Now It Is Becoming...

 ... a comedy. 

It’s been two months since ex-American M-1s tanks arrived in Ukraine. And two months since we’ve seen any evidence of the tanks.  It’s not clear what Ukraine is doing with its 31 Abrams, but it is clear what it should be doing: up-armoring them to resist attacks by Russia’s explosive-laden first-person-view drones. FPV drones are everywhere all the time along the 600-mile front line of Russia’s 23-month wider war on Ukraine. They now rival mines as the biggest threats to tanks on both sides. It’s all but inevitable that Ukraine will lose some of its four-person, 68-ton M-1s. The 2000s-vintage M-1A1SAs that Ukraine received are some of the best-protected tanks in the world, but they’re not invulnerable to attack.

In related news, it is also good for M-1s to lose a couple of pounds... ahem, I mean, 10-15 tons, to get a lower profile, to get new tracks with a better traction, get a turret's effective anti-FPV screen and, in general, to stop being M-1 and become something which is suited for modern war not for rolling over incompetent and demoralized Iraqi infantry in ideal desert conditions. 

Per sights and other "avionics"--they are all about the same in most modern tanks and Russian T-90M Proryv and T-14 Armata are fully netcentric tanks capable to communicate and even provide targeting not only within homogeneous tank (armor) unit but even for aircraft and AD complexes. Ah yes, all (ALL) Russian tanks are capable to launch a very nasty ATGM Reflex through their guns, M-1 cannot. So, the great military "expert" from Forbes David Axe can wet dream whatever he wants about those 31 VSU Abrams but they ain't getting to the battlefield where they will be blown up by Russians and then the pictures and videos of them burning will be gladly shared by Russian military with global community. 

I mean, for many going through the realization of NATO weapon systems being NO GOOD in modern war is a difficult moral journey, but, believe me, for me also when I fully realized the depth of Pentagon's incompetence it was a shocking discovery. Here are German Welt's journos and "experts" suddenly recognized that Patriots PAC-2,3 in 404... suck and cannot stop X-32 cruise missiles. Welcome to the Putin Krieg, morons.

Of course, X-32 while being extremely high supersonic and stand-off is still not hypersonic missiles. Here is me 4 years ago explaining this simple fact that and explaining that no NATO AD system, naval or ground based, can stop the salvo of X-32, which also since then underwent even deadlier modification.

The reason for that is a simple fact that large and expensive surface combatants are not survivable in the modern naval combat, unless they have weapon systems which can fight REAL hypersonic weapons such as fully combat ready and deployed Kinzhal, 3M22 Zircon or even nearing M=5 X-32 anti-shipping missiles. That is the real hypersonic threat, not those exotic Avangard gliders which merely exist to forestall the appearance in the future of similar systems in the United States and, if it ever materializes (I doubt it, but who knows) some sort of strategic anti-missile system. Unlike Avangard, which is a nuclear deterrent, another one in Russia's arsenal, Kinzhal, X-32 and Zircon are actual weapons designed specifically to fulfill a classic Sea Denial (or, if one wants an exercise in Pentagonese from me--Battle Space Denial) in both conventional or nuclear variants. They, not the Avangard, are the weapons which, being tactical-operational ones, achieved already a strategic and even doctrinal effect and these weapons are extremely precise. United States knows that. Liana, as Shoigu reported recently, namely last Peon NKS is nearing completion (in Russian), that's what is going to complete creation of Liana, which will (already does) provide detection, tracking and targeting for hypersonic and supersonic weapons against any targets. 

People love to talk about hypersonic Kinzhal, which performed brilliantly, but the salvo of X-32s which actually carry false targets and extremely ECM resistant is also not survivable. Unless, of course, it is in 404 and Western media, but then again, they still cannot wrap their brains around the outcome of SMO which unfolds while I type it here. Russia also launched more satellites in the last couple of weeks and is gaining a much better situational awareness and targeting certainty in preparation for... what? Make your own conclusions. The SMO is a paradigm shift for which Russia was preparing since 2008. Recall, I wrote this book 5 years ago:
    

In it I explained that physics and mathematics for NATO' victory in modern warfare are absent and that combined West operates legacy systems based on self-aggrandizing mythology (a euphemism for lie) of its part in WW II and, of course, BS of the Gulf War. The worst part for the West (USA generally) is that this cannot be changed because the clockwork of Western views on warfare is broken and doesn't work. 

As Alexei Leonkov (aka Comrade Maduro) explains in Russian--the thesis which I advance for the last 10 years in my writing--US doesn't have great strategic analysis as such due to a complete degeneration of the American educational system, including military education, and belief in all kinds of equivalents of computer Teslas, not understanding that they operate primarily on myths. 

You cannot fix this system without destroying it and rebuilding it anew based on verified datasets and proper history and historical assessments. And here is what I noticed recently, once in a long while I go to the comments to my books on Amazon. And here is the comment to my first book. Take it for whatever it is. 

This first of Martyanov's three books is the most infuriating, aggravating, sickening and depressing book that I’ve read in years. He dispassionately debunks the myths of American exceptionalism and that of the US military as the finest fighting force in history. As a retired USAF pilot, this has been a bitter pill for me to swallow. At no time during my four years in the Pentagon in USAF Plans & Ops, as well as USAF Requirements, plus Armed Forces Staff College & Air War College, plus 15 years in the cockpit in both crew and command positions, none of the significant information he shares was ever made known or disclosed to me. His experience, knowledge and footnotes are impressive. Likewise his writing style is straightforward and to the point; no hyperbole. This book should be MANDATORY reading for EVERY senator and congressman, particularly those on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, as well as every US military officer, senior NCO, DoD, State Department, NSA and Executive Branch decision maker, especially the Offices of the President and Vice President. We are woefully unprepared to engage in a conventional conflict with either Russia or China and no one wins a nuclear war.

