Two pics of today from Kaliningrad – repainted Neustrashimy and TUMAN (seems they are going to build it after all) and almost finished Jaroslav Mudry (the crew will start to take it over in June). Bad news for India if Yantar is going to build Tuman:diablo:
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g191/snake65/IMGP2940.jpg
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g191/snake65/IMGP2915.jpg

So thats three Neustrashimy’s, quite an improvement for the Russian fleet when it happens.

Get over it. If you are going to play this game then you have to except the rules, this kind of reminds me of someone who decides to play rugby and is then surprised when they get bruised.

And before anyone gets there knickers in a twist I would expect the Russians to do exactly the same thing if B1’s, and B-2’s started flying round near their airspace.

Directed fire Broncho old boy!. Putting the amphib on the beach and stationary opens it up to a whole raft of threat weapons that a ship standing 10nm offshore isnt exposed to.

Put it this way – you’ve had your air component sweep across and hit all sorts of fixed targets to prepare the landing beach. You call in your amphibs to put MBT’s onshore. While this is happening the two spec ops lads in a covert OP monitoring your landing beach get on the radio and 20kms inland 3 Smerch launch vehicles roll out of their covered positions and fire 36 rockets in salvo. With the LPD you’ve probably lost the armour and maybe, if unlucky, the LCU’s. With the LST odds on you lose the ship, its crew and everything therein.

10nm offshore doesnt sound much and certainly is no defence against advanced AShM shore batteries and radar-directed long-range coastal artillery. It does however offer much, much better protection against less-advanced threat systems that the beached LST most definitely IS vulnerable to.

As usual I just want to remark upon the excellent postings of Swerve, Jonesey and Fedaykin. The above piece of myth busting being quoted as an exceptional example. Just to add my two pence, it is worth noting that everybody is moving away from LST’s in one way or another. Furthermore you would not even need a Smerch to mess up an LST’s day. A fast firing 120mm mortar or even a few AT missiles will have the potential to make life very complicated indeed.

On the wider issue of turkey and future procurement, it seems like a classic case that a real foreign policy/money driven defence review is needed to determine exactly what Turkeys armed forces are expected to do. An LPD may not be that unsuitable depending on what your ambitions are, if your foreign policy objectives are limited to disaster relief and only intervention in failed states very little escort of any sort is required, take the proposed South African LPD procurement as an example.

The Dokdo may well be a good option, however one of the best ways to make it cheaper would be to remove some of the luxuries like the V/STOL preperations and impressive CMS/radar outfit.

Correction – they did believe Iraq was in breach of several UN resolutions which included, among other things, the fact that the country had not fulfilled all its obligations with respect to disclosing the scope of its WMD programme and that verification of the project’s destruction was incomplete. However this is NOT the same as believing WMD stockpiles actually still existed – just expressing dissatisfaction with Iraq’s progress in proving that all such stocks and infrastructure had really been destroyed.

I think it is safe to say that UN security Council approval for military action would not have been a problem if those countries had genuinely believed Iraq still possessed WMDs. While it was acknowledged that conclusive proof of the complete destruction of Iraqi WMDs was lacking, the reverse was also true: Powell’s presentation utterly failed to convince the above mentioned governments of the continued existence of any stockpiles – which led to military action being dismissed.

Since this discussion is moving off-topic I won’t be commenting on the Iraqi case anymore in this thread. Anyone who feels the need to continue may send me a PM.

You are wrong.

More or less every country with any intelligence interest genuinely believed that Iraq had WMD, to the extent that the French went so far as to declare that If Iraq used them during any conflict with the US France would become involved. This is not a subjective matter for debate but one of fact, you are wrong.

What if it was a North Korean replacement for the Yongbyon reactor…

http://geimint.blogspot.com/2008/04/syria-and-north-korea-nuclear-partners.html

Makes perfect sense and to be honest is what I have been thinking for a while. A reactor in Syria makes perfect sense for both Syria and North Korea. Look at the concessions that NK has extracted in return for disposing of its nuclear program, and look at Syria’s position. Theoretically you could see them doing an NK and negotiating for security promises and possibly even the return of the Golan. The harsh reality is that this strike itself shows how absolutely feeble Syria’s security situation is, put it into the context of Israel having invaded what used to be Syria’s backyard (Lebanon) and it is easy to see where such concerns could come from.

For North Korea it gives them a facility where they can continue Nuclear research and even production just outside North Korea thus giving NK a double victory in the six party talks. Indeed one can even see a potential narrative for this, following the likely failure of both their Nuclear test and the Taepodong-2 delivery system the NK deterrent looked extremely weak so a negotiation at that time would have made sense to achieve temporary security. However the fundamentals remain, paranoia, isolation and weakness. These are the factors that initially drove NK’s nuclear program and they remain. A Nuclear weapon is a far better promise of security than a paper promise not to attack so it makes perfect sense to try and continue the project covertly.