Will Russia really strike NATO anti-missile defenses?

[kato]

In Nov '77 I was at a peaceful assembly of Pro-Shah supporters in front of our White House during a Carter/Shah meeting, "No Im not Iranian its a long story". Out of nowhere thousands of masked Iranian fundamentalist students came running across the parkway and started beating innocent people within an inch of their Lives.

Gee, and that had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that ten years earlier almost to the day some 150 SAVAK members supported by police attacked a peaceful anti-shah rally in Berlin, resulting in large-scale riots with hundreds of wounded and one dead.
And you might know what that started - it was the turning point from which left-wing terrorism started in Germany, while around the same time the first seeds for the 1970s guerilla warfare against the Shah began in Iran.

Reza Pahlavi was never a victim. Nor was anyone who supported him. Since 1943. It was his side that started exactly what you describe. And ye shall reap what ye sow.

 

[USAF77]

I guess Im missing the "Missiles and WMDs" part of your post.

Gee, and that had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that ten years earlier almost to the day some 150 SAVAK members supported by police attacked a peaceful anti-shah rally in Berlin, resulting in large-scale riots with hundreds of wounded and one dead.
And you might know what that started - it was the turning point from which left-wing terrorism started in Germany, while around the same time the first seeds for the 1970s guerilla warfare against the Shah began in Iran.

Reza Pahlavi was never a victim. Nor was anyone who supported him. Since 1943. It was his side that started exactly what you describe. And ye shall reap what ye sow.

 

[Bonza]

He was only responding in kind to the content of your own post, it's silly to ignore that.

Regardless, getting back on topic would be better, so we can avoid turning this into a political he-said she-said. But as I stated, if you speak in a certain way, please don't cry off-topic at another poster when they respond in kind.

 

[the concerned]

i wonder if that is reason behind the latest Pac-3 abm trials if so then we can expect a few more sam deployments throughout eastern europe. Could the Pac-3 intercept a Iskander missile.

 

[Bonza]

If Russia trys they will be sorry.

Are you just planning on going from thread to thread and engaging in nationalist chest-beating? Read the forum rules, stop with the one liners and stop with this "if they do anything they're dead" blustering BS.

 

[lgKido]

I don't think people realize how serious this situation is. NATO has every intention of deploying their anti-missile batteries in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East. From a defense briefing I read, Russia has just recently forward deployed their most sophisticated interceptors near the Arctic to counter our deployment of anti-missle batteries in the same area.

It's a balance of power issue. NATO contends they are installing missiles in eastern Europe and the Middle East to defend against an attack from Russia. Russia contends we are forward deploying these missiles in preparation for a NATO preemptive first strike. Essentially we are surrounding them and backing them into a corner. And I don't blame the Russians one bit for being fearful, and I take their warnings very seriously. What do you think the US response would be to Russia deploying anti-missile batteries in Canada and/or Mexico?

Adding to this is the tension in Syria, Iran and Israel. In my opinion, It's not a matter of "if" Israel will will attack and destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities, but "when." And it's important to note that Israel CAN NOT win a war with Iran by itself. Iran is just to strong. The West will have to support Israel. And the Russians have very clearly drawn the line in the sand in regards to Syria and Iran and have made it perfectly clear that they WILL use nuclear weapons to defend their interests (allies) in the area. I have lived through the Cold War, and although our joint policies through out this period (NATO & Warsaw Pact) were governed by mutually assured destruction, I never heard any Soviet representative making use (publicly) of this type of language. Back then, It was always implied. But not now. I've seen and heard top Russian officials on two occasions use those exact words, and I find this very, very disturbing.

Currently, we have troops in Israel and Carriers in the Easter Mediterranean in case hostilities break out in the Middle East. Of course, the Russians interpret these deployments differently and have countered by massing their troops on the Iranian border and sending their own ships to the same area. I do not believe with our depleted assets (because of our involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, etc. over the past 20+ years) that NATO can win a war in this part of the world. What's worse, Eastern Europe will become vulnerable once hostilities break out in the MIddle East. And we no longer have the capability of winning a two front war if the violence spreads. In my opinion, we have become arrogant and now find ourselves in a "no win" situation. To sum it up: we have been out played on the global chess board. We need to step back, take a moment of pause and consider if it's really worth it. Because If we continue along our present coarse what will follow is unthinkable............

