U.S. President Obama asks Iran to return the downed drone.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/obama-asks-iran-to-return-downed-u-s-surveillance-drone-1.401047

😮 :rolleyes:

For me correlating building quality with colour painted pipes is … a very weird way to evaluate a quality of a vessel.

Colour painted pipes = high quality & gray pipes = bad quality :confused::confused:

I am not sure Nebo-M will be deployed as far as these distances from the batteries. It can be deployed as a forward surveillance station, true! But if the idea is to provide high quality tracking data of stealth targets, it should be deployed much near than that because the idea is to provide a small likelihood-cloud to the engagement radar that will “burn” this cloud, via a very narrow beam with an insane quantity of radiated energy on the engagement band.

Or, is the system able to provide engagement quality data?

I don’t think so. In the past, some S-300 batteries were deployed with both Clam-Shell and Tin-Shield radars at a regiment level in addition to the battery level engagement radars. Later both radars were replaced by Chesse-Board (battery level) and Big Bird (regiment level).

In addition what can happen with a malfunction? If some radar broke, the data-fusion station will still be able to operate with data provided by the other two. That means redundancy and robustness. Off course the cost will be a few more trucks and operators but, I think, it is worthwhile.

MiG-31BM may also be used to patrol the Russian soft south border with Central-Asia stans.

Yes, I know, there is a low likelihood bombers will come from this direction.

Israeli black-teams were active in Iran. I will not discard such an explanation.

Why?

Swerve is right. Oil extraction costs in Saudi Arabia are considerably lower than in Russia. Like it or not, Saudi Arabia is the oil superpower. Russia will need an insane investment level to start exploiting those huge Siberian fields.

The Russian power-that-be never accepted Yelzin’s drunken liquidation of 1000 years of Moscovskoye expansion. A strong military is needed to re-establish Russia’s glory and world standing.

But Kudrin is right – despite record level pumping and Russia currently being No1 oil exporter its base to support all the military and social programme expansions is awfully narrow; and nothing in sight to widen that base.

100% true!