, have become top-notch tourist destinations and will never be used in a pejorative sense when "Ryazanskiy" would mean often a low-brow, low taste, primitive Russian-derived. Especially since Ryasan Higher Paratroop Military Academy is located there. Ryazan today is a first-class city. Ryazan's population is growing. Historic, Central Russia is becoming unrecognizable in the best meaning of this words. Do you think Russians want the USSR back? Think again. Think also about reasons all those former "brotherly" people from now independent states of former USSR assault Russia's borders trying to get inside Russia to become Russia's "Mexicans". Right. Would I have thought about such a situation in 1985 or even in 2005? Nope.
But this is precisely the case when picture is worth a thousand words. But here is the catch--this all would have never be possible if not for a tremendous industrial acceleration Soviet system provided for historic Russia in the 20th century, even when considering a profoundly harmful, for Russia and her people, distortions of Soviet internationalist ideology which afforded the development, now largely rolled back, of USSR's national republics at the expense of Russia. Yet, I mentioned Gorbachev and Robinson's piece for a reason, especially when related to Gorbachev and his late wife's preference of spending many of their vacations abroad, especially in Italy, when Gorbachev was still just a member of Central Committee and was enjoying his and Raisa's drives in rented car in the middle of the capitalist West. It was then that his idiotic ideas of catastrophic reforms were born, not least through the influence of his domineering wife, and we all know where it all ended--a demographic, economic and political catastrophe Russian people had to endure, especially when at Gorbachev's coming USSR was winning the arms race against the United States.
I am on record--the history of the Cold War 1.0 IS NOT written yet. And I mean real history not propaganda which was succinctly defined by George F. Kenna when he wrote:
What did the greatest damage was not our military preparations themselves, some of which (not all) were prudent and justifiable. It was rather the unnecessarily belligerent and threatening tone in which many of them were publicly carried forward. For this, both Democrats and Republicans have a share of the blame. Nobody -- no country, no party, no person -- "won" the cold war. It was a long and costly political rivalry, fueled on both sides by unreal and exaggerated estimates of the intentions and strength of the other party. It greatly overstrained the economic resources of both countries, leaving both, by the end of the 1980's, confronted with heavy financial, social and, in the case of the Russians, political problems that neither had anticipated and for which neither was fully prepared.This issue needs to be addressed, because without addressing it, there is NO rational explanation to the current events in the world and many, still many, wrong conclusions and estimates making it into the public sphere, obfuscating the answer to a burning question of geopolitical stability and global peace...
To Be Continued...
Friday, July 30, 2021
If This Is "Intelligence", Then I am...
Pope. Rebekah Koffler has an "impressive" (for DC) resume and she is "from the former USSR" and she is an embodiment of why the United States finds itself where it finds itself today vis-a-vis Russia and pretty much the rest of the world. There is very little about this Koffler lady on the internet, say how old is she and where in the USSR was she born precisely (she states she was born in Kazakhstan), but there is very little doubt in that she read too much of Solzhenitsyn and, judging by her appearance, she does look like my peer and that is why she is full o' shit. No, I am not talking about her book and "Russian hacking", I am talking about her urban myths and BS about the USSR she spews on the air at Fox (and elsewhere) and here is the latest this "Russia expert" delivers three days ago.
I am not claiming that the USSR was a "free" country in Western understanding but it is clear that I and millions of my peers and Rebekah lived in a different USSR and that this intelligence "professional" is milking her "Soviet" biography for some kind of gain, most likely monetary, and tells fairy tales about USSR popular among former Soviet (primarily Jewish, but not exclusively) Brighton Beach populace. For starters, why she lies: criticism and anecdotes about Soviet government and Communist Party were not just common, but they were spoken openly from smoking rooms to diners to even barracks in Soviet military (and she certainly has no experience with that) and nobody were persecuted let alone "expelled from schools", because the only reason to be expelled from any Soviet school was two fold--discipline and academic failure. Period. Hundreds of my peers, who entered naval academy with me in 1980, same as before that, or after, were political anecdotes and jokes telling, American jeans wearing, rock-music listening and long-haired dudes, have been checked by KGB (namely counter-intelligence) before even allowed to apply, well...
