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.
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.
The date Russia has made first statement about her arriving back from the near death. I recall all those "military experts", especially a bunch of shysters from Russia, promising that Russians will be defeated because US "trained" Georgian Army. US learned absolutely nothing since then. We all know thee result of that 5-day war. US "trained" Army disintegrated when faced with real combined arms.
This is the type of human trash the US views as its "allies".
But today something begins to trickle down even into the sewer of American media and clueless politicos:
Read my lips, you also may quote me on that: there is NO understanding of modern war in the US across the board, including most of American military. There is also NO serious strategist in the US who has a clear view of the formation of balance of power and how serious militaries write their doctrines. That is why I see sincere attempts by Daniel Larison to challenge one of the leading American "strategists" as misplaced and having all signs of the Sisyphus Labor.
The US has only a handful of people, who also are the exception to the rule of a wholesale sheer military illiteracy, who are capable of speaking on and understanding how actual strategy is developed and implemented. Walter Russel Mead is not one of them. 99% of America's "strategists" are people with NO systemic military education, knowledge of history and the only skill those people have as the result of their "degrees" in the so called "strategic studies" from Ivy League humanities degree mills is juxtaposing of carefully selected facts. Walter Russel Mead has degree in English Literature from Yale and never served a day in any military or intel capacity. So, the fact that he teaches Clausewitz and Sun Tzu's one-liners in the times of neural networks, space-based ISR and hyper-sonic weapons whose physics and math he cannot possibly understand, tells you everything you need to know about America's "Strategy" academe. It also explains why those are incapable of talking in anything but pseudo-strategic platitudes--a euphemism for BS.
In other words, Mead has zero qualifications for speaking and writing on modern geopolitics and strategy, because to do so one has to have the tool kit of looking at strategy in conjunction with operational level--two levels at which wars are won or lost and which require the depth. And that's the point I make for years--one cannot continue to merely challenge the BS fountaining from the deep recesses of US "academia" and think-tankdom, one has to challenge qualifications, that is to say start operating in the ad hominem mode, when dealing with a cabal of uncultured, unread, illiterate Ph.D shysters who toil for the benefit of America's homicidal foreign policy and military adventurism. Yes, they lie, but many of them sincerely believe those lies. That is why the ONLY American real strategist of true international repute, Alfred Thayer Mahan, was a graduate of the US Naval Academy, has been a cadre naval officer with combat experience all his life, and retired in the rank of Admiral.
Military degrees and experiences in and of themselves do not guarantee from stupidity and fraud, enough to look at US generals at the so called ISW, or read US "doctrinal" documents, but it is time to finally start calling all those white board "strategists", who wouldn't know how operations are planned or insulate themselves from inconvenient facts of the America's grossly exaggerated military history, for what they are--frauds and shysters who know only pseudo-military verbiage and have no clue about the real history of the last two centuries. And it was on this date fifteen years ago when they have been taught the first lesson in real continental combined arms warfare.
Or, as quoting Lieutenant-General Klokotov, at the time of the Gulf War the chief of the Strategy Department of Academy of the General Staff (guess from three times if "strategist" Mead and ilk will be even able to pass entrance exams there):
“I
would like to emphasize here that the Persian Gulf war was taken as the
standard in studying the strategic nature of possible war. It would appear that
this position, adopted in the draft ‘Fundamentals of Russian Military
Doctrine,’ is dangerous. The fact is that this war [was] ‘strange’ in all
respects [and] cannot serve as a standard.”
On August 8th, 2008 Russian Armed Forces started their healing and return to their proper shape allowing them to fight and defeat combined NATO forces. The rest is history, but they don't teach it in the US anymore.
This "something else" is, thanks to Saker's Blog discussing it today, about the fact that they cannot do strategy inside the Beltway and I am talking top-bottom, Pentagon including, not to speak of think-tanks such as RAND. One can build a cottage industry based just on debunking RAND's BS and exposing their incompetence. Enter Foreign Affairs rag. These people have been very busy as of lately discussing things they have no clue about--e.g. United States doesn't have diplomacy in any operational sense, among many other things--related to SMO and Russia. Here is one such Exhibit:
As I stated, thank to Saker's blog I stumbled on this "jewel" of a "strategic (lack thereof) thought" from Dara Massicot who, if to believe a very limited info on her background, is:
DARA MASSICOT is a Senior Policy Researcher at the RAND Corporation.
