I wouldn’t get your hopes up about recon sats, seems GPS type sats are of more importance according to GerryB Russia only has one. Besides as we’ve gone over already and all know recon sats are no real use finding a carrier.I heard Russian satillites tend to break alot too like thier space station did.

The 26% readiness figure was in one of the newspapers i saw at the weekend, i’ll try to find it,it also said about Russian sailors being drunk all the time while on duty at sea – it was said they guzzled vodka then went round in a circle for 200km before realising they hadn’t been following the coures, they estimated about 70% of the crew were drunk for about 5 days in all!! 😮

If you believe these stories then you should believe more stupid stories like Russia actually reducing it’s nuke arsenal to less than the U.S., have you asked your slef, “why would Russia openly tell the world about it’s weakness in public news forums?” I think your to smart to think about it like that right?:D

Yes 1Man i think if those soviet SAMs were anywhere near the quality we’ve all seen before countless times from Russian SAMs i really doubt they would be that much of a problem, after all Russian made SAMs were so effective and deadly during Desert Storm (the last big test of Russian SAMs), I don’t think any coalition aircraft ever made it out alive, thousands shot down ya know… lol

Remember during the Vietnam war the Soviets sold down graded Cez Republic SA-2’s to vietnam and they still shot down hundreds of U.S. planes, so in Desert Storm those Iraqi SAM’s were most probably down graded SAM’s also (scince Russia has a history of doing this) and they still shot down 63 “Coallistion Planes”

While the US Navy surface fleet was vulnerable, I don’t think that it follows that the Soviet or Russian Navy would have fared any better. The oceans would be cleared of ships of all sides. SSNs rule the seas. USN SSNs were the best in the world during the Cold War, and I suspect that they still are.

But on the other hand, how survivable are Soviet or Russian bombers on the ground from attacks by FB-111A bombers, or B-2A bombers? Could USN SSNs and P-3C aircraft defeat Russian SSGNs? Perhaps if the surface fleet held back until the threats had been neutralized, the surface navy would remain viable. :confused:

With 12,000 SAM’s the F-11 wouldn’t even get with in 125 miles of Russia.

Second world war terror-bombing eh 1man, may i ask which alternate reality this took place in? oh no sorry i forgot, yeah now i remember those 1000 bomber raids and the carpet bombing of Serbian city’s, silly me how could i have forgoton that. Anyway on a more serious note, i think you fail to realise 1Man that coalition aircraft roamed the skys of Serbia racking up many thousands of combat hours, its kind of sad that people look straight past the statistics in these conflicts to make silly statements. Iraqs Desert Storm was another example, certain people harped on about how the glorious Iraqis were in downing allied aircraft but failed to realise that a few minor victories in these shoot downs does not make up for the fact that the Iraqi military was completely and utterly molested and utterly defeated.

I guess it brings hope to believe in the ‘david vs goliath’ type situation, that the little man can still hurt the big mean bully, but in reality the little guy gets stomped close to death and the big mean bully walks away with a cut lip.

One other thing to bear in mind is that one F117 shoot down did not make for a capability to always shoot down 117s, i say this because the hard cold fact is they didn’t manage to down any more 117s.

Anyway heres something you can cheer about as i’m quite sure this will delight you,if you don’t understand all of the phrases and terms used just ask: http://www.patricksaviation.com/videos/Gligorow/3069/

Be more specific in what your quoting me about, because I don’t understand what your taliking about, because of your typical western “generalised talk”

I would also love to learn more about RuAF pilot hours and what sort of training they get but unfortunatly no-body seems willing to provide any numbers, only a YouTube video of one excercise have been provided so far and i think everyone agreed that it didnt prove a thing.
I would love to believe the Russians can do it (take down a carrier) ,they have the weaponry but do they have the skills? Most here think not it seems, prove us wrong….

In the 20-30 minutes minutes it takes a ballistic weapon to arrive ( given you knew where it was to start with) a CBG CAN maneuver and at the outbreak of a general war they will most certainly not move in the strait lines you require for ballistic tracking and engagement. I mention the nuclear warheads because a American task force has it’s main strike weapons in the carrier and a carrier is unlikely to be able to operate aircraft after experiencing the blast effects of a nuclear warhead some 10 or 20 km’s away. The Russians designed their surface strike forces for quick and decisive mass strikes as this is what some American Admirals had to say about that strategy:

1. At the time, we were not ready for war. Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, former Navy Chief of Operations, said at the Australian Naval Institute Seminar in February, 1979: “It is the professional judgment of senior officials in the United States that our Navy has only a 35% probability of winning a conventional naval war against the Soviet Union. Our military knows this, and so does theirs. About the only people who do not know it are the general public in the United States and Australia. Nor do they know that a nuclear exchange in 1981 on present trends would result in about 160 million dead in the United States.”

2. Well known that the cantankerous Late Admiral Hyman Rickover, US Navy (Retired) did not think much of his own carrier-centered navy. When asked in 1982 about how long the American carriers would survive in an actual war, he curtly stated that they would be finished in approximately 48 hours. Former President Jimmy Carter, a former US Navy officer, and Annapolis graduate, was also none too keen on the big carrier Navy, either. Vistica mentioned that Carter did not want any more new carriers, and for the existing fleet to be cut dramatically.

The Late Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, US Navy (Retired), himself a former aircraft carrier skipper, was also an outspoken critic of the Navy and its infatuation with big aircraft carriers and its collective fear of change. He once said that if the United States continues on its path to build ever larger and ever more expensive aircraft carriers, it will eventually degenerate into a “bankrupt nation.” The most damning comment ever made by a senior officer was that of the Late CNO, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, US Navy, who in 1971 confessed that with the advent of long-range Soviet anti-ship missiles, if there had been a US-Soviet conventional naval war, the US Navy “would lose.”