Never in my life have I heard of any kid "expelled" from the school on the bases she proposes and I met and studied with very many peers who were border-line asocial and anti-Soviet. One of my academy classmates made it into the KGB organization NEVER being in Komsomol, let alone being a member of Communist Party and... had no problems in advancing along the career path. Koffler, obviously, when she left USSR at a young age, had only Soviet dissident narrative, much of it hearsay and outright BS, and urban myths to sell in the US, which was eager to listen to any contrived BS as long as it was instrumental in drawing a caricature of a country, they had no real understanding of. It is not surprising then, when having such "analysts" and "experts" as Koffler, who sounds like a keynote speaker at the regional Communist Party gathering and who deliberately oversells this "totalitarian thingy" for own benefit, that the US "intelligence community" has become a butt of a jokes around the world, especially in anything related to Russia.
She claims that she was an analyst of "Russian strategy and cyber warfare", well, strategy is a very broad term, but Koffler's feeble attempts to sell her Soviet high school experiences as a valuable contribution to the intelligence field while having zero experience and education with Soviet institutes of state power and security, be that military or security services are telling, as are her misguided and incompetent attempts to draw parallels between the USSR and modern USA. She is no big thinker. She is also utterly militarily incompetent. Here is a proof from her book:
This is the "level" of "experts" who consulted and continue to consult on Russia inside the US and who think that two technological catastrophes such as F-35 and LCS are "capabilities" for the United States, then there is no surprise with the outcomes we all observe. You can extrapolate the rest of the skill-set for such "analysts". I am not gonna buy her book because I don't have time to review yet another pseudo-intelligence drivel (Koffler states that Steele Dossier was a Russian operation, face-palm) about Russia from a person who has zero background in both USSR and Russia and has only her past security clearance to wave around and use big words and catch phrases. I will just remind you of a superb piece by our esteemed guest Mark Hackard about another dissident BSer Yuri Bezmenov, who was selling exactly what Koffler sells--a hot air. Here is Mark's succinct conclusion about Bezmenov, which applies fully to Koffler:
This also explains why those "analysts" cannot find their own ass with both hands in a brightly lit room. They call it "intelligence."
I am still puzzled with the role Koffler ascribes to "advanced" Littoral Combat Ships in the "war with Russia". Unless she means to build so many of them that Russians exhaust completely their stock of anti-shipping missiles sinking them and then surrender? Then several thousand of LCS should be built. I am sure it was Russian clandestine operation too, to convince Pentagon to invest innumerable billions into shitty technologies, such as F-35 and LCS. It has got to be Russian operation. How else can you explain this clusterfuck. I am sure Koffler will write a book on that too. Nah, I am screwing with you.
Thursday, July 29, 2021
You Get Gorbachev Only Once a Century.
Or even millennium. Cowardly, very narrow-minded and hollow. He is, certainly, one of the most outstanding dumbfvcks in history who managed to destroy his country, granted it needed some changes, and who became an embodiment of human incompetence. Despite leading Soviet scientists and military people telling him that Strategic Defense Initiative (aka Star Wars) was mostly smoke and mirrors, Gorbachev and his cabal of "reformers" decided that they can use SDI as one of the excuses for entering negotiations with the United States on matters of Strategic Arms Limitations, Anti-Missile Defense and humiliating and grossly disadvantageous for USSR INF Treaty which was presented by Gorbachev as an "achievement", when in reality it was nothing more than surrendering already emerging decisive Soviet advantage across the whole spectrum of weapon systems. The problem, of course, was the fact that Gorbachev being a door mat for his late wife and being a stubborn village jackass, wouldn't know the difference between shit and shinola, nor could recognize, despite multiple warnings, that he was played as a preschooler by the West.
