While they could:
– nuke all Russian airfields
– shot down all aircraft exiting Russia (the Tu-160 has to go via Northern Ice Sea, and through GIUK)
– cluster-bomb Venezuela (with prior notice)
– put the Black Fleet out of service within hours

I would say the threat to the USA from a better dozen of airframes carrying weapon system that primarily exist in the fantasy of their fans is an acceptable one.

Please show us, because the facts even according to U.S. figures is Russia has to many SAM/ABM systems for a truly seccessfull destruction of any of thier airfields, why the U.S. has less than 50, and the SSBM and Tu-22’s/160’s/ SS-25/27’S LAUNCHING together, my goodness what ever drugs your on get off of them, because you don’t know anything your talking aboutwhen you say, hollywoodish/fantacy statements like above!!:D:D:D

Why? It doesn’t dictate we blow up anybody who comes by or we’d have been shooting down Russian bombers for years. Besides, if we decided we wanted them gone they’d be gone.

If you want to look at some of the FACTS, U.S. AND Russia have shot down numerous fighters, bombers each, it was published in an 06 issue of “AirForce Monthly”, or maybe it was “AirCombat” Magazine, I can’t remember but I can assure you the U.S. was not, nor can push Russia around like they portray in the News/Hollywood Movies, you may find that hard to believe, but it’s true.

Imho, Boeing’s SH is the clear favourite, especially after clearing the landmark nuke deal with the US. Boeing can offer the best industrial offsets, maybe they’ll do a fruity tie-in with P-8s -and it’s easily the finest in the tender.

SH’s AN/APG-79 is leagues ahead of Zhuk-AE, but the most advanced MMICs will shortly be available as COTS (e.g Toshiba GaN HEMT), so why would the Russians (or anyone else, for that matter) want to re-invent the wheel?

in terms of raw range performance the Russians equal or better all except the F-22A’s APG-77. http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2008-04.html

I wonder if India will purchase Growlers too 😎

It’s called “trajectory analysis”. These were ballistic point-and-shoot weapons that did not maneuver in flight. If you know it’s going to land on a sand dune, there’s no reason to engage when you may need to fire at another target that might hit, say, Kuwait City.

The point is that Russia had/has better missiles than that and it would have then, and now defeated NATO, not the down-graded Missiles Iraq had.

Russia has five sites that house ABMs capable of intercepting a strategic warhead. There is exactly one S-200 site remaining, and neither the S-300V nor the S-300P/S-400 have the speed to do it. The S-400’s 48N6DM has the best chance if you can call it that, being capable of intercepting targets moving at 4800 meters/second. So that makes eight sites, counting the two S-400 batteries outside Moscow and the single S-200 battery in Kaliningrad (assuming it still can carry a nuclear warhead, which it’d have to have to do it). Kaliningrad gets killed as it can only fire at two targets per intercept. Moscow doesn’t have to get killed by saturation nuking, you can simply land warheads around it out of range of the systems. Hello fallout, goodbye populace. People disregard the massive impact that radiation and fallout would have on a given area. If you put a 10 megaton warhead into downtown New York City, you’ll probably kill everyone from DC to Boston. Neither side is going to survive a nuclear engagement.

When Russia gets the S-500 online, then we can talk about serious ABM defense and the problems a mobile system like that could create.

The U.S. Gov doesn’t beleive you:

“Critics of the ABM treaty argue that the
treaty is no longer binding because the Soviet
Union no longer exists and because the
Soviets were, and the Russians continue to be,
in violation of the treaty. They contend that
the Russians have more than the one ABM
system permitted by the treaty.

