Sean,

Do you think there will be any kind of internal investigation (within the CIA) to try to figure out what happened and who was to blame? What are the chances that somebody will go down for this?

I have no idea how these things work withing the US armed forces let alone the intelligence services.

what were they doing with Al Qaeda officials?

It is a breach of the Geneva convention and, therefore, a war crime to delibirately target civilians even if military units are present in the area. Whichever way you look at this its bad for the US.

at just sick, all those people got killed just for one guy.

And they didn’t even get the guy.

I don’t remember where I read it but didn’t Ivan Koyedub (2x Hero of the Soviet Union) down an Me-262 flown by some swanky German ace? If anyone can remember more info about that I for one would be interested to hear it.

how do you know if they are innocent? it’s something Pakistan’s government wants to double check on

Apparently four of the victims were children – surely you’re not going to suggest that they were hardened terrorists?

Is there anyone who believes this attack was made without the agreement of the Pakistan government?

No. However, they’re less likely to agree in future because of something like this – unless they really want to completely alienate themselves from the population.

The minimum complement for effective operations around the world is 18 satellites. The system is to reach this status in 2007, when Glonass-M and Glonass-K long-endurance satellites are to be placed on orbit.

As I understand it GLONASS currently covers the whole of the Russian Federation – i.e. at least a third of the northern hemisphere… Good enough for their current needs surely.

I think the point here is that Tor can (and is designed specifically to) engage even quite small, fast targets. So yes, you can fly over it in your F-16 (or whatever) and drop your bombs but it will be able to target your bombs (in theory) and take them out. So you just over flew the Tor and dropped your bombs at the target it was defending, the Tor killed you bombs. You’re still alive, heading home with empty racks, the Tor is still alive, being reloaded… Who is the victor?

Are you kidding me? More than one senior USAF official stated on camera that the B-2s were not as effective as they could have been due to the absurd target approval process!

Yea I’ve seen those interviews too. Watch them again – I think you’ll realise that every time it is because the USAF wanted to strike targets in central Belgrade straight away and felt that they were restrained by their NATO allies. Trust me; central belgrade has nothing to do with Yugoslavia’s air defense system. No single NATO ally (obvious exception of Greece of course) had any objection to bombing of the VJ-PVO.

Look, I’m not saying that US strikes wouldn’t cause massive damage, they certainly would. However, to completely cripple an entire ADS in 24hrs is just fantasy. Even if Iran had Yugoslavia’s antiquated air defense system it would still take something in the 78 day ball-park just due to the sheer geographical size of Iran (all those nooks and crannies to hide in). Now I know that US technology and tactics have progressed since Allied Force but don’t expect the Iranians to have been sitting around doing nothing either.

I think you’re trying to convince yourself that we CAN’T do it.

Look at it this way: What would have worse consequences? My underestimation of US capabilities or your complacency and bravado?

SOC,

I shouldn’t need to explain this to you surely?

we’re just talking about making their entire AD network disappear overnight.

Couldn’t do it over a smaller, poorer, less well equipped, less determined Serbia in 78 days – can’t do it now over Iran.

The USAF+USN might be able to supress the Iranian air-defense system on a local and temporary basis but shutting it down completely is too tall a task – unless you’re willing to spend months doing it. Anything else is just buying into your own propaganda in my opinion.