plawolfYou dont get it, ya? The ONLY and SOLELY reason why USSR and USA had 5000+ strategic warheads in its arsenal and desired to achieve parity is MAD after first strike. I.e. – second stirke capabilty. 2000 warheads on 500 missiles what Russian have is more than enouth for MAD given what China have 200-300 warheads. But it will be NOT enouth given China have 2000 warheads.
Thats plain nonsense mate. Firstly, no nation on earth have the ability to launch a nuclear first strike using BMs without every other major nuclear power knowing about it the second the engines light up. A quick trajectory check will easily show where the missiles are heading (as in which country and maybe even which part of the country depending on the sophistication of the different early warning spysats). Reprisal strikes will be well on their way long before hostile missiles reach the empty silos. And we are not even talking about the sub launched stuff and mobile launchers.
Secondly, are Chinese nukes magic or something? Why does Russia need 2000+ nukes to balance China’s 200-300? And how do you work it that 2000 Russian nukes will not be able to achieve MAD against 2000 Chinese nukes? :rolleyes:
In that case China can destroy all(or most) russian missiles with first strike.
As I have already pointed out above, that is just cheap fiction.
The reverse is also true, currently Russia can, if needed VERY badly, use nukes against China and expect only very minor response.
Wrong, the PLA doesn’t have that many ICBMs and fewer mobile versons, but they have plenty of IRBMs and SRBMs that can take nuclear warheads if needs be. If the Russians made a nuclear first strike, they can take out the ancient liquid fueled ICBMs quite easily, but then they will get a full barrage of mobile DF31s, IRBMs and SLBMs. It won’t be MAD level retaliation, but its far far more then what any sane person would describe as a ‘very minor response’.
We are talking about nuclear weapons here and not some HE bunkerbusters. There is curretly no dispute between China or Russia or anyone else that would come close to warrent them willing to eat even one Chinese nuke to settle.
Whats why chinese nukes are not that much threat for Russia – certainly much, much lesser threat than USA nukes.
Chinese nuclear forces don’t have MAD capacity because it was never persued since they didn’t want to bankrupt themselves like the soviets did. What they have is more then enough to deter any attack, and thats all the nukes are supposed to do.
P.S. I said IF the current trend continues.
Still zero evidence. There have been zero offical Chinese signals of anything of the kind. The only possible event you could have used is a comment from ONE general who said absolutely unequivically that he was merely stating his own PERSONAL OPINIONS when he suggested that a military confrontation between China and the US may well go nuclear. Thats plain common sense and what any number of American generals and polititions have been ranting about for years. Dont see anyone talking their opions as mission statements for the US gov. :rolleyes:
BTW, China have laid off another nuclear SSBN. Tell us about “China not even adding to their nuclear arsenal anymore” something else…
So what? The PLAN is going to fill that thing up with platonium and lob it at LA? :rolleyes: I was talking about nuclear warheads. The PLA might be improving its delivery ability, but almost all sources have it on good authority that the PLA has stopped manufacturing warheads years back.
Of course, IF China restrict itself to 200-300 nukes, IF NK, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, India and other Middle East countries restrict themselfes to 100-200 warheads, IF USA restrict they NMD to 50-100 interceptors… then IRBM’s will be not needed and Russia most likely will not field them. STILL i expect Russia to develop and field non-nuclear ballistic or cruise or semi-balistic missile in 1500-3000km class.
Nice to see some of us still keeping the good ‘ld cold war flames alight. :rolleyes:
What, everyone who has or might have nukes are all suddenly going to arm to the teeth with them and lob it all at Russia just for poops and giggles? :rolleyes:
Russia have MAD capacity against everyone except maybe the US right now and for the forseeable future. Thats far more then enough to maintain the peace.
If the Russians are developing new IRBMs, they are doing so not because they think they need more missiles. Far from it. They are probably planning to downsize their strategic weapons arsenal by replacing old missiles with fewer new ones that will cost far far less to maintain.
plawolfDespite the recent kissy face I’d argue the Chinese are more of a threat to Russia than the US is. The US has nothing to gain by going to war with Russia. The same cannot be said of China. In addition China has boasted of a willingness to engage in nuclear war with anyone who stands in their way of taking what they want.