Gorbachev was dealing with cartoons and a lot of speeches ABOUT SDI, while having under his command what already then was becoming not only the best Air Defense system in the world but some of the most advanced and breakthrough technologies in both weapon systems and their enablers. But the guy was a moron with agenda and he, probably, wasn't that disposed against being duped to start with. He had a "plan" and we all know how well it worked... for the West. But time never stands still and tables tend to be turned once in a while. Obviously SDI turned out to be nothing more than a PR trick and once the heritage of tractorist Gorbachev and alcoholic Yeltsin was dealt with, new strategic and technological reality begun to emerge, being the sum of all things described above and more, not least a complete loss by Russia and Russians of any trust to a combined West. All this resulted in Russia declaring a new era of warfare and of global balance of power shift on March 1, 2018. I wasn't melodramatic or driven by pathos when wrote then:
As it turned out, I haven't been dramatic enough. I did, however, predict already then that the new task of the United States in a face of a radical shift in power balance will be to mount a concerted effort to drag Russia at the negotiating table and try to push as many of new Russian weaponry as possible under the umbrella of one or another type of the treaty, which should mitigate somewhat a strategic catastrophe (from the Western point of view) which real revolution in military affairs brought about. First Russian-America meeting on strategic stability took place yesterday and voila'. As Interfacx reports:
Translation: Moscow. July 29. INTERFAX - Moscow is ready to discuss with Washington its latest weapons systems, including the Dagger (Kinzhal) and Poseidon, but sees no reason to raise the issue of a potential limitation of Russia's capabilities in this area, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Interfax on Thursday. "For the Americans, this topic is of interest, we, of course, do not avoid this conversation. The essence of our position on this issue: there are no grounds for bringing this issue in this plane, namely the potential limitation of our capabilities in the field of these new systems. We already explained to the Americans long ago which of our newest systems are subject to the START Treaty extended in February. When these systems of ours are put on alert, we, of course, will act in full compliance with the requirements of the treaty, there is no doubt about that, "he said , answering, in particular, the question whether the Russian advanced weapons systems were discussed at the talks in Geneva.
In other words. you want to talk about those systems? Sure, let's talk, but we are not putting, say, Kinzhal up for negotiations and the United States has practically nothing to offer in return to start with. Sure, there is the issue of anti-missile "defense" in Europe, but it is not the "defense" part which worries Russia, because the West has no systems which can intercept even meaningful part of Russia's missile salvo. The issue are MK-41s VLS which can accommodate TLAMs. Simple as that, but even if to imagine that the United States will be ready to bargain, neither Kinzhal nor Poseidon are "strategic" weapons in a traditional sense. Neither are Tomahawks, BTW. But let's cut all Bullshit and face the reality. Of course, Kinzhal even when carries a conventional warhead, can shift military balance in any theater of operations as fast as the first half-squadron (6-8) of MiG-31Ks could be deployed there, which is the matter of hours, half-a-day tops. Soon all military districts and fleets will have their own squadrons of those; then, the time is cut to a half-hour before on duty "couple" gets airborne. After that ANY surface fleet of any configuration which is within 3,000 kilometer radius of those MiG-31Ks, forget about TU-22M3(M) (that could be an overkill, with each of them carrying 2-3 Kinzhals), has nothing left to do but disperse and hope not to be near capital ships, such as DDGs and CVNs.
Ryabkov's words in conclusion speak volumes:
"Мы будем прежде всего заботиться о том, чтобы мы гарантированно были защищены от любой агрессии со стороны любого потенциального противника, включая США, а уже потом, когда мы будем иметь стопроцентные гарантии в этой сфере (сейчас они есть, но их нужно поддерживать на должном уровне дальше), уже потом мы будем смотреть, возможно что-то дальше, невозможно...это вопрос открытый, он очень сложный, и в любом случае США должны понимать, что никаких односторонних уступок, никаких просто шагов навстречу им, просто их пожеланиям без готовности США идти на компромисс, учитывать наши интересы, наши озабоченности в разных сферах, связанных с тем, что США проводят в плане развития собственной военной организации, создания новых систем, появления их в разных регионах, - без этого ничего у них не получится с точки зрения "постановки под контроль" наших новейших систем вооружений", - сказал высокопоставленный российский дипломат.
Translation: "First of all, we will make sure that we are guaranteed to be protected from any aggression from any potential enemy, including the United States, and only then, when we have one hundred percent guarantees in this area (now they are, but they need to be supported at proper level further), only then will we look, at a possibility of something further down the road... this is an open question, it is very difficult, and in any case, the United States should understand that there are no unilateral concessions, no simple steps towards them, just their wishes without the willingness of the United States to compromise, to take into account our interests, our concerns in various areas related to what the United States is doing in terms of developing its own military organization, creating new systems, and their appearance in different regions - without this they will not succeed with the point of view of "putting under control" our latest weapons systems, "said a senior Russian diplomat.