Before joining RAND, she served as a senior analyst for Russian military
capabilities at the Department of Defense.
And here I have to immediately point out the issue I am dealing with for the last almost decade and a half, and that is that neither Pentagon nor the so called US "intel community" have any clue about Russian military capabilities because they don't have proper academic framework economically, militarily, historically and politically because of the scandalously low intellectual level of US "elites". Dara Massicot, considering the paucity of info on her, could have been a spook or simply yet another "product" of the US "strategic studies" degree mills for good ol' boys and girls, who in either case wouldn't last academically a semester in any serious military academy in Russia. Consider also aggravating factor of a Russia Study field in the US being a playground of academic frauds, primitive ideologies and all kinds of former Soviet citizenry selling themselves as "experts" while having no clue about the subject. E.g. former English Language teacher with not even DSP clearance in Russia/USSR "consulting" US on Russia's "strategic culture".
The record of shysters from USSR/Russia selling BS to rather uncultured US "elites" on Russia is long--from notorious Golitsyn who damaged CIA profoundly, to no less notorious Bezmenov who packaged well known open facts into "intel" and sold it to US media, to, of course, Solzhenitsyn with his fiction on just about anything to, already mentioned, "expert" in Russia's "strategic culture" Koffler. So, to expect that some gal from RAND, who wouldn't know the difference between the doctrine and strategy and how many parts the latter is subdivided into, and what it all means, is down right risible and Massicot doesn't disappoint with confirmation of what I wrote three books about and am writing fourth one--they cannot do strategy in Washington D.C. They also cannot fight the modern war and they do not understand, in the nation subverted by ethnic and religious lobbies, from Israel to Saudi Arabia, and Qatar with Ukraine, what national interest is and how it is formulated.
Massicot immediately goes for the jugular of a remaining credibility she might have had and states:
Why Russia did not prevail—why it was instead stopped in its tracks,
routed outside major cities, and put on the defensive—has become one of
the most important questions in both U.S. foreign policy and
international security more broadly. The answer has many components. The
excessive internal secrecy gave troops and commanders little time to
prepare, leading to heavy losses. Russia created an invasion plan that
was riddled with faulty assumptions, arbitrary political guidance, and
planning errors that departed from key Russian military principles.
Well, Massicot who, obviously, never attended any serious military institution and has zero serious military background, doesn't understand the process of serious strategic and operational planning by such institutions as Russian General Staff, and she never heard of a development of decision tree, which manifests itself in such thing as contingency planning. I will omit here the issue of Markov Processes and how they apply in modern operational and strategic planning, but Massicot, of course, parades her ignorance here by presenting her personal (that is serving only narrative) preferences as strategic wisdoms. They are not, this is the writing of the amateur who doesn't understand what Russia is and how she fights. Not to mention the fact, that she simply lies, especially about Russian losses or Russian intentions. It is natural for a "senior analyst of Russian military capabilities" from organization which loses all of its wars since Korea. She should simply go back to Washington Post's famed Afghanistan Papers and relearn how Pentagon "fights", primarily in media field.
But she doesn't stay there, she develops another thesis, which shows both a serious butthurt and lack of knowledge of Russian military culture:
Yet in January 2023, Surovikin was demoted in favor of General Valeriy
Gerasimov. Although the reasons for this command change are unclear,
palace intrigue and cronyism may be behind it rather than any specific
failure of Surovikin’s leadership. And no Russian commander has been
able to break Ukraine’s will to fight even though Russia continues to
launch missiles that inflict suffering on the Ukrainian people. But the
bombings and entrenchment may well degrade Ukraine’s capacity, making it
harder for the country to reclaim more of its land.
The reason she writes this sophomoric BS straight out of the Ukie propaganda, about Surovikin being "demoted", is because she doesn't understand what coordination is and why, the Red Army was using throughout WW II the "institute" of Representatives of STAVKA at the fronts, who, like Zhukov and Vasilevsky, at different times either coordinated or directly commanded several fronts (army groups). She, obviously, never heard about it, because she doesn't know that Russian General Staff IS the main organ of combat control (Главный Орган Боевого Управления) of ALL Russia's Armed Forces ranging from ground forces to strategic nuclear ones, to navy and the list goes on, and on, and on. The big honcho in all that is Valery Gerasimov, who, as a Chief of a General Staff, unlike Surovikin, who never was "demoted", has supervision of everything, and Russia is playing here for much more than Ukraine. But, evidently, this former Pentagon's and present RAND's "analyst" doesn't read what is openly available in Russian media and not a secret since the inception. Here is me from BEFORE February 24.