Well done! I have seldomly seen such a high concerntration of baseless crap before. :rolleyes:
What has China got to again from a nuke war with Russia? Not even a convential boarder skirmish is remotely likely between the two, and the only ones who think that relatations between the two are likely to take a turn for the worse anytime soon are the loonies at far-right rant sites like newsmax. Even then its more out of hope then expectation.
When has China ‘boasted’ of their willingness to engage in nuclear war with anyone over anything less then a nuclear strike on China? You do realise you can’t just invent BS and then present them as facts don’t you? :rolleyes:
plawolfPredicable move seeing how close countries like China, Iran, NK, East Europa(ICBM defence) , etc. starts arming with nuclear weapons. Its unneeded expencive to hold Topol-M against China or Iran. IRBM will be much cheaper. If the current world arming trend continues i expect Russian starts to field IRBM’s in about 10-15 years – when China , Iran, etc. aquire enouth nukes to threat Russia.
I must ask if you have thought that through there mate. What, you think everyone holds nukes EXPECTING to use them? Costs have nothing to do with it.:rolleyes:
Also, FYI, China has had enough nukes to ‘threaten’ Russia for decades and are not even adding to their nuclear arsenal anymore according to the vast majority of sources. As for Iran, well why would they be interested in attacking one of its very few friends? Typical arogence-induced paranioa.
plawolfGentlemen, can we please leave the political bagage at the door and stick to the topic? If some people actually like having a pi$$ing contest, they can go start a threat for such, or better yet, do it via PM which is not subject to any rules.
Anyhow, I think that is has been pretty conclusively shown that supersonic is better then subsonic in terms of lethality, while subsonic tends to be cheaper and can be fielded in larger numbers. A combination of the two could potentially be better then both, or present new advantages over the other two types while suffering new problems.
The ideal solution could be a mixed inventory of the two, and timing the launch so that the different types of missiles show up on target at the same time.
plawolfDetails of military deals and non-specialist news agencies just don’t mix. Even the specialists like Janes and Kawan are well known for major errors, especially reporting on matters that are not posts on a company website or quoting from press confrences. How reliable you think a news site quoting strategy pages is likely to be?
$20m per plane is excessive even if it included support and weapons, and is plainly implausible as for that kind of money, you can easily buy some FC1s at least. Zimbabwe may be limited in the places where they can get warplanes from, so that might allow Hongdu to milk them for a little bit more profit then they might normally get away with. But its not like Mogarbe is swimming in cash right now, nor is he facing any pressing threats that requires the planes to counter, so he would simple choose not to sign a deal if the price was too outragious.
plawolfAAM seekers only have a limited life span once they are made combat ready and strapped onto a pylon. Something silly, like 24h or something for some models IIRC, so it really isn’t smart to fly around with them if there is no chance of using them, especially with very small missile inventories as each seeker would clock up hours really fast.
plawolfSeems to be of two different ac, I’m guessing that the second is the KJ200 (Y8 based AWACS). Probably just half the full width, with the same setup on the other side.
Actually, come to think of it, the first pic looks awfully like the interior of Embraer ERJ 145 series jets being jointly built in China. Could be something new here.
plawolfWait and see. Of cause it was a conflict between Israel and Lebanon. Hezbollah are Lebanese citizens!
Hezbollah is not the winner, if someone has no “sado-maso” feelings by that.
An exchange ratio of ~ 1:10 in my disfavour could not be claimed a success at all, except for insane people, who did not care about the well-being of their own people.
The 1:10 figure only apply to civilian deaths. The military loss ratio seem to be much lower. Just today, I heard a Israeli figure of 500ish Hezbollah fighters killed in this campaign, which I suspect is on the high side of the range of figures we would likely see in the coming days. Thats compaired to the 120+ Israeli military fatalities.
plawolfI wasn’t talking about the general campaign strategy, the general war strategy is a bit irrelevent because Hezbollah was never going to compete on the strategic level anyways. I was talking about the standard operating procedures of Israeli forces once in combat, at the tactical level. They have been using pretty much the same ‘playbook’ in urban combat as they have been using against the Palistinians for decades, and Hezbollah have been taking notes.
plawolfThe problem for Israel is that they have not changed their tactics much in the last couple of decades, and Hezbollah have had plenty of time to come up with sollutions against them. A victim of its own past successes.
plawolfDear Member,
Try and please understand what we are trying to warn you about. Key Publishing Forums are a great place. One of the best on the internet. But Key Publishing makes it clear that they want as little politics and religion as possible on these forums. Not to long ago there was a great sub-forum called LAND WEAPONS and two groups (one from Europe and one from Asia) got into it big time and you want to know the adminstrations solution: They shut that forum down and deleted all the messages along with a lot of important material. I am not an old timer. But I can understand their view. They don’t want the same thing happening here as happed with LAND WEAPONS.
