Next PAK-FA prototype is scheduled to have its first flight on June 20th.

http://sdelanounas.ru/blogs/79051/

I will never understand their reluctance to heavily upgrade the Udaloys given that there are zero plans of retiring them for another 15+ years. They will still be floating in 20 years. They keep marketing the Shtil-1 VLS as drop in and forget. It shouldnt require all that much rewiring.

Me thinks they’ve confused Russians for Westerners if they think human shields mean jack to them. Almost insulting.

That’s the first video from something other than a Searcher II. Any idea what the platform doing the taping is?

Most current Russian bombs can only be released at low mach or subsonic speeds. This probably fixes that. KAB-500S is basically 2006 era JDAM. This is 2008 JLDAM. And that makes sense since Russian radio electronic base basically hit 2008 this year.

Nonsense. Figuring out the warhead is easy. Of course, none of that matters. Ukraine as the de jure state actor had the responsibility to close the airspace. There is no international prohibition on the proliferation of air defense weapons even to non-state actors or the US would have a lot of military personnel facing war crimes charges for Stingers in Afghanistan or for that Iranian plane the USN shot down in the late 80’s. Russkies broke no laws even if they did put Buks in Ukraine. The fact that Ukraine ignored multiple prior shoot downs and didnt close its airspace means legally responsibility starts and ends with them — especially now that the DNR/LNR entity is coming back under the Ukrainian fold so there is no separate statelet you can sue.

Seeing the ridiculous amount of SACLOS ATGM in the hands of the jihadists and Saudi Arabia’s threat to send some more TOWs, Russia should probably consider deploying Shtoras within the SAA.

That would probably render most of the islamists arsenal pretty useless and reduce the losses of the SAA.

Right, because the Russians want to incentivize the US to start developing more sensitive laser diodes to counteract the current generation of Shtora and thus force the Russians to waste more money on the next iteration. Nope, they wont get into that kind of race with the West over Syria. That’s a never ending game of one-upmanship.

“I don’t want to dismiss your point, but do you realize that this was 12 years ago with missiles being built in the 80’s 90’s (some were simply cold War era refitted to conventional strike)?”

And? The Klub really isnt a new missile. The design was unveiled in 1993. The first known test fires were around 1996. Its 20 years old. Design on it probably began around 87-88.