As for Russian stuff for Russian armed forces being superior to Russian stuff ofered for export, I doubt it. In this moment the best variant of Flanker, for example, is not flying in Russian AF.

Yes, but that’s the blanket Russian fanboys hide behind. Whenever there’s a loss or failure of one of their favorite systems, they fall back to this claim: “Oh, that’s just the export version. The one in Russian service has much better capabilities, they’re just keeping it under wraps for now.”

P.S. Anybody know the status of SOSUS (and how many here are going “what’s that”?)

Last I heard, they were using it to listen to whales and such. NOAA/Woods Hole made some kind of deal to use it for a while too, I think.

Israel has one single option to remove Hezbollah – to remove reasons and motivations for their support and very existence.

By that, you mean, stop being Jews.

BTW, in what way do hundred obsolete tactical missiles from the 50s endanger the existence of Israeli state equipped with nuclear weapons and 4+ gen fighter aircraft??

Who does today’s Istrael have to fight against for its very survival? Who is directly endangering their very existence? If you are unable to answer this question, they all your arguments about ‘the right of Israelis to defend themselves’ are pointless.

Let me get this straight…Hezbollah rockets were falling into shopping centers, schoolyards, etc, and your position is that the Israelis should have stopped to say: “Well, these are obsolete weapons that don’t threaten our existence as a nation, so we should refrain from launching a response.” Please tell me that’s not what you’re really trying to say.

Call this tunnel-vision on my part if you wish, but I see a very clear distinction between the two sides of this conflict:

— Innocent civilians are often injured or killed as a collateral result of Israeli military actions.

— Innocent civilian casualties are the expressed, explicit objective of Hezbollah actions.

One is tragic. The other is criminal.