 

[DrewUSA]

NO WAY... Russia is a nation that will say they are going to, and what they will do is just build up some great number of weapons to defeat BMD, which they are already doing in their R&D in counter Anti-BMD tech. Either way, it will be outdated too soon and one way or another... Both sides. another Arms race, great, at least we know who is better at it. See you don't actually build it. We built the SM-3 or SM-2IIA block, (need cite) but the missile that we used to shoot down the satellite, was built within 6 weeks, all the systems were already tested and developed, just not built. You don't build 20,000 Tanks, you prefect the production process so should you need to you can produce that tank. That's the way the Russians need to start thinking. They are all talk but this is why there was and seems to be cooling down, and not in the good way, between the US and Russians again since around 2004.

 

[lgKido]

I don't know DrewUSA, but I sure hope you're right. You can only push someone so far before they fight back. Are we at that point? I'm hoping we aren't, but I think we are. They simply won't allow us to systematically surround them. Try looking at it from their perspective. If the roles were reversed what would we do?

 

[the concerned]

But they are also planning on deploying the same type of system,are we threatening them no if anything by the way they are talking they are justifing the need for the deployment of such a system.The missiles that we are trying to defend against are Iranian missiles the question is where did the iranians develop these missilies from in the first place, didn;t they all start from adaptions of scuds and then upgrade through their own requirements.

 

[Feanor]

I don't think people realize how serious this situation is. NATO has every intention of deploying their anti-missile batteries in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East. From a defense briefing I read, Russia has just recently forward deployed their most sophisticated interceptors near the Arctic to counter our deployment of anti-missle batteries in the same area.

Interesting. I'm assuming you're referencing the Foxhound squadron that's getting deployed to Novaya Zemlya. In case you haven't realized, there are no US interceptors in that area, and the MiG-31 is in no way a counter to US BMD. The redeployment of a MiG-31 squadron there has to do with plugging holes in the radar field, and restoring Soviet-era capabilities that were lost (in this case when the Flanker unit stationed there was moved to the mainland).

It's a balance of power issue. NATO contends they are installing missiles in eastern Europe and the Middle East to defend against an attack from Russia.

Hmm. You seem to be about 30 years out of date. NATO "contends" that they are deploying those missiles to protect Europe from third parties, namely Iran. And of course there can be no balance of power between Russia and NATO. NATO is over two dozen countries with a combined GDP that's absolutely humongous. Russia is a single country with a GDP of a little over a trillion. There can be no balance of power between a single (even very large) ant and a whole colony of them.

Russia contends we are forward deploying these missiles in preparation for a NATO preemptive first strike.

Check your facts. Russia does not claim that. It claims that NATO BMD could (emphasis on could) undermine the strategic parity of nuclear arsenals between the US and Russia.

Essentially we are surrounding them and backing them into a corner. And I don't blame the Russians one bit for being fearful, and I take their warnings very seriously. What do you think the US response would be to Russia deploying anti-missile batteries in Canada and/or Mexico?

Well a Russian nuclear battlecruiser, and a couple of strategic bombers participated in joint exercises with Venezuela. The US State Dept. issued a statement along the lines of "don't care".

Adding to this is the tension in Syria, Iran and Israel. In my opinion, It's not a matter of "if" Israel will will attack and destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities, but "when." And it's important to note that Israel CAN NOT win a war with Iran by itself. Iran is just to strong.

What exactly do you mean by that? The two have no land borders, and if Israel destroys Iran's nuclear program, that could easily be the end of the "war". The Iranian air force isn't going to be able to do much, and Israel has no reason to carry on an air war. Recall the Osirak incident in the 80s.

The West will have to support Israel.

Not if Israel can handle itself, which it has on multiple occasions in the past.

And the Russians have very clearly drawn the line in the sand in regards to Syria and Iran and have made it perfectly clear that they WILL use nuclear weapons to defend their interests (allies) in the area.

They have done no such thing, nor would they, ever. Russo-Iranian relations are complex, and cautious at best. Syria is a long time Russian client state, and Russia is using all of its diplomatic leverage to bail out the regime there, from Western intervention. However what this has to do with BMD is beyond me.