In diplomatic language it is called "fvck off". Russians are damn aware of what is coming next for Russia's Ministry of Defense, and considering today's contract for the first 10 battalions of S-500s signed, with first battalions being deployed in early 2022 (in Russian), we may only guess what is in works. Newest Yasen M-class Krasnoyarsk will be floated out tomorrow (yes, I know, it is The National Interest):
Russia's New Yasen-Class Submarine Is Here and It Looks Fierce. Yasen-M’s arsenal will be headlined by Russia’s new 3M22 Tsirkon winged anti-ship hypersonic cruise missile, which has a top speed of up to Mach 9 and is capable of performing mid-flight evasive maneuvers.
Now they are talking about the new generation of Peresvet laser-weapons coming soon and it is also clearly stated that navalized version of S-500 is in works and I can bet my ass on this thing being installed on Peter the Great during his (her) upcoming modernization. The only real subject of negotiations today regarding genuine strategic weapons are RS-28 Sarmat and Avangard and only in terms of some (emphasis--SOME) limitation on their deployed numbers and, as you may have guessed it already, IF Russia will discuss those, the price for the American side will be very steep. Because unlike Strategic Defense Initiative, these Russian weapons are not cartoons and PR-tricks. Those are already on combat duty or in IOC and if I would have been asked to characterize those people who run Russia today in two words, my characterization would have been: not Gorbachev. And really, how often you get a leader of a nuclear superpower who is a complete moron and a door mat. Once a century?
Thursday, July 8, 2021
Pepe Escobar, Power Politics and S-500.
Pepe Escobar wrote an outstanding piece on Afghanistan and he has the expertise to do so because Pepe spent a lofty amount of time in the region and knows it extremely well. Unsurprisingly, Pepe titles his excellent insight like this:
Read it, it is how REAL journalism is done. But I am sad, really sad because this guy left us too early.
Translation: Doha, 8 July--RIA Novosti. The delegation of the political office of a radical movement Taliban has arrived to Moscow for negotiations, stated the official representative of the movement Sukheil Shahin, whose leadership resides in Qatar. "The visit will last for two day", stated Shahin who himself is a part of a delegation.
Only real power with enough military wherewithal has real... well power and weight which allows them to broker anything: peace, war, armistice, what have you. Taliban knows that and they talk to Russia. Recall, it matters how you leave. The USSR left Afghanistan in 1989 not only undefeated but left the country which was functional. Many Afghans even today recall those Shuravi who were building schools, hospitals and infrastructure. This is well documented. Late Ahmad Shah Massoud himself is on record that if they would know what would happen to the country after USSR leaving and the collapse of Najibullah government, they wouldn't have resisted. Well, hindsight is a 20/20 vision. Per Taliban's visit--there are many other groups in Afghanistan, including transported by the US from Syria remnants of ISIS and associated Al Qaeda structures which do have an expansionist agenda and will try to continue to destabilize not only Afghanistan but its surroundings. I am sure, this is on the agenda in Moscow in negotiations with Taliban.
In related news, Russia marks today the Day of Air Defense--the only air defense in the world with unrivaled capabilities and a cutting edge technologies. Some of those technologies are beyond the reach of the combined West and will remain such for a long-long time. Speaking on this occasion to Red Star (in Russian), the Superintendent of this branch Major-General Babakov confirmed that S-500 has passed combat missile launches tests and, as he stressed, there are no analogues to this system. Yes, once you consider that a single S-500 in Kaliningrad can shoot down E-3 Sentry over Berlin, not to speak about Poland, you get the idea. Now consider also the fact that naval version of S-500 is being worked on as I type this, make you own conclusions. Russia's lead in AD and ABM complexes today is so colossal, that it does completely change a whole strategic balance calculus. I am writing the article on this now. Especially when taking into account anti-hypersonic capabilities of S-500, S-400 and other latest systems.
For the United States it creates a strategic ambiguity initially and then, if one considers the way US top brass thinks, or, rather, don't, a real gap which cannot be closed. But I am on record since 2017 that the United States lost the arms race and I do not state it lightly or in vain. That is why The National Interest tabloid dedicated the article to memoirs of once negotiator on START:
Rose Gottemoeller Talks New START and the Future of Arms Control. During a recent appearance on the Press the Button podcast,
Gottemoeller spoke to her experiences with arms control negotiations
and shared her views on the key challenges facing global arms control,
including how to verify direct limits on nuclear warheads.
Her experiences are as relevant to real revolution in military affairs as are my experiences with driving my car to flying a commercial jet airliner. Nice try though. But look at this bird:
Serial MC-21s are already on assembly lines and "hot" heart for PD-8 was recently successfully tested and that means SSJ-100s become russified soon. God, Russia is disintegrating especially dramatically today, wink, wink.