Joseph Arminio, chairman of the National Coalition
for Defense, states:
Not only did the U.S.S.R., unlike the
U.S., deploy the one missile defense
permitted by the treaty, ringing
Moscow with the 100 interceptors
sanctioned by law. It also littered
about Soviet territory with another
10,000 to 12,000 interceptors, and 18
battle-management radars. Together
the Moscow defense and the vast
homeland defense formed an interlocking
system—nearly all of it illicit.10

The “10,000 to 12,000 interceptors” to which
Arminio refers are SA-5, SA-10, and SA-12
anti-aircraft missiles that some ABM treaty
opponents argue have an anti-ballistic missile
capability.1″
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa337.pdf

“Over the past decade, Russia has deployed thousands of S-300V and Antey-2500 missiles around its key military and industrial complexes. In addition, it has exported these systems throughout Asia, Europe, and the Middle East as a means of financing its ailing economy in the wake of the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse. According to Aviation Week & Space Technology, “in the worldwide competition to sell ballistic missile defense systems, the Russian Antey Corp.’s S-300V is a main contender.”(8) The advantage for buyers of Russian surface-to-air missiles is that, unlike buying from the U.S., there are no political strings attached and, more often than not, the weapons are significantly cheaper than their U.S. counterparts.(9)”
http://www.missilethreat.com/missiledefensesystems/id.51/system_detail.asp

They have something like 20 MIDAS tankers, that’s it. The rest of the MIDAS fleet was retained by the Ukraine when the USSR deconstructed. BISON tankers are long gone. And those 20 or so MIDAS tankers? They live and breathe to support BEAR H and BLACKJACK flights. Sure they get out and deal with other types on occasion, but the MIDAS fleet is primarily a bomber-support asset. And well it should be: BACKFIREs can perform their theater anti-ship strike and recon roles fine without tanker support due to their basing, and FLANKERs and FOXHOUNDs don’t need much in the way of tanker support thanks to their long range to begin with.

And with a 20-something tanker fleet, they aren’t massing a large-scale BACKFIRE strike on CONUS anyway. That’d be massively retarded when much more sensible assets like BLACKJACK are available. What are you going to do, close within 100 miles of the coast and toss Kh-15s at targets along the East Coast? Good luck with that, thanks to the massive RCS of the Tu-22M. Langley’s Raptor pilots will turn that into an open competition to see who can bag the most BACKFIREs. At least the BLACKJACK has RCS-reducing features and RAM treatments.

Besides, BACKFIREs have no IFR capability despite completely absurd conspiracy theories to the contrary. The IFR probe installation is like an external hardpoint on the B-1B: a treaty inspectable part of the airframe. If it’s a simple case of screwing in a probe it’s easy to determine.

Use your heads, people. BACKFIRE is a theater asset, and am absurdly dangerous one at that. But there is a reason you don’t see them practicing long-range flights along the US like the BEAR H crews do: it’s a stupid use of the airframe, and they can’t be tanked in flight.

So WHAT your saying is: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/bomber/tu-22m.htm is lying about it right?:rolleyes:

Russia isn’t going to get into a nuclear exchange over Georgia and their conventional forces would have a hard time fighting their way out of a wet paper bag, let alone take on the west. Heck, I’ll bet the U.S./NATO could kick that rabble outta Georgia faster than Iraq was kicked outta Kuwait and there would be very little the Russians could do about it.

Yeah U.S. forgot to mention that Iraq’s SAM’s where outdatted but the Patriot STILL did bad against their pethetic Blastic missiles:

“Accounts from the field indicate that the Patriots are being used in a manner known as the ripple-fire, where multiple Patriots are launched against a single threat in the hopes that their lethality will be increased simply by sheer dint of numbers. The ripple-fire method is more or less how the Patriot was designed to be operated, so it is not unusual that it is being applied in Iraq. But it is important to note this doctrine, because otherwise the impression might be gained that the missiles were destroying their targets on a one-to-one basis. Also, some of the Iraqi missiles are simply being let to fly unmolested if U.S. forces deem that they will land in unpopulated areas. This would imply that Patriot missile battery commanders are reserving their limited number of missiles for the most pressing threats.

