KapedaniPeople join an air force, or a military, for many reasons. Few, if any, have to do with an intent to kill anyone within your own country (or outside of it for that matter). An oath isn’t given only by the airman/soldier. It is also given by his commanders, and his leaders and president etc. The soldier isn’t supposed to “break his oath”, but for Assad it’s ok to break his oath (I’m sure that even in Syria, there’s some formality about a constitution etc etc). As for your first point, that’s your opinion, based on your far away knowledge of the situation or the people involved. You sure you know what you’re talking about?
KapedaniWhat’s “heroic” with that?
What’s heroic about bombing your own neighbors on the orders of a madman?
One’s hero is another one’s traitor.
This implies that both points of view, simply because they exist, are equally valid.
Kapedanisee how the wing is mated with fuselage:
That doesn’t mean that the wings and center fuselage are “forged as one piece”. They most certainly aren’t on the F-35.
Also, there’s nothing unusual about having security and escort vehicles for such an oversize load, regardless of what it is. No “swat team” there. These are regular police unit. If this was a military object, wouldn’t there be a military escort?
KapedaniSounds like it was ZSU-23 and S-60. Probably navigation error that the plane(s) flew so close to Syria. (at that altitude, if it was a recon flight, it may not have been able to gather much in terms of intelligence)
Dear friend, you said “…they will destroy Syrian air defenses using Tomahawks first then the Rafale/Stike Eagles will do the rest.” So would you care to expand a little bit as to how much of Serbian air defenses were destroyed?
Not this again! The war has been over for 13 years now, and the same old internet themes keep popping up. Let me guess, you also believe NATO lost about 78 planes there too. A very large % of Serbian air defense was, in fact, destroyed. The rest, was kept out of the fight. You don’t have to destroy something, to render it ineffective.
Clearly, this has no bearing on Syria, because no NATO planes would be flying low enough, just as in Serbia, to be affected by AAA or short-range SAMs. Long-range SAMs, especially the vast majority of Syria’s SAMs which are antiquated, are not likely to be a solution. Large radars and SAM sites emit their position to everyone.
yes, long live Greek Syria friendship..
Doesn’t this seem a bit “pathetic”? At least try to keep it civilized, instead of gloating over the (hopefully unlikely) loss of two airmen.
KapedaniI know what a loan is, but if you take out a loan to buy spinners for your car, both you and the bank are idiots. You double your money on interest? Thats some trick, but its only impressive if you can define a time period. But of course we both know there’s no interest here, not really. So I give you 10 bucks, so that you can give me 11 bucks tomorrow. This only benefits both parties if 11 bucks tomorrow, is worth more than 10 bucks today, and if you can actually make 11 bucks by tomorrow with the 10 I gave you today. A Mig-35 isn’t exactly going to be making Serbia any money; if anything its a huge additional expenditure for parade toys.
Anyway, good to hear its just an internet story like all others.
KapedaniIt most certainly would be a “smart move” for the Russians.
Putting money from your left pocket into your right pocket, is not smart by anyone’s definition. If the aim is to provide support for a dying MiG, then just give the money to MiG. Of course, I don’t know how Russian taxpayers feel about giving $3 billion of their tax money to a dead company to grease up the managers there. But stranger things have happened.
Forget interest. The only smart thing about putting money from your left pocket into your right pocket, is that some of it gets “lost” along the way.
so a fast airborne response mobile squadron of SA-10s could change the war
A “squadron” of Sa-10s costs upward of several billion dollars, and is yet another sure way of throwing money down the toilet.
The most likely armed operations are very small in scale and more akin to policing than to military operations.
Which is why a MiG-35, or whatever, is a parade toy designed to get some votes. Which may be why the Russians may be throwing it out there (if the rumors are true); ie a $10 billion “deal” (read: “stimuls”, ie political deal) can make or break any government.
KapedaniI hope someone was joking with this supposed “rumor”. I hope Russia isn’t so stupid as to think that lending 3 billion to buy weapons from yourself, is a “smart” move. What a horrible waste of money that can only happen in the Balkans. I get the feeling someone is trying to position themselves for the “18 year old patriots” vote in the next election.
The whole “we need to patrol our airspace” argument is silly. Patrol for what? A lot of good those MiG-29s did. How many billions were burned on them?
also, sadly, the most realistic proposal so far
It probably is. Perhaps the most cost effective, and peace effective way would be to organize a joint Balkans force, made up of units from all countries, and stop this silly re-armament drive going on (for purely political and electoral reasons). This is not likely to happen in this generation.
KapedaniWhat weapon destroyed these guys? Cluster bombs maybe?
KapedaniThey have prob radar imagers ( like those in old-pershings) in their BMs that are tasked for the high value must hit targets, even every Beidou Bird was shot down and GPS all shut off they would prob have no problem hitting the right part the the runway, or radar station, or docks, or…
the warheads are maneuverable and decoy ridden.
Zero evidence of any of this existing.
In all seriousness, I have already postulated that they did not count on their fighters to go fighter vs fighters to achieve their required air superiority.
I think you have a short memory?
Well what you or PLA have “postulated” is not really relevant. The question is whether they can actually DO it.
Right, we are back in age of eye-ball dog fight again eh? nothing like P-51 Mustangs over Berlin to show who is the boss
If you’re flying 100-150 miles away from the shores of Taiwan, you’ll have trouble doing much of anything unless you get a “bit” closer 😉
They have the accuracy number printed on their brochures.