Jack E. Hammond
Stop being melidramatic. :diablo: This is nowhere like what was happening before. :rolleyes:
Anyways, Suflanker waved his right to lecture others about going off topic when his first and only post in this thread at the time was just as off-topic as anyone he criticised. Besides, it was hardly a call to stop on both sides. He’s sour because his ‘side’ was getting spanked, not because he is strictly against people going off-topic.
Anyways, the discussion seems to be getting somewhere back on track, so lets try not to derail it again shall we?
plawolfWow, that sounds like a WWI “landship”!
Not exactly what I had in mind, but then ‘landships’ were designed to take on hostile infantry, so its not that far off I supose. 😉
plawolfWhen did I say world navies r a waste of space? Is that yr definition?? LOL.. Don need carriers? Then u expect every combat aircraft t have a combat radius of 10,000km? Aircraft carriers r mobile airfield to allow yr combat aircraft to strike yr enemy far away from yr own territories.
I was just expanding on your arguement that, ‘if it ain’t good to fighting insurgents, its obsolete’ line of reasoning and applied to that Naval warships. Fast jets are also not best suited to fight insurgents, so why do you need them? Attack helos are more then what you need to take out some poorly armed insurgents.
Imagine MBT facing a militants who armed with AK-47 and oldies RPG! Who will win?? MBT have relegate to the role of fighting poor equip militants which is a hard fact!
Thats just silly! How much time does the vast majority of modern armies spend fighting? Does that mean you don’t need them? You don’t just have armies to fight the threat of the moment.
As I said before, MBTs are not designed to fight insurgents, they are design to kill other armoured vehicals and lead your armies into battle, and in that role, there is no better candidate to replace it, so it is still a critical part of the armies’ arsenal.
But MBT facing a highly train operator of ATGM will be a different story.Heavy APC Achzarit is using a Merkava body meaning it provide equal armour protection except it don have the bulky turret and offer cheaper operating fees.
And how good is the Achzarit at killing MBTs and other armoured vehicals? You are comparing applies to oranges.
BTW,in modern warfare context,u don need a MBT to kill a MBT. If I don have modern MBT but facing a modern MBT,I will have Attack helo on standby and using ATGM to knock them out.
And your foe will have attack helo and fighters of the own; mobile AAA and short ranged SAMs and MANPADs to take them out. You think a force with attack helos and MBTs would do better or worse at taking on hostile modern armies compared to a force with just attack helos?
Or my amoury too have ATGM on standby in case the helo cant complete the job!
And your opponent have mobalized infantry who would surge forward with the armour to root out your missile teams very quickly if your just stick them out in the middle of nowhere with no armoured support. But faced with a division strength armoured charge, any amroured force without MBTs is just going to get slaughtered.
But most cases ,such scenario is unlikely cos air campaign of using PGM of deep strike into enemies territories shall have already destroy buky of their MBT! Ground troops merely went in to pick up the pieces…
And what is your enemy’s armies going to be doing while your air force fight to gain air superiority? :rolleyes:
If you have a vast superiority on land, then thats where you want to fight your opponent. Every force have its own unique strengths and weaknesses, and only a general stupid beyound belief would choose to fight the enemy’s strongest force with his weakest while holding his own strongest forces without using them.
It will take time to win air superiority, and your foe will be using that time to crush up on land if he is significantly stronger there. What is your super-duper air force going to do if the enemy has all their airfields and planes?
America was only allowed to bomb its enemies at will because it had an overwhelming superiority on land and in the air, so their opponent could only try to dig in and attempt to use the land to have any chance of achieving victories.
Air campaign demoralish the serbs,cutting them off from the rest of the world and result the removal of Molosovic.