Finally, the accidental downing of a British Tornado fighter by a Patriot missile on Sunday is a terrible reminder of the system’s limitations. Even if the operators do everything they are supposed to do, technical problems can and do crop up. Expectations of the Patriot’s effectiveness must be reined in so that such tragedies can be side-stepped in the future.”
http://www.cdi.org/missile-defense/patriot-performance.cfm

“To begin, the 32d AAMDC claims that the Patriot made nine intercepts out of nine engagements, allowing it a 100 percent success rate. This seems to be the result of a rather tortuous portrayal of the facts given in their own history. Reading through it, 23 Iraqi missile launches are documented (9 Ababil-100s, 4 Al Samouds, 4 CSSC-3s, 4 FROG-7s, and 2 unknowns). Of these, indeed, 9 apparently were intercepted by U.S. or Kuwaiti Patriot batteries, thanks to the at least 24 Patriot-type missiles (PAC-2, GEM, GEM+, and PAC-3) that were fired. However, that leaves 14 Iraqi missiles which were not intercepted. Excluding the one Ababil-100 which malfunctioned and blew up shortly after launch and the four FROG-7s which were outside of the Patriot’s range, leaves 9 Iraqi missiles which were not destroyed by the Patriot. The fact that they landed “harmlessly” in the desert or the Persian Gulf, in the words of the authors of the report, does not change the fact that they were not intercepted. In the CENTCOM area of responsibility at the time of the war, there were 1069 Patriot missiles (54 of which were PAC-3 missiles), and 29 U.S. and 5 Kuwaiti Patriot batteries, so there should have been ample assets on the U.S. side to counter these Iraqi threats. Claiming that the Patriot had a 100 percent interception rate seems disingenuous at best and an outright manipulation of events at worst. Also surprising is that after 12 years of criticism, following the dismal performance of Patriot in the first Persian Gulf War, the Army is still calling an “engagement” an interception, when by their own descriptions sometimes “engaged” Iraqi missiles were not intercepted. For example, the history for March 21, 2003, reports six Iraqi TBMs “successfully engaged and destroyed by Patriot systems to date.” But that counts an Ababil-100 and an Al Samoud that were NOT intercepted on March 20th. This calls into question what evidence the Army has for the nine intercepts it does claim.”
http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=1798

“We conclude that the body of video we have reviewed contains data on at least 22 to 23 out of roughly 47 Desert Storm engagements. Of even greater significance, the video appears to include 17 to 18 out of roughly 30 engagements in Saudi Arabia. This indicates that there is a very substantial base of video information from which an assessment of Patriot’s performance can be made.

We have found no convincing evidence in the video that any Scud warhead was destroyed by a Patriot. We have strong evidence that Patriots hit Scuds an two occasions (in WSMR Events 8 and 13), but in both cases we found video evidence that the Scud warheads fell to the ground and exploded. These clips suggest that even when Patriots could hit Scuds they were still not able to destroy the Scud warheads. We also have several other clips where it is possible that Patriots hit Scuds without detonating their warheads. but the evidence in these clips is quite ambiguous (see, for example, Additional Event 3).

In addition, we have estimated minimum miss distances for all cases where we could clearly observe Patriot missing Scuds. We present our summarized findings in tabular and graphical form in figures 8, 9 and 1O. The median minimum miss distance was roughly 600 meters. This is much larger than the press video minimum resolvable miss distance of 35 to 70 meters. To achieve lethality against Scud targets, a system like the Patriot must routinely achieve miss distances of meters to tens of meters, not hundreds to thousands of meters as observed in the video. This result of the video review by itself indicates unambiguously that there was a serious problem with Patriot during the Gulf War.”
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/docops/pl920908.htm
I suppose it will take about 10 days for NATO to be put in place.

Instead of putting 10 interceptors in central Europe the U.S. should put in 10,000;)

Then you just don’t know the military stratagies Russia has.

Putin will tell the west what they want to hear and then proceed to do whatever the hell he wants. And the west is stupid enough to fall for it again, and again, and again.

Even if the didn’t fall for it I can assure you 100% that the west is not going to risk getting flatted beyond recognition over Georgia.

The Backfire threat had to be overstated to justify the money pit they called NORAD. Luckily the guys in the legislative branch figured it out and largely shifted money to offensive nuclear elements and attack submarines where it really counted. The Backfires were always projected as intercontinental range by the top defense analysts. Reality proved otherwise.

Despite the links I posted ignorate remarks like this is amasingly still capable of being made.:eek::(:o