The whole Peru contract is fishy. The Peruvian government insisted MiG create a Peruvian subsidiary when they awarded the contract. What exactly the Peruvian subsidiary does besides kick back money to Peruvian officials is anyone’s guess. The numbers in MiG’s annual report (Russian law requires they disclose all the Peruvian subs financials) make ZERO sense. The most likely though the most difficult to prove explanation is they are having issues greasing the right hands in Peru. While RSK MiG has been gutted rather thoroughly by UAC there is still enough of an entity left that they can fix 9 lousy airframes. The work on the UPG’s for India isn’t delayed as far as I know and if they can do that why would this pose a challenge requiring over a year of delays?

When the Phobos-Grunt probe failed the Ruskies made absurd accusations about HARP and and US radars, and Chinese gray market parts — anything to blame some foreigner. Sad to see Americans resorting to the same sort of BS only concerning the F-35. Its speaks to an inferiority complex stemming from what is an increasingly obvious American decline….

And the Yemeni president Saleh took exile in the US less than a year ago, and he killed almost as many civilians as Assad trying to stay in power. The Pentagon has even admitted he provided them with false info about the location of terrorists so that US drone would eliminate regime opponents for him. Assad ending up like Saleh, but only in Moscow and not New York makes plenty of sense.

Syria without Assad will fall into sectarian strife like we see in Iraq only without the Americans there to stand up even a semblance of a national security force it will likely be far worse. Once the Syrian national army is gone the country will implode like Lebanon in the 80’s. There is no real organized democratic opposition. The opposition is down tribal lines and they will butcher each other for sport. The well educated urban elites in the opposition who get press time on Al Jazeera and on CNN are a tiny minority, and this tiny minority has already been sidelined in Egypt and will likely simply be butchered in Syria.

Syria has a VAST uneducated class with no more than a 5th grade education. This is thanks largely to the currents regime robbing the country blind, but the fact remains that huge swathes of the population, a good 30%, are barely literate. And these barely literates will fight over the dead husk of the burned out state they inherit for years to come. It is profoundly naive to think any sort of real business will be done by any multinationals in Syria for decades to come. Putin has done the calculus and they figure they will get more out of Assad today than anyone will be able to get out of an Assad free Syria for the next generation. The Russians are pretty good at this kind of math.

The Russians also have their own experience with these sorts of “transitions.” In 1991 people hated Brezhnev and all the party secretaries and today half the Russian population would like to see statues built to him. They run miniseries about him on Channel 1. Assad may well be remembered fondly by the next generation after the country is burned to ash in his absence. So they probably figure their helping him now will open doors in Syria in 20 years even if he is removed from power today. The entire national elite likely wont be displaced with Assad and should one of these Assad era officials climb to power they will be back in the Russian sphere quickly enough.

Pretty sure the 2004 redesign means the current hull essentially has no commonality with the 1993 design.

Compared to the Cold War era when SPAAG’s and MANPAD were being churned out like candy and proliferated everywhere by both sides such low level air defense assets are, if anything, in short supply the world over today making aircraft like the Su-25 and A-10 vastly more suited for combat today than they were 30 years ago when they could have expected a life expectancy over the Fulda gap of about 20 minutes.

The US is so confident of air superiority that low level air defense is all but ignored by the Pentagon. Avenger is the only real system deployed in the US today, and by Russian and Chinese standards its almost a joke both because it lacks guns, and radars, and because the numbers its been procured in are far too small. Of course, a Russia v. US scenario is completely absurd, but this same dynamic unfortunately exists in most every military today.

The US and Russia have greatly restricted MANPAD exports, exporting dumbed down monkey models even when they do agree to export them to third countries. The IGLA’s Libya received for example were dumbed down models that couldn’t be individually detached from the bulky Strelets complex they came with so they couldn’t be legitimately shoulder fired or easily transported or hidden. And the Strelets complex itself was monkey modeled into a primitive variant unable to fire at night and only able to engage 2 targets at a time. In short, the Russians sold them garbage. The infinitely more sophisticated Barnaul system the Russians wont export — not even to Venezuela which got naked Iglas and the same downgraded Strelets systems.

In Georgia UAV’s were far more vulnerable than any Su-25’s. Every UAV the Georgians sent up the Russians shot down. Nothing in the literature suggests the Georgians received any benefit from the UAV’s they managed to send up.

The Su-25SM losses were more the result of poor tactics and horrible intelligence than any underlying problem with this kind of aircraft. The Russians went in too early with the Su-25’s. This kind of aircraft should not be the first aircraft deployed in theater. It comes in only after air defenses have been suppressed by higher tiered assets. Essentially no work was done on Georgian air defenses before the Su-25’s started doing their thing. The VVS simply had a very poor workup on the state of Georgian air defenses. Russian military intelligence dropped the ball. The presence of Ukrainian Buk’s in Georgia should not have surprised the VVS, but it did.

Then there is issue of how many Su-25’s were actually shot down by Georgia and how many were lost to friendly fire. There is some evidence that all but 1 of the Su-25’s downed was shot down by trigger happy Russian soldiers who thought they were firing on Georgian aircraft. In fact if you read the CAST report on the August war, and buy their argument, Georgian air defenses proved uniquely impotent and the major threat to Russian pilots was from Russian soldiers on the ground.

And finally, the utility of armed drones in conflicts involving near-peer adversaries with sophisticated electronic warfare capabilities is still highly questionable and not something I suspect any country wants to bet the farm on anytime soon. Iran supposedly did just bring down the most sophisticated US drone in service today, and Iran is hardly the most sophisticated of potential opponents. Manned CAS airplanes have a future so long as datalinks and satellites remain vulnerable.

Something like 5 minutes.

The American SBIRS system will only give 20 minutes of warning for launches from the Northern Fleet and something like 18 minute for launches from further north. 12 v. 20 is essentially nothing. The sheer size of Russia lets them make do without satellites. It is not as if an American president is going to have a solid hour to sit there and contemplate the end of the world.

The president of Sevmash gave a rather long press conference/interview this week where he talked rather candidly about the state of the Severodvinsk. ]

http://russiandefpolicy.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/dyachkovs-interview/

Final handover to the navy has been pushed back 6 months due to the fact that state acceptance trials of the Kalibr missile system are ongoing and the ship is the only available launch platform for this missile system. There were problems with subsystem suppliers, but much like with the Nerpa those have been sorted out.

We can look forward to much more predictable delivery times now that the funding picture has been “clarified.”

Nowhere does he say anything about it being a death trap, sailors being afraid to step foot on the ship or him being at all worried about it. And if the thing sinks this is the guy who gets to spend a decade in Siberia pondering why so his being so unemotional about the whole thing should tell you a lot more than some anonymous poster on a message board.