So, you see--I warned.  And just let me add--we ain't seen nothing yet. Or as Vladimir Vladimirovich said--we haven't even started yet.

After Media Amateurs Had Their Time, Some Insiders Begin To Talk.

Despite being very busy, I couldn't miss this one, since Dr. Mark Schneider is a Pentagon and State Department insider and he presented his views through US Naval Institute Proceedings, one of few remaining more or less competent forums on some key defense issues. He writes on the issue of venerable TU-22M3 upgrade to TU-22M3M version which, for all intents and purposes, is a completely new aircraft within old fuselage. Schneider starts with sacramental phrase. 

The Russian Air Force’s bomber fleet is back in the antiship strike business.

He proceeds to assess new TU-22M3M capabilities:

The Backfire weapon upgrade is quite impressive, enhancing the bomber’s capabilities against both land targets and surface ships. In addition to the new land-attack missiles (the Kh-101 and Kh-555, according to Russian press), there reportedly will be at least two long-range ultrahigh-speed dual-capable (nuclear and conventional) missiles with land-attack and antiship capability. This is important because the Department of Defense has said the United States currently has no defense against hypersonic missiles. Backfire’s manufacturer, Tupolev, claims the improved Backfire bomber will be operational in 2021. 

But while admitting a current vulnerable state of US Navy's surface fleet, he, predictably, settles back into the good ol' tactical and operational ambiguity of aircraft carriers: 

The Kh-32 makes it more difficult to intercept the Backfire before weapons-release range. The Soviet-era Kh-22 (still reportedly operational) has half the range of the new weapon. While post–Cold War U.S. Navy fighters have much better radars and avionics than the F-14, they lack its long-range (and even the F-14 range would not be adequate against a Kh-32-armed aircraft). The longer range of the Tu-22M3M complicates a carrier strike group’s ability to set up a barrier defense. The extreme speed of the missile reduces flight time by a factor of four compared to a subsonic antiship missile, reducing the defensive value of locational uncertainty between launch and impact time. 

It really is fascinating how outdated concepts and technologies continue to dominate thinking since:

1. Issue of locational uncertainty is resolved by number of means such as configuration of salvo, ability for refined (finishing) search (Dorazvedka) by active warheads of modern highly evolved anti-shipping missiles (ASMs), plus other tactical and technological means which make modern ASMs fully shoot-and-forget weapons, which are often launched not at fixed position of target but at an area accounting for the rate of obsolescence of the intelligence (last datum) on target's position. In this case, as I stated before, it is a salvo at the area with the radius R= Vcarrier*tfrom detection to impact.

2. By far the most terrifying weapon in TU22M3M is not even X-32, however deadly, it is fully hyper-sonic Kinzhal, which makes any defensive solution useless on arrival for a simple reason--modern Russian ASMs have ranges greater than ranges of carrier aviation and their air-to-air weapons. But there are other, no less complex, issues with the intercept of very to hyper high speed maneuvering missiles which cannot be resolved by creating another, intercepting missiles--solutions to that lie in a completely different field and physics.

3. Appearance of 3M22 Zircon on submarines, especially SSGNs, will make not only near-littoral operations of CBGs, which are already, impossible--it may complicate greatly even blue-water, that is ocean deployments of any assets. And that brings this ever sensitive issue of CBGs forth. 

I repeat myself, US Navy's super-carriers are magnificent ships but they are way pass their prime as US Navy's main striking force. Against peer they are not only a secondary, if not tertiary, asset, they are, in actuality, a liability--one has to ask Elmo Zumwalt's question time and again: what happens, God forbid, with escalation if the United States loses one of its CBGs during conflict, what will be the psychological impact of such a massive loss? The era of magnificent American CVNs as strike and deterrent force against even near peer, forget peer, is over. In fact, in the same issue of Proceedings, Captain Barber calls on:

The U.S. Navy’s current fleet design does not match today’s conditions, much less those expected over the next 20 years. Today’s fleet—a mix of ship types that are simply evolutionary improvements and larger versions of designs from two or more decades ago—is too small, and the ships on average are too large. It is time for the Navy to make broad, significant changes in the fleet’s design. 

Is such a redesign even possible? I don't know--institutional inertia, Status Quo culture, as called by Roger Thompson, and, in the end, colossal expenditures required for such a gigantic overhaul, may doom US Navy to a status of still beautiful visually but hollow force good only for demonstration of the flag and serving as high value prestigious targets in what shapes to be global very high threat environment. Again, don't tell me that I didn't warn:  

Putin’s message was clear: “You didn’t listen to us then, you will listen to us now”. After that he proceeded with what can only be described as a military-technological Pearl-Harbor meets Stalingrad. The strategic ramifications of the latest weapon systems Putin presented are immense. In fact, they are historic in nature. 

My next book is exactly a deliberation on these ramifications which are, indeed, historic. The signs of this understanding dawning on American professionals are unmistakable and these are good signs...for peace.   

He foresaw it all in 1970s