UPDATE: completely forgot. Russia's MoD released a short film to mark Air Defense Day and it shows different generations of AD from 1960s to today and what those guys do. Really nice.
Monday, June 28, 2021
Coherent Unicorns.
And a generic justification for a mess that the US military acquisition system has become from all quarters of the American think-tankdom who care to notice that the United States consistently is not ready to fight real wars. Yet another one of those justifications appeared yesterday in TAC and it is, as is expected, well, generic.
Generic, of course, but the author of the piece takes us on a journey to the La-La Land of the American coherent global strategy:
So it’s worth taking a look at what research, development, and fielding of new weapons looked like when America had a clear mission—and when the American defense sector championed merit over politics. In order for future developments such as the Air Force’s promising Next Generation Air Dominance program to succeed
And the author gets immediately into the American military myths.
The Lockheed Corporation, predecessor to the F-35’s embattled designer Lockheed Martin, was responsible for building some of the most impressive aircraft in history. Lockheed’s Advanced Development Projects, nicknamed “Skunk Works” as a reference to a 1940s comic strip, built aircraft that played a pivotal role in countering the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The F-80 Shooting Star was the first jet fighter to shoot down another jet, a Soviet MiG-15 fighter over Korea. The ultra-lightweight U-2 reconnaissance aircraft flew high over Soviet territory, taking photographs of military installations from up to 80,000 feet and evading early surface-to-air missiles. The A-12 and SR-71 spy planes added extreme speed to extreme altitude, blazing past Soviet air defenses at up to three times the speed of sound. Skunk Works was effective because its top-notch engineers were allowed to operate with relative freedom from Lockheed’s bureaucracy and management constraints, and even encouraged to bypass standard procedures when necessary.
It is forgivable for a person with such a generic background as Chris Nagavonski's, to write a generic and militarily and historically ignorant piece. But what do you expect? Truth is, when talking about American ingenuity and high engineering standards which still worked in the times of alleged American foreign policy "coherence" (a historic and geopolitical unicorn many inside the Beltway still believe in) Navagonski could at least point out to excellent F-16 or F-15 fighters which were the force to be reckoned with in 1970s and 1980s, but using a F-80 Shooting Star, who saw its numbers decimated by MiG-15s in Korea, I don't know what was he thinking. Even introduction of excellent F-86 Sabre didn't overturn kill ratio of American pilots who flew by far superior to F-80 aircraft when fighting Soviet pilots. In the history of the jet-age combat aviation F-80 was not a milestone against the background of Me-262 which was superior still to it and saw a fairly extensive, however late, combat in WW II, one is surprised that openly inferior aircraft would garner such an admiration. But Nagavonski doesn't stop here.
He brings up the U-2 spy aircraft which earned its distinction as US aircraft type which was twice shot down by Soviet Air Defense in 1960 and 1962 and which became obsolete in any serious recon sense barely four years into its service life, because modern air-defense missile systems made it absolutely useless against countries which had them, such as Chinese downing in 1965 Taiwanese U-2 by the Soviet-made S-75 Dvina complex. In other words, U-2 turned out to be useful primarily against backward nations and who can forget this Gary Powers' "surprise, surprise". U-2 is still being used today to monitor all kinds of things using modern recon technology but it is an easy target for any moderately non-ancient combat aircraft and any air defense complex from 1970s. Yet again, how does this aircraft reflect on the alleged American "coherent global strategy" remains a complete mystery to me.
SR-71, of course, is a unique aircraft, not the least due to the titanium obtained from the...ahem, Soviet Union, and saw extensive use over Vietnam requiring almost a week to service for a single sortie, but while it is up to the American side to debate until hell freezes over why the initial retirement of SR-71 happened relatively fast, there is very little doubt that appearance of the S-200 air defense complexes in 1967 and eventual procurement of MiG-25 in 1970 with new air-to-air missile made SR-71 obsolete, same as was the case with U-2, few years after it was deployed. None of the American technology author introduces as, in his opinion, proof of some kind of America's better R&D acquisition practices due to some "coherence" can be taken seriously, because all of those weapons failed to make an impact other than against technologically backward adversaries and all three were obsolete by the time they were deployed against "peer" power.