I have lived through the Cold War,

That is extremely obvious from your perception of Russia, and what you think are political realities. You need to realize that Russia is not the USSR, and while it sometimes likes to pretend it still is (or have others pretend that) it's a regional power with some global interests, and a very cautious middle of the road approach which allows it to simultaneously do business with various unsavory regimes, while pretending to be a democracy at home, and maintaining relations with the West.

and although our joint policies through out this period (NATO & Warsaw Pact) were governed by mutually assured destruction, I never heard any Soviet representative making use (publicly) of this type of language. Back then, It was always implied. But not now. I've seen and heard top Russian officials on two occasions use those exact words, and I find this very, very disturbing.

Hardly. It's in many ways the opposite. They have to use the language to remind people that it's still the case. And they have to use the language because it's the only real form of strategic parity they have left.

Currently, we have troops in Israel and Carriers in the Easter Mediterranean in case hostilities break out in the Middle East. Of course, the Russians interpret these deployments differently and have countered by massing their troops on the Iranian border and sending their own ships to the same area.

Ahem... the Russo-Iranian border!? Holy sh*t man... go look at a world map dated post 1994. What massing of troops are you talking about? The closest thing I can think of are the Caucus-2012 exercises, but if you did your research you'd discover that there have been large scale Caucus-20XX exercises for the past 6 years, and they always occur in the summer/early fall. This years exercises were numerically inferior to similar exercises conducted in the past, and focused heavily on showcasing new command and control equipment, comm gear, and other elements of networked C4I. Much of the exercises took place in cyberspace, in the form of notional troop elements making notional movements.

I do not believe with our depleted assets (because of our involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, etc. over the past 20+ years) that NATO can win a war in this part of the world.

Victory is contingent on the objectives one sets. You have to be more specific. Are you saying NATO can't demolish Iran?

What's worse, Eastern Europe will become vulnerable once hostilities break out in the MIddle East.

What part of Eastern Europe, and how exactly? This isn't a game of Risk...

And we no longer have the capability of winning a two front war if the violence spreads.

How do you arrive at that conclusion?

 

[My2Cents]

See you don't actually build it. We built the SM-3 or SM-2IIA block, (need cite) but the missile that we used to shoot down the satellite, was built within 6 weeks, all the systems were already tested and developed, just not built.

Actually it was as stock SM-3, All the changes were in software to permit the launching ship to get targeting information from another ship. The satellite altitude and speed required the missile to be launched before the satellite came over the horizon to reach the interception point.

You don't build 20,000 Tanks, you prefect the production process so should you need to you can produce that tank. That's the way the Russians need to start thinking. They are all talk but this is why there was and seems to be cooling down, and not in the good way, between the US and Russians again since around 2004.

Do you honestly think that much manufacturing capability can just be left idly standing by for when it might be needed? Including the trained personnel to run it? And the manufacturing capability to create all the components needed, including operational spares?

And when they are ready, then you have to recruit and train people to operate them. Call it another year, minimum.

How long do you think it will take to build 20,000 tanks? Try 15-20 years with current manufacturing facilities. Can you guarantee that your intelligence can reliably spot a need for them that far in advance? The answer to that, as with any intelligence question of this type, is different degrees of ‘maybe’. So you build them, just in case, which is exactly what happened. And there are a lot of problems that show up, and get fixed, during training that didn’t show up in the testing.

 

[Feanor]

Do you honestly think that much manufacturing capability can just be left idly standing by for when it might be needed? Including the trained personnel to run it? And the manufacturing capability to create all the components needed, including operational spares?

And when they are ready, then you have to recruit and train people to operate them. Call it another year, minimum.

How long do you think it will take to build 20,000 tanks? Try 15-20 years with current manufacturing facilities. Can you guarantee that your intelligence can reliably spot a need for them that far in advance? The answer to that, as with any intelligence question of this type, is different degrees of ‘maybe’. So you build them, just in case, which is exactly what happened. And there are a lot of problems that show up, and get fixed, during training that didn’t show up in the testing.

Here's a better one: what would one do with 20 000 tanks?