3. If Zumwalt was correct, the only way the US Navy could handle the Soviet Navy was through the use of nuclear weapons, which in turn would provoke a Soviet response, and then, in all likelihood, both sides would be destroyed. Apparently, Admiral Thomas Moorer, US Navy, was worried also. When Soviet and US ships confronted one another in the Mediterranean during the October War of 1973, Goldstein and Zhukov observed: “Soviet battle groups were using the actual U.S. aircraft carriers in the area as virtual targets, an act comparable to holding a cocked pistol to an adversary’s temple. Adhering to a kamikaze-like, “battle of the first salvo” doctrine, the Soviet force of 96 ships was poised to launch approximately 13 surface-to-surface missiles (SSMs) at each task group in the U.S. 6th Fleet deployed in the Mediterranean. U.S. Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, then chief of naval operations, recalled a Washington Special Action Group meeting at the peak of the crisis, during which Adm. Thomas Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, estimated: “[W]e would lose our [expletive] in the Eastern Med [if war breaks out].”
The source for this article is here http://www.g2mil.com/thompson.htm the link doesn’t work any more for what ever reason.
As far as I’m concerned relative to the missile’s speed ships are as good as motionless in the water and any maneuvering after the missiles comes from the radar horizon is largely futile. Chaff has absolutely no capacity to destroy these missiles ( the heated air sheath around the missile will either evaporate it or simply blow it away) and to suggest as much shows little knowledge as to the function of chaff… Nuclear armed cruise missiles do not have the ‘maneuver’ anyways and this is apparently the point most do not remember considering. I don’t think there is much evidence that a naval war third world war would have even started out with conventional weapons.

So are you saying that the Serbs and the FRY shot down hundreds of F-117s over Kosovo?, or that they just tracked them but decided not to shoot them down because it might be embarrasing for NATO? They retired all of the F-117s because they were made with obsolete 1970’s technology, and despite it’s stealth capabilities being better than the other non steath USAF aircraft, those capabilities are maintennance heavy. Timeless designs such as the F-15 etc are still in use because there is still a place for the aircraft in the USAF for the role which they were designed for, all they require is avionics updates. F-117s facet based stealth technology has been surpassed by more advanced technology in the form of aircraft like B-2 and F-22, so a simple upgrade would not be enough to make it economically viable to remain in service. Therefore the decision was made for these reasons to retire the entire fleet to make room for more F-22As. The F-117 was NOT retired because 1 was shot down over Kosovo, and also I must reiterate that stealth does NOT mean that an aircraft is invisible to radar, all stealth aircraft can be detected by any radar under certain conditions.That does not mean specifically that Russian radars are any batter than any others from the rest of the world.

1. The F-117 were downed by missiles and a number of allied aircraft were in fact damaged. The fact that so few were shot down is largely due to the fact that they simply flew at ‘safe’ altitudes were the relatively aged Sam’s could not effectively counter them. The fact that they were forced to fly high enough to make their ground interdiction campaign such a failure proves that even properly operated 1960’s era Russian weaponry can still force a massively ‘superior’ enemy air force to fly at altitudes where they are not a serious threat to your ground forces. That all being said the Serbs claimed dozens of destroyed NATO aircraft and considering just how ineffective the NATO campaign was ( before it resorted to second world war style terror bombing) i am still exploring that issue as 1 destroyed aircraft is most certainly not any reason for NATO to fail so badly.

Which is, of course, why they managed to shoot more than one down…oh wait. The F-117s were not varying their routes, making their appearance predictable. The battery involved had been modified to better handle low-RCS targets, and they were able to engage the F-117 at a distance of 13 kilometers as a result. And this tactic worked exactly once. So if the F-117 was still able to fly over Iraq and the FRY and not get shot down, that must mean that either yes, it did work as designed, or that every other Soviet weapon system apart from that modified S-125 battery was completely worthless against a low RCS target. Or both.

Well I believe it worked hundreds of times not once, thats what NATO wants people to believe, the fact that an 117 got shot down should make it even more easier to shoot down the non-stealth
why do you think they retired all of them so soon after Kosovo while the F-15’s and others soldiers on? Possible to prevent more embarresing losses from scuttling the F-22? thats just my opinion though.

It’s not a blatant lie, it is a misinterpretation. They’re counting a hit on the airframe as a kill, when in reality only a hit on the warhead is considered to be a kill, something the PAC-2 did not do well at all. But technically, yes, the PAC-2 did manage to shoot down nearly all of the missiles.

If you bothered reading the links, instead of making up events to try and covered up the Patriot’s pathetic history you’ll see they DID NOT intercept even half of Iraq’s missiles, :rolleyes:

Prove it.[/QUOTE]

The F-117 is unparalleled in terms of it’s stealth capabilities, my point was that, despite being unparalleled, it is not completely ‘invisible’ to radar signals, and most radars in use today, including some frrom the 60’s, can detect stealth aircraft for short periods of time under certain conditions (adjusting wavelength, frequency etc.) . However the nature of those conditions is down to the pilot, so therefore a well trained pilot can make his aircraft ‘invisible’ by avoiding situations where his aircraft can be detected. However, this does not mean that if any old country (say Iran) set up and amazing network of Cold War era SAMs and radars (such as SA-5, SA-3, SA-10, Il13 EWR) they would be able to detect and shoot down US stealth aircraft.

the SA-10 is MUCH more adbvanced than the SA-3 and for you to even “think” let alone say it won’t be able to shoot it down, deserves the standing ovation for “MOST” uninformed about Russian Radars of the YYEEAARR 😀 😀 😀