Remarkably, the best American military technology was produced not because of the "coherence" but because of a scientific and combat tradition which naturally worked in the Cold War period in mass produced and excellent combat aviation ranging from ground-based F-16 and F-15 to carrier-based work horse of F-18, to always excellent US Navy's submarine force which led a revolution in naval warfare and strategic deterrence, which makes U-2 and SR-71 pale in comparison as boutique technological oddities in their "impact". Mass-produced P-3 Orion was a fearsome ASW weapon and in this role was orders of magnitude more feared by Soviet/Russian submariners than some exotic and dubiously "effective" exhibition and PR items. P-3 Orion first flew in 1959, its different and younger mods still fly today--this is 62 years in service, while SR-71 is primarily a museum exhibit with only 32 built, while P-3 Orion saw its production numbers in 750+ range. How's that for comparison?
But that brings us to the main issue--Skunk Works is a fine-fine engineering org and is the American legend and institution which has to have a certain due respect to be paid for. But it is also responsible for F-35 and F-117 which saw its "stealth" characteristics stripped from it in the most dramatic fashion by Serb good ol' Soviet-made air defense in 1999. In fact, the United States didn't produce a good solid combat aircraft in ages. The last, promoted as if it was a next best thing ever, F-22 Raptor, stopped its production run in 2011 and became known in the USAF as "Hangar Queen". The issue which Nagavonski raises but never actually goes to the heart of the matter is that the US military technology almost never encountered first-class opponent since WW II, bar the air-battles with Soviet 64th Air Corps in Korea (Americans are not going to like those kill ratios) and facing off with Vietnamese Soviet-made MiGs-17, 19 and 21s and air-defenses. Period. The rest of opponents were, as Patrick Armstrong says, small fish. As a result, the United States got used to little to no resistance to its hi-end weapon systems in real combat and learned all the wrong lessons, with or without "coherence". Tumultuous events of April this year give some clue that someone does understand that the R&D and acquisition process in the US is a mess. That is why it brought about a rare moment of an actual coherence on part of Biden's Admin which wanted the summit with Russia, and that in itself could be considered a first verifiable encounter with a coherent unicorn.
Sunday, June 21, 2020
It Is Really A Heartbreak...
USSR, 1987 Alliance band and Oleg Parastaev's Magnum Opus At the Dawn (Na Zare). Oleg died yesterday at 61. He simply collapsed in a front of his wife at his dacha in the morning. "At the dawn voices call me..." Oleg became a global meme of the guy who traveled from the 31st (or was it 34th?) Century back to 1987 USSR to play one of the most haunting songs in synth-pop.... He is back to 31st Century. RIP, cool 31st Century Man..... Look at people's faces in studio--no-earthly civilization.
I guess generation of true talent abandons us all.
Monday, February 10, 2020
Stalin=Hitler?
That's the formula which was promoted in the West non-stop since the moment WW II ended. Equaling Stalin and, through him, USSR to Hitler and Nazi Germany became one of a most dominant ideological streams in West's war against USSR/Russia and it pursued two main objectives:
1. To whitewash West's inaction, if not altogether cooperation, with Nazi Germany while placing own blame for helping Hitler and Nazi Germany's rise squarely on the shoulders of the Soviet Union;
2. Rewriting WW II history with the emphasis on West's role in defeating Nazism, while simultaneously trying to diminish a decisive role USSR played in demolishing Third Reich by means of demolition of its military machine represented by feared Wehrmacht and SS and, of course, other participants in Hitler's "crusade" against USSR, such as European formations from Italy, to Spain, to Hungary, Romania--you name it.
So, when one sees this:
Don't be surprised with creeping success of the campaign of equating Stalin to Hitler, because in about 10 years the last push to blame Soviet Union for the start of the WW II will happen. There are many people who worked and continue to work on this, especially in the field of equating USSR and Nazi Germany. Many Westerners, of course, know such strong proponents of this point of view as famous falsifier of Russian history as Solzhenitsyn, who provided ideological ammunition to all kinds of Western falsifiers and equators of USSR to Nazi Germany. How is it done? Easily, by pointing out to the fact of existence of GULAG where, by different "estimates", done mostly by Nazi collaborators such as Solzhenitsyn's favorite "professor" Kurganov, tens of millions of innocent Soviet civilians perished thus making Stalin a criminal even larger than Hitler, which, in its turn, as you may have already guessed, smears by default the role Soviet Union played in ridding world off the Nazi scourge.