You see? I warned. Nobody heeded, least of all all those Russia "experts" (most of them frauds) in the US. In the end, after reading this sophomoric BS from Massicot, she has to contend with the fact of the US military technology failing dismally in Ukraine, moreover, with the fact that the fields of strategic planning, strategic intelligence, TOE of the US Armed Forces, doctrine, strategic studies, national defense policy, procurement policy are a complete wasteland of academic and intellectual fraud which cannot hide anymore Western military impotence against serious military power, let alone military power such as Russia who exposed Western military impotence for the whole world to see. Massicot's sophomoric propaganda in the CFR's rag is one of the many signs of a systemic crisis of the combined West, who in desperate attempts to save the face, is also desperately trying to re-frame BS narrative, with some therapeutic BS added to the new one, by means of constructing the alternative reality. This is the only thing they are capable of doing.
Russia, at this stage, wouldn't give a flying fvck about what Biden and his Administration think about Russia. But when even the inventor of non-existent "Gerasimov Doctrine" and polymath in wide-range BSing without any real life and professional qualifications in issues he tries to cover, such as Mark Galeotti, has to react to Biden's utterances about Russia as having only oil wells and nuclear weapons (you know, the gas station masquerading as a country), it tells you something. Galeotti writes:
Galeotti, being a humanities "educated" hack still doesn't get the message though--he should read up on that, but I don't hold my breath--that THE issue here is the fact that Russians are afraid of America's weakness which is not recognized and that eventually, when considering a precipitous decline of mental faculties and professionalism of the Western "elites" (Galeotti is an Exhibit A of such a decline, despite his prolific writing on subjects he doesn't understand), the US will decide to, as Galeotti himself suggests:
When the Kremlin demonstrates aggression or perfidy, this needs to be
called out. But over-heated rhetoric encourages woolly-thinking at home,
and a backlash in Russia. By all means let us make sure we carry a big
stick – then we can also speak softly.
And here is the problem, neither Galeotti not his ilk of alleged "Russia experts" have any ability to assess this proverbial "stick" nor establish the causality (it is there, alright) between increasingly hysterical tone of anti-Russian rhetoric in the West with this "stick" which long ago lost any capacity to realistically hit anyone and if not for nuclear weapons, nobody would pay attention to it. So, when Galeotti states that Russians will be "annoyed", he doesn't know what he is talking about. Russians are intimidated by a bunch of monkeys with grenades who run the combined West and that requires an extreme caution on Russia's part in handling this menagerie of mental pathology exhibits in order to avoid a war in which this combined West will cease to exist. Why I am positive about it? Well, because...
Unlike Galeotti, Commander Salamader is a military professional and, unlike Galeotti, has a required background to pass judgements on matters of war and of this proverbial "stick" which allegedly allows its carrier to "speak softly". I do not frequent Sal's blog anymore as I used too, but somebody sent me a link to Sal's last post and it is an outburst (objectively justified) in response to this piece of news.
Apart from some wowsers of operational "thought" in this piece, one thing which attracted my attention was the use of...spaceships in US Navy's operations around Taiwan. I am not screwing with you, read it yourself:
Contested logistics. Creating new ways to deliver fuel
and supplies to front lines. U.S. Transportation Command and the Air
Force are working on using rockets and a space trajectory to get large cargo spaceships into and out of battlefields.
No shit. I had to read several times and go and research the issue before being able to move my popped out eyes back in their sockets. This is desperation. Sal, however is not so polite, he has the right to be:
Sal also uses such terms as good ol' "Bullshit" plus other strong wording but he is ultimately correct:
I'm sorry, but in spite of all the warnings provided about building
an exquisite Tiffany force and shoveling billions in to critical
peacetime capabilities that in war immediately are converted in to
critical vulnerabilities with zero benefit and uncounted risk ... we are
shocked? Study for 20 years? Bullshit, you can see our vulnerabilities in open source in 20 minutes. If
we had a culture that allowed aggressive critique as opposed to
obsequious agreement, we wouldn't be here. We let the military
industrial complex sell of a bill of peacetime-only concepts about
networks, real time video, invulnerable satellites, the whole
transformational offsetting grabassery that no intelligent person
expected to survive any near peer adversary.