What, did the air campaign blow a mote around the former Yugaslavia? :rolleyes: It was the sanctions that cut them off, and the bombing did not come anywhere close to ‘demoralise’ (or are you trying to say demolish?) the serb military. It was the civilians that broke if anyone did. But most commentators suggested that it was the immanent threat of a land war that broke the serb people. Just as well, because NATO would have been majorly mauled if its ground forces did go in.
Serb r too good in using fake tank decoy and decept and wasted many Coalition PGM. This is tatic failure and not usage failure…. Using air force to pound yr enemies too stone age is the correct choice but Serbs r too cuning!
Serb success in avioding NATO air strikes owes as much if not more to the difficult terrain and weather pattern of the region as their fieldcraft skills. The LGP was the backbone of NATO PGMs at the time, and LGBs don’t tend to work that well when fog cuts or refracts the guidence beam.
But that does not explain how Iraqi division sized forces were pretty much at full strength when encountered by US/UK ground forces in GW2.
Blitzkerig is obsolete and patient using of airpower of gaining air supremacy is the 21st modern wafare tatics. Using Air PGM to pound yr enemies of whatever advantages to them is the best solution to reduce casualties of yr side and win the war easily!
Blitzkreig is nowhere near obsolete mate. GW2 is based exactly on the principles of air power covered lighting fast armoured advance of Blitzkreig.
And as said before, without a sufficiently strong ground force to hold your lines, any half compitent foe would be swarming all over your airfields before you had time to slowly grind them to dust with your airpower.
In the chenya war 2,the Russia using artillery and PGM to win the rebel. Whenever they have clear up an area,they will send in fast mechanised armour to pick up the pieces and set up artillery bridgade and start pounding the next area again. They Key is having the patient and proceed slowly inch by inch after each pounding,casualties r low and rebels were rooted out! While for the Israel-Lebanon situation,Israel r desperate and making the same mistake just like Russia of of Chenya war 1.. Sending in amrour unit hastily….
Urban warfare have always been the bain of generals. No-one wants to fight in cities because everyone is going to take massive looses no matter who wins if they are fighting a well equiped and highly motivated foe. Tanks were never designed or intended to fight in cities with the exception of maybe the Merk. They are designed to take on the enemy in the fields and crush them so you don’t have to grind your cities to dust to beat them.
The tank is not obsolete because its role is not to take on insurgents in urban battlefields, but to wipe out enemy armour out in the open. So long as world armies have armoured vehicals, then MBTs have a critical and unique role to play. What is lacking is a dedicated urban anti-infantry combat vehical that can take sustined hits from modern ATGMs. You need to add to your armoured inventory to deal with the new threat, not sacrific one ability to gain another. That’ll be like retiring the fighter to make room for close air support planes because fastjets aren’t that good at taking groundfire, and rationalising that by saying that large scale air combat hardly takes place nowadays, so fighters are obsolete and because SAMs can take out enemy fighters so your own fighters are not strictly needed.
plawolfMBT is obsolete and need no replacement just like battleship of WWII. Tatics change and modern warfare of the 21st century need no MBT. Why MBT still exists today,cos of the fact nowdays costant warfare is more of fighting militants,a group of loosely equip soldiers who totally lacked modern light weight weaponery to fight those armoury! While in these case,Hezboallah r hardly a militants but in fact a highly organise and modern military organisation with well-fund and modern weaponery once again prove MBT r obsolete in Modern warfare.
By that definition, 90 of all the world’s navies are a waste of space. All you need to fight militants are some assault ships. You don’t even need carriers as fast jets are not that effective against insurgents anyways, attack helos are far more effective. But then, Navies don’t exist to fight militants do they?
By the same vein, MBTs are not designed to fight militants, so its hardly suprising that they are not doing that great a job of it. However, only fools would think that militants are the only threat to the world’s nations. Other nations still pose the greatest threat by far, and you can’t hope to win a land war against another modern army if you don’t have capable MBTs while the other side does.
In fact ,it is the US who set the standard of modern warfare of the 21st century by using raw airpower to subdue the enemeies. In Gulf war 1,the coalition airpower basically use airpower to overwhelm the Iraqi by blinding it network using PGM on its radar,CAC HQ,communication,network then going into its hardware of weaponery of armour,aircraft,air defense,warship,weaponery storage and facilites. Simply bombed its enemies into stone age soldiers. Making them a loosely organise militants with no modern weaponery and support! Armour support by attack chopper moved in basically just to occupied the territories with search and destroy mission.