One such Western "intellectual", evidently disturbed by the fact that Russians decided not to take the crap from the so called Western "historians" about WW II anymore, exploded with hysterical and grossly a-historic piece at UNZ Review today. Eric Margolis concluded that:
I am not sure what Mr. Margolis mean when he uses the term "rightfully" but he is both extremely vague when mentioning "some leading Russian historians" and surprisingly specific when stating that 20 million died in GULAG. We'll start of course from those "leading Russian historians" who, unsurprisingly as a majority are, such as "professor" Kurganov (he is known for stating that Bolsheviks "murdered" 60 million), or many Ukrainian crypto-Nazi "scholars", not really historians nor even Russians. Obviously late Alexandr Yakovlev (his number was around 32 million killed), who is universally viewed in modern Russia as CIA-MI6 asset was never a real historian but a crude ideologue behind dissolution of the Soviet Union. Obviously, for people who consider Solzhenitsyn a great writer or a historian it is difficult to comprehend a complexity of Russia's XX century history, but, I would expect them (nah, they can't, I am being facetious) to at least have some basic understanding of statistics and counting. But, as Solonevich stated, after his escape to the West, "I think the number of GULAG prisoners is no less than 5 million, but, of course, it is difficult to know". Well, it is not really difficult to know.
Here is what actual professional Russian historian writes about (in Russian) and some peculiar tables he presents:
But even if one assumes that professional historians (and I mean historians, not people with agenda and no qualifications) conspired to whitewash Stalin and USSR, one cannot fight against killer facts by Zemskov which are taken from MVD/NKVD and GULAG archives and reference materials.
But, of course, Eric Margolis knows better than anyone else, especially being "specialist" on the so called "Holodomor"--a relatively recent fad invented in the deep recesses of post-Soviet Ukraine during Yushenko Administration and sold so well in the West, as was GULAG Archipelago and other mediocre at best writings by Solzhenitsyn, as was psychotic delirium by Robert Conquest, as was pretty much most outrageous falsified narratives, the latest being a pseudo-historic crapola by Antony Beevor about Red Army soldiers raping 2 million German women (why not 15 million?), which whipped pseudo-intellectual Western class into anti-Soviet frenzy, which organically flowed into the anti-Russian one and which, to a very large extent, is responsible for the pathetic state combined West finds itself in today. One cannot lie to himself non-stop--at some point of time one needs to have an encounter with reality and cold hard facts, if not--the death will follow. As per the death of the Western so called (and largely self-proclaimed) intellectual class, as piece by Margolis shows--the patient is dead and nothing can bring it back from the dead.
Meanwhile, Russians vigorously prepare for the 75th Anniversary of the Victory celebrations all over Russia and, as always, millions upon millions of people will march in massive Immortal Regiment processions to demonstrate what price Soviet Union payed to stop barbarian hordes from turning the world into a playground for genocidal maniacs. Western "intellectual" class cannot take it and you can be 100% sure what an intolerable pain those festivities and demonstration of national unity on May 9, 2020 will inflict upon them, especially under the Red Banner of the Victory. Let them suffer.
I can hear them squealing already.
Sunday, November 3, 2019
Total Recall-1.