Moral and judicial issues of situation around Taiwan apart (that is another story altogether), the United States simply has no resources to fight modern war, especially with naval force which will be detected, tracked, the targeting developed and it will be annihilated even before its properly deployed. One can play with CONOPS whatever he wants but you cannot fight without having proper weapons and enablers. Modern war tactical-operational truism is simple, even Galeotti can grasp it--if you are seen by the enemy with advanced weapons, you will be killed. ANY US force is seen today across the whole electromagnetic spectrum and that means it becomes a target, EMCON or not. The US Navy still deals in weapon systems which reached their modernization limits already by early 2000 and if it thinks that launching good ol' Harpoons and their longer-range subsonic iterations such as LRASM will provide the edge, I have a bridge to sell.
With 3M22 Zircon finishing its state tests this August, it enters IOC and then in early 2022 it begins to be deployed to the first line ships and subs. But that is not all, Russia tested few months ago an item which is known as GZUR, it is a 1500 kilometer range Mach=6+ missile and a single TU-22M3(M) is capable to carry 20 (twenty!!) of those. Do you know how many SU-34 capable to do the same out there? The 3000 kilometer range M=12 version of this weapon is in works. Make your bet on how fast the first version of this weapon will end up in Chinese hands. Good luck developing air-defense system which can handle such a salvo, granted it even is capable to detect it. I totally understand when US officer has issues, but reading some British subject with degree in economics and history, bloviating on some stick, with UK being a secondary, if not tertiary, military and economic power is risible. That is why he doesn't understand the issue, that is why I write my books and post in this blog--to warn that what the combined West knows about Russia is mostly propaganda BS and when it will have its ass handed to it militarily, which will happen, if it decides to commit a suicide due to hubris and ignorance, the only thing which will be left to this loser is to launch nukes, and that will be it.
I know how hard it is to face the reality of own weakness and obsolescence, it takes real courage to do so, and there is a huge deficit of this courage in the West. But it is better that such admission is made by real professionals than leave this necessary step to people who have no understanding of this subject at all and have no business in passing their judgements on this matter in the first place. For Galeotti, however, some news, selling hydrocarbons accounts today for only 15% or Russia's budget, but, as Sal concludes his angry rant:
As a military, we have learned absolutely nothing.
No Sal, the problem is much deeper than that, West as a civilization learned absolutely nothing, and that is a much-much bigger problem. Like this:
I don't know how to react or comment on that. Maybe we should get scared all.
Yes, yes, that is what Turkey declared in Brussels and I think they, out of traditional humbleness, lowered numbers of destroyed S1 Pantsir AD systems dramatically. I think there were at least 25-30 those systems destroyed together with those 3,500 SAA soldiers and, probably, couple battalions of Russian SSOs. In related news, before lunch I was Napoleon, after lunch I became Marcus Aurelius. Turkish baloney and butt-hurt from what they experienced in Idlib is such that they don't see anything wrong with simply making shit up. So much so, that Russia's Ministry of Defense was forced to flatly debunk those fairy tales. In its statement Russian MoD underscored:
Translation: Assessments of combat effectiveness of strike UAVs in Idlib Province, presented to the head of Turkish Republic, alleging the destruction of eight Syrian gun-missile complexes "Pantsir" do not correspond to reality and are more than just exaggeration".
Truth is, only four S1s have been deployed around Idlib, two were damaged and repaired. Most of SAA's S1s remained deployed around Damascus and didn't take part in operations in Idlib. But never mind, as long as it is stated that it happened, it DID happen in accordance to NATO's combat doctrine which is rigged towards media and brainwashing, not fighting the actual war against competent adversary. The butt-hurt in Turkey is understandable, but it wouldn't be completed without this S-400 soap opera.