You have far too rosy a picture of what happened in GW1 mate. The air war failed to crush the Iraqi army, and it was only after the demonstration of the overwhelming superiority of western MBTs and tactics that won the war so convincingly. Please read up on your history, because when the coalition ground faces went in, they encountered well organised (as much as that applied to Iraqi forces anyways) and huge Iraqi Republican Guard Tank divisions. Attack helos would have been chewed to bits by the mobile SAMs and AAAs. Even if they weren’t, they would not have nearly enough missiles to hope to stop such huge numbers of enemy tanks, and any armoured force without MBTs would have been rape onces the Iraqi T72s got within range.
Subsequent conflicts have shown again and again the importance of ground forces, and MBTs in particular.
In Kosovo, the air campgne did far less damage to serb units then anyone in the west thought possible, and it was only the threat of a NATO ground offensive that forced the removel of Molosovic.
In GW2, air power again did less then hoped, and large Iraqi armoured formations were discovered to be almost full strength when American (and maybe also British units, but I can’t remember exactly) amroured units encountered them. Again, it was the superiority of American and British MBTs that won the day.
Sum up in modern warfare. Both countries bascially just have a airfight first to exhaust each other and awaits the winner of the aerial combat before taking the next step.
Without a solid army (and no army without MBTs can be called ‘solid’), you don’t have another step short of the nuclear option.
Remember the old joke about Soviet Generals camiserating each other about the defeat in the air during a victory parade in Paris? That same principle still applies today.
Blitzkerig of aerial and armour moves in together is only successful when fighting a very inferior adversaries like the Iraqi arm forces of 2003,an armed forces who suffer 10yrs of arm sanction and decaying equipment. In fact,i will see old Iraqi armed forces of 2003 more of a militants than a convention armed forces! Why need a MBT when airpower will do all the main assault job?
Blitzkerig, as first used by the Germans in WWII is the perfect counter-example to what you just said! They easily defeated far superior enemy armoured units. And thoughout the war, German Panzer divisions ruled in land because of the superior MBTs.
I have also pointed out before how your Iraqi example is not based on what really happened on the ground.
I personally reccomend a heavy APC maybe seen as a solution for ground assault. The ground forces just need to send in troops to root out the remaining stubborn enemies. Heavy APC like Achzarit which is much lighter than MBT,cheaper to maintain and operate will provide the solution. Modern armour merely relegate to the role of taxi of ground battlefield. Achzarit form the first line with attack chopper closely nearby the act as immediate reaction team of destroy adversaries follow by normal APC like M113 or Pirahna AWPC will form the neccesary armour combo of the future.. Who needs heavyfirepower from the ground unit when the airpower is doing all the job? No sense countries will send in armour to do the main assault job!
Considering what a hard time MBTs are having against ATGMs and RPGs, it would be stupid to send in even lighter armoured IFVs to try and do the same role! You’d get hugely increased looses as the armour of almost all IFVs offer zero chances of surviving direct hits by even decade old ATGMs never mind modern weapons.
The Israeli have come up with the best solution to what the best anti-insurgent fighting armoured unit should be – a massively armoured MBT designed to take hits from ATGMs and survive. Maybe a better design might be a IFV armoured like modern MBTs but with anything up to half a dozen romote operable turrets instead of a main gun for the troops in the back to operate. This should provide far better all round anti-personel coverage then any MBT or IFV and would offer the crew the protect of the Merhava4 if not better, to take the inevatable ATGM hits and survive.
plawolfHEY PLAWOLF AND GREENDAY1 STFU!!!!!! WHAT DOES YOUR POINTLESS BS GOT TO DO WITH THE MERKAVA??!!! STOP THREADJACKING AND GET BACK TO THE TOPIC!!!!!!!!!!
Where’s the mods? Another thread was locked because of this pointless BS and that thread was about the whole Israel Lebanon conflict. Most of this thread has NOTHING to do about the Merkava! Geez!
So what is STFU meant to stand for then? What? Did my response hit a little too close to home? :rolleyes:
Anyways, I didn’t see your first post on this thread having any ‘on topic’ material. At least I entered this thread on topic.
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