WS-2 has an advertised accuracy of 600m CEP with inertial navigation guidance. WS-3 has an advertised CEP of 300m.
Sat navigation only exists on paper so far
their terminal seekers includes sat-guided, image guided, ir-guided, sensor fused, and anti-radiation. etc etc
Do you have a lick of evidence of any of this existing?
I wouldn’t bet on tbms making it through every time either, but I’d certainly expect bmd to not intercept one ever time.
Of course. But if you need a massed saturation attack to begin with to achieve comfortable levels of confidence that you will hit anything, or cause enough damage, you’ll have to launch a multiple of that number to overcome ATBM defenses. How many missiles can be launched at once is limited by the number of launchers, and at that rate, you’ll be out of missiles very soon.
PAC-3s have demonstrated 100% or close to 100% kill ratios in combat situations. Thats nothing to joke about.
with terminal guidance df-15 can achieve a CEp of 35-50m
No it can’t. At least no source claims such numbers, except for saying “in the future they will…”. Thats if they get a realistic sat guidance (which they currently don’t have).
If there was already a USN or us presence around Taiwan then yes 2nd arty BMs would have a harder time, but if it had gone to that then the pla would either already have fired off the missiles
Preparations for any PLA action against Taiwan would take months, and be plainly obvious to the US
but most of the recent ones post ~2004 have respectable CEp good enough for targets like airfields or other such military installations
Systems like sy-400 and p-12 have ins and gps/compass guidance, so you can infer the CEPs if you want. And they’ve been shown at airshows and defense expos for years…
Sat guidance is on paper only. Currently its based of US civilian channels, which of course won’t happen in wartime. CEP figures for their ballistic missiles, are not exactly impressive…despite the claims that “in the future we will get 30-50m!”. Well thats in the future. In the future ATBMs will also be a heck of a lot better.
Kapedaniso where are the New NATO members contributions to all of this?
Didn’t Poland deploy minesweepers? I wouldn’t be surprised if they have deployed spec-ops too (weren’t some PZLs spotted flying towards Libya a few days back?).
KapedaniRight. Why should we assume Chinese cruise missiles will have an easier time? Taiwan has AEW assets, air defense and point defense assets too…plus USN involvement (Taiwan has land-based LACM, the HF-2E).
Why should we assume Chinese ballistic missile attack will be as advertised in PLA manuals (which were copy-pasted by Rand, to come up with that poorly veiled political piece)? These systems have pretty dismal accuracies…these are far from pin-point strike systems…requiring saturation attacks on single targets to ensure destruction. Taiwanese airfields have hardened shelters…so direct impacts are likely to be required to take them out of action. How many missiles with 100-200-300m CEP (or worst) does it take to put a hardened airfield out of action (and for how long), or destroy aircraft in hardened shelters? If you’re throwing a couple of hundred TBMs at every airfield, you’ll be out of missiles in no time…and certainly no guarantee of success. Taiwan has a very robust ATBM capability which is only going to get more capable in the near future…and these are likely to be concentrated at defending airfields.
Add any USN involvement with SM-3s…and why is it a given that Chinese ballistic missiles will be successful in crippling Taiwan? Give the successes of these systems, not just in tests but in real combat (PAC-3), I wouldn’t bet on TBMs making it through every time.
Rand’s assessments of these scenarios are very simplistic, and are just copy-paste of PLA publicly available doctrines…which tell us nothing of how likely they are to be successful. And thats how they come up with simplistic solutions…like the B-1R
KapedaniRemote systems have their issues aswell, and I don’t buy the UAV promises about their effectiveness in air combat, air combat is way too dynamic, and nowadays UAVs are just reusable cruiser missiles
The B-1R in this scenario is little more than a missile truck. Even though the concept is poorly thought out, and the whole Rand scenario is sci-fi…a UCAV could perform such a mission without necessarily having to engage in “air-to-air combat”
why would they loiter on top of the strait? they would be behind their own SAM coverage, marshalled in the hinterlands, vector in as situation needed to fire off their BVRs and then turn around and run back.
So they’ll be flying over China? Way to win air superiority.
actually PLA Daily etc never gives out any claims. you just have to read what they are actually doing and if you are in the field you would understand what their capabilities are.
And where would I read what they are doing? PLA publications where they have incredible insightful tactics copy-pasted from US publications from the 80s?
uh… ever wander to any of those defense shows where norinco has their booth and take a look at brochures. their have rocket systems that was pretty much limited by MTCR only
Which tells us nothing about accuracy. Good going.
spit ball?
Taiwan has LACM systems
KapedaniApparently Qaddafi has moved Sa-8 launchers to Benghazi. One was captured by the rebels inside the city (Al-Jazeera just showed crowds cheering on top of it, which begs the question why Q moved them so close in the city).
KapedaniWell its likely that air-to-air UCAVs will be what will fill this support role. Rand’s proposal is about 40 years too late.
KapedaniNot that I wish to drag this any further off topic, but there’s at least a dozen types of engineers, and I never claimed to know anything about airplanes. I brought it up, because as before, he insisted on going on tangential topics and inform us of the wages of Chinese engineers (for what reason, I still have no clue). Since I’ve worked a lot with Chinese engineers, I might have had something to say.
Now if you have a particular issue with something I said, please comment on it. Don’t carry out ad hominems
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