Erdogan was in Brussels to "report" on Turkey's great victory in Idlib. Meanwhile lunatic "Ambassador" Jeffrey was thinking on:
Jeffrey also said they
had considered possible responses should Russia and the Syrian
government break a ceasefire in Idlib, officials said. He
suggested other NATO states could individually or as an alliance provide
military support to help Turkey. But he ruled out sending ground troops
and said there still needed to be a resolution to the S-400 issue for
the security relationship to move forward. "You can forget ground
troops. Turkey has demonstrated that it and its opposition forces are
more than capable of holding ground on their own," Jeffrey said. "The
issue is the situation in the air and it's what we are looking at," he
said. Washington did not believe that Russia and Syrian had any interest in a permanent ceasefire in Idlib, he said. "They are out to get a military victory in Syria and our goal is to make it difficult for them to do that," Jeffrey said. "Our
goal is...to make them think twice. If they ignore our warnings and
preparations and move forward, then we will react as rapidly as possible
in consultation with our NATO and European allies on what the package
of sanctions and other reactions will be."
Jeffrey is delusional and is very butt-hurt, possibly because of his utter professional and human inadequacy, which is expected from a man with background in management and a member of "National Security" team of W (we all know how "well" that played out) and a burden of "victory" in Vietnam War with which utter irrational hatred of Russians comes naturally and, in fact, is a requirement; enough to recall another American Vietnam War "hero", late John McCain. Obviously Jeffrey's deal with Syria is not to fight terrorism but to support Al Qaeda (and its many iterations) operations there. In general--anything to not allow Syria (and Russia) to defeat Islamic terrorism there. He even speaks openly about it. Jeffery, an infantry officer in Vietnam, then some CIA "spook", in addition to his "diplomatic" background, is a 74 year old and, obviously, cranky man who does not understand modern warfare and, as is expected from US "experts" in Russia, has no knowledge of real Russia. Nor, obviously, he knows his own country, the United States that is, since he still thinks that the United States is this unstoppable military juggernaut which....lost most of its wars. That is why this senior citizen is so eager to start the war with Russia. There are many like him in all kinds of D.C. institutions.
Highlighted in yellow is a very good indicator of a depth of a delusion this whole cabal of US "strategists" resides in: sanctions are good for Russia. But as was demonstrated in the last 72 hours, Russia can also "sanction" back and that shakes the bejesus out of not only the US, but global economy. But here is the larger issue: how many still rational and competent people are left out there in the US governing institutions? How many of them have real strategic awareness and I am not talking about Mnuchin suddenly having an urge to talk to Russians on "investments" and "sanctions". Mnuchin is a bankster who understands only debit and credit, black and red, and when he sees red he (and his ilk) react, in pain. I am talking about people who have any strategic vision based on reality. Whole American geopolitical thought in the last 30 years is a permanent record of one failure after another. US "diplomacy" is a laughing stock of the world, US military, ask Iran. Economically? You all know what is going on. How this all could have gone so wrong, so fast? I have a metaphysical answer for that--exceeding established limit on a number of ass-holes populating governing institutions. It all comes down, in the end, to how many decent, honorable, honest that is, people are still out there and I'd say not many. In final analysis these are always human choices we make, which count most towards the final outcome. Or, as beloved by me Barnett stated:
…
swift decline in British vigor at home and the failure to exploit the
empire were not owing to some inevitable senescent process of
history....That cause was a political doctrine.... The doctrine was
liberalism, which criticized and finally demolished the traditional
conception of the nation-state as a collective organism, a community,
and asserted instead the primacy of individual. According to liberal
thinking a nation was no more than so many human atoms who happened to
live under the same set of laws.... It was Adam Smith who formulated the
doctrine of Free Trade, the keystone of liberalism, which was to
exercise a long-live and baneful effect on British power.... Adam Smith
attacked the traditional “mercantilist” belief that a nation should be
generally self-supporting.
We all will pay one way or another for an expected and predicted and ongoing as I type it collapse of liberalism, it is just that one cannot escape a desire to see some of the most ardent enablers of liberalism, who have their hands soaked in blood, be seen behind bars or in a front of a firing squad. Some of them know today that this is not anymore beyond the realm of possible and will try to light the world on fire, thinking that under the cover of ensuing chaos they can make an escape. But I know for sure now that there are those who keep the score. Just listen about "We can repeat":
1. Trump and his Administration are trying the only trick they know--to bully and apply max pressure (threats) to get whatever they seek (such as China joining, why?) and then, in the last minute, extend START Treaty. It is obvious that this so called "policy", if it is indeed A policy, doesn't work and will not work with Russia, not to speak of China whose nuclear arsenal is much smaller than that of US or Russia's;
2. Trump, actually wants START to expire--the point of view which I hold so far--which will untie America's hands in building up the only real power tool she has left, nuclear weapons. It is because the United States lost a conventional "arms race", albeit I don't like this term and prefer "being late" for the Real Revolution in Military Affairs.