I, as promised earlier (you can find this exchange on education and professionalism in one of the recent threads), begin to address some issues related to military-political analysis as a function of fundamental education and experiences. I want to stress, as I think Tom Verso may have misconstrued my point (and I apologize if I came across as a jerk--in real life I am just an average run-of-the-mill ass-hole, but not a jerk) about humanities as a sweeping generalization about the filed and as me being totally against humanities field. I am not. In fact, as I stressed many times--no truly educated man or woman are possible without rigorous training in philosophy, political economy, history and classic arts. That goes without saying, what also goes without saying is this, I quote myself from my latest book:
It was Socrates, via Plato’s Republic, who came up with the prescription which would, in his mind, make life better for all:Until, then, kings are philosophers, or philosophers are kings, cities will never cease from ill: no, nor the human race; nor will our ideal polity ever come into being.Socrates’ idea, formed in the times of sail and wars fought with swords, shields and spears, seemed reasonable since philosophers and intellectuals of the era had little problem grasping the essence of warfare, the marketplace and industry as it existed 2,400 years back. Any inquisitive mind then could learn a great deal about different manifestations of human activity given that it was greatly limited by the primitive conditions of the time. Philosophers could build and lead armies then, they also could be kings or Caesars, such as Marcus Aurelius who definitely satisfied Socrates’ desire to see a philosopher as a king and vice-versa. Today things have changed dramatically—the modern world is filled with philosophers and their other contemporary iterations such as political scientists, sociologists or even economists, yet their grasp of the modern world is growing weaker and very few of them are capable to grasp all the complexity of the ongoing processes of this increasingly puzzling modern humanity. In fact, increasingly what used to be philosophy’s prerogative—finding the answers to life’s most complex questions by reasoning on the basis of abstractions and principles—cannot be done anymore. It was possible to assert this prerogative in the times of sword and sail, but in the times of space travel, neural networks, instant propagation of information and robots, something else entirely is needed and mere appeal to well-learned philosophical wisdom is not enough. Reasoning can no longer be based on broad generalizations only. In fact, uninformed reasoning can, and often does, lead to unexpected and not always benign results. In the modern world saturated, if not altogether overwhelmed with data, one has to have at least some rudimentary tools which allow one to filter, systematize and analyze this data. Philosophy and political science simply do not provide viable tools for that—the reason being rather simple: most modern philosophers, political scientists and other representatives of what came to be known as the field of humanities are not educated in the field of modern technology.
As you can see, I merely underscore the lack of tools which are required for sound analysis (and synthesis) of the issue central, even more than any time in the past, of global power balance as a function of military, technological and economic potentials of geopolitical players. I would say even more--no one without good training in humanities field will be able to pass sound judgement on this crucial issue. But this is just a necessary condition, but it is not a sufficient one. Something else is required. This something else is a key to unlocking the secrets of this balance--what is generally known in the Wests as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). One simply cannot pass a judgement on modern tactical and operational matters without having a profound background and training in STEM. Real modern military, starting from WW II, is literally driven by STEM in its every manifestation and that imposes an enormously high and rigid requirements on modern military professionals who see themselves slightly more than mere automatons designed for carrying out orders--this doesn't work like this, in fact, it never did. The requirements for a genuine military analysts are even higher.
Here is a simple example. This is how C4ISR looked in the times of Admiral Nelson and Trafalgar Battle:
And this:
This, however, is how things started to change by early to mid-20th century. This is how Mark 63 Fire Control System, among many other similar fire control systems around the globe, began to look like by 1950s.
By the end of 1950s fundamentals in guided missiles looked like that. Granted this 1972 version is based on classic 1957 Guided Missiles Fundamentals by the Department of Air Force. I have an paper version in immaculate conditions of this superb book (thanks for garage sales) which is a superb textbook on physics as applied to rocketry. And suddenly this:
And this:
And this:
Among very many things, become one and the same--a modern warfare. And that is whole other science rooted in complex physics, higher mathematics, dynamics, radio-electronics and the list goes on and on, and on. Now, here is the issue with me personally. As I already stated not for once, I was quite happy to forget all this military science staff, together with my specialty and experiences, if not for damn politics and a catastrophe which unfolded with the US foreign policy which was shaped by people so removed from the state's main power tool--its military--that we could at the end of 2014, after Crimea returning back to Russia, with real hot war. This catastrophic mistake would have been made by utterly incompetent people in Obama Administration, people who have zero understanding (it is expected from people with degrees in political "science" and law) of the warfare and how wars are fought. I was forced to enter my Total Recall phase, abandoning my passive posture with some trolling posts on different fanboys discussion boards. By 2014 it was clear to me that one cannot continue with playing preposterous game of American foreign policy and pseudo-military (largely Hollywood-driven) semantics and has to try to explain to lay people that what they know about real war through mostly American media and so called "experts" is a caricature totally removed from reality.
I should start with pointing out some huge, dramatic really, differences in approaches to higher military education in the USSR/Russia and the United States. I do go over this somewhat in my first book, but often people in the West, and even Russia, still cannot grasp the intensity of the STEM training to which most command-engineering officer cadres were and are subjected in Russia. And I do propose that without serious precise sciences background, not to mention military one, any talk about contemporary geopolitical balance shift becomes absolutely useless since lacks professional understanding of the main factor which drives it--modern military power. It is one thing to know force structure, totally another knowing or predicting how this force will perform. And that is how I began my total recall.
To Be Continued....
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