As was stated many times, the field in which the United States currently may have some extremely narrow lead or barely parity with Russia is in SOME, I underscore, only SOME, enablers in terms of American developed computational abilities, which derive from still impressive semi-conductor (microchip) industry. Sure, but, as I also repeat ad nauseam, no matter how good your enablers are, if they do not command state-of-the-art weaponry, their value drops dramatically. E.g. LRASM may be everything it is stated to be, long-range, stealthy, smart anti-ship cruise missile, but it is still sub-sonic weapon whose parameters allow modern AD systems develop firing solution, in the worst case scenario, within very few seconds (implying LRASM being detected already within radio-horizon). Consider this simple fact, Russia readies Pantsir SM with hyper-sonic (that is M=5+) missiles which will have no problems dealing with high super-sonic or even low hype-sonic targets at ranges of 40 kilometers, not to speak of a slow subsonic targets even in salvo, since hyper-sonic interceptor missiles shorten the "busy" time of a missile-control channel of AD system dramatically, thus allowing to switch to dealing with other incoming threats much faster.
This is just a simple example, there are plenty of those, not to mention open admission by leading Russian specialists in early-warning and radar technologies, such as NPO Vympel's own Sergei Boev, about ROFAR (or Radio-photonics) systems getting ready soon to be deployed. Go to minute 31:00 in the video (in Russian). So, no matter how productive one's computer is, if it cannot control weapons capable to reliably, with good level probability, say Pk=0.7 and higher, kill the target it doesn't matter how sophisticated your microchip is, let alone how much your enabler costs--in real war with the peer it will be reduced to a passive expensive equipment. No American weapon in existence can intercept any modern Russian missile systems such as already fully deployed strategic Avangard or anti-shipping (or land-attack, depending on the task) M=9+ Kinzhal or just successfully tested 3M22 Zircon. So, let's drop any pretense of politeness here and admit that in a strategic sense the United States currently is in a very unenviable position, to put it mildly. The nation which US "elite", at least its largest part, and we can state this confidently, hates viscerally, Russia that is, not only called US strategic bluff, but doing so revealed a very real "missile gap" which for the United States will be very difficult, if possible at all, to narrow, forget about closing it.
So, what's left then for the United States under these conditions? Right, bluff again--because it is the only thing which is left for an enormously expensive and highly ineffective American military machine. One of this bluffs is actual expiration of the START and then attempts to nuclearize US "posture" to the utmost, including manufacturing whatever the strategic and mid-range nuclear missiles the United States will be able to afford and hoping that Russians will buckle and submit to the American demands. Right. It is all from the same opera as current NATO exercise Defender 2020, which is built around "Kaliningrad" scenario and Russians already voiced their concern with this NATO "defending". The essence of the concern is not that some 40, 000 NATO troops can "capture" Kaliningrad exclave--they can't, unless they want to sustain catastrophic casualties--but in the fact that desperate bunch of losers in NATO who cannot win a single war in generations and are clamoring for showing NATO's (that is US presence in Europe) "relevance" may accidentally cross the line and force Russia to, indeed, rearrange stones both at NATO's front lines and in a deep rear. That, of course, reeks of a possibility of a nuclear exchange because the United States (other NATO members are military dwarfs) is inherently nuclear-biased nation because it knows, at least some in Pentagon do, that it cannot fight and win conventional conflict against Russia in her geographic vicinity in a classic combined arms warfare scenario.
Thus, the United States will continue on a path towards complete nuclearization of its foreign policy, because at this stage the Empire has very little in terms of what can actually fight and win a conventional war with real opponent. Such a posture requires all strategic nuclear weapons limitations treaties to be disposed of. Plain and simple, but that goes far into the American history as a nation which didn't realize itself as a continental military power. Without this realization, even considering American glorious and rich naval history and global naval supremacy in the late XIX and good part of the XX century, we should always remember geopolitical strategic truism: the seat of the government is always on land--just ask Russians, they know.