I'll give you a hint, the Russian army, one of the most tank-heavy armies in the world, currently has a total of under 5 000 tanks. After full mobilization it will have under 10 000 tanks, and that's at a numerical strength of around 1.7 million (after mobilizing). So what kind of army are you trying to raise, that you need 20 000 tanks? Or a better question, what enemy are you trying to fight that you need 20 000 tanks?

 

[ghost]

Two separate Russian military leaders with significant apparent influence have declared the potential need to use military force to "destroy" western anti-missile batteries if they are installed in their near-abroad. These batteries are, it is claimed, to protect Europe and, perhaps, America, from missiles launched from Iran. Russia worries they are designed to shoot down their ICBMs.

This certainly appears to be little more than posturing... but is it? Would Russia seriously consider a first-strike using their Iskander non-nuclear SRBMs merely to take out these batteries short of a planned strategic ICBM salvo?

What does Russia gain by such a threat? It seems ridiculous on its face. If they were genuinely serious, what sort of response would they expect in retaliation?

What am I missing here? Traditionally the USSR and modern Russia have been a bit more careful about military rhetoric than some other countries. And the west is unlikely to take a first-strike tactical threat like this seriously. So anybody have a notion of what is at work here?

If you read the history (few hundred years back) you'll learn that Russians never attacked first. It's just not in their blood. I served in the arny during the Cold War myself. Putin has a sick fobia from the old times (remember, he's 60 ok). But that doesn't mean that all Russians support his vision.

 

[Waylander]

They never attacked first in the last hundreds of years?
Big statement.
You should maybe ask some Finns, Latvians, Turks, Swedes, Poles, Georgians, several Central Asians of all kind,...

 

[ghost]

They never attacked first in the last hundreds of years?
Big statement.
You should maybe ask some Finns, Latvians, Turks, Swedes, Poles, Georgians, several Central Asians of all kind,...

Thanks. They defended their own country from Sweden invention. They defended their own people from Georgia when 2,000 Russians were killed in one day...

You might be right about Finns though.

 

[Waylander]

Your statement is just BS. Russianas a country in all it's iterations was not more or less peacefull or agressive than most other countries over the last few hundred years.

Making that statement part of an argument about the current problems with a NATO missile defense is pointless.

 

[ghost]

Your statement is just BS. Russianas a country in all it's iterations was not more or less peacefull or agressive than most other countries over the last few hundred years.

Making that statement part of an argument about the current problems with a NATO missile defense is pointless.

I don't think that using a word BS is an appropriate on any forums. Might be the moderator can help here. However to better understand American's mentality some one actually needs to be an American; to better understand Germans some one needs to be a German. The same story is here. It's one thing to read any newspaper article or internet and become a "desk analyst" and quite a different thing to understand the mentality of other nation. There are not too many people in Russia now as paranoid as Putin himself. They will definetly install more powerfull radars and ground-to-air rockets close to the border. No questions here. But that's it. As of Litvania and other Bultic Republics - they were accupied by Soviet Union (that included Georgia, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Kazakstan, etc). Russia let those countries go... The same with Finland which was part of Russia just 100 years ago.

 

[Feanor]

I don't think that using a word BS is an appropriate on any forums. Might be the moderator can help here. However to better understand American's mentality some one actually needs to be an American; to better understand Germans some one needs to be a German. The same story is here. It's one thing to read any newspaper article or internet and become a "desk analyst" and quite a different thing to understand the mentality of other nation. There are not too many people in Russia now as paranoid as Putin himself. They will definetly install more powerfull radars and ground-to-air rockets close to the border. No questions here. But that's it. As of Litvania and other Bultic Republics - they were accupied by Soviet Union (that included Georgia, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Kazakstan, etc). Russia let those countries go... The same with Finland which was part of Russia just 100 years ago.

I'm a moderator, and I don't see anything inappropriate about his comment. Your line of commentary is tangential, at best. Please refrain from generalized and unsubstantiated statements that have little, if anything, to do with the subject of the thread.

 

[Innocent]

Will Russia destroy usa bmd...........

Whats the capabilities of the latest Russian sam's ,aren't they just as capable of degrading Nato's missiles. Why are we taking advice on our defence from a country that think's it can threaten us. Do they really think that with US soldiers at these sites that there just going to strike at them without creating a huge response.No US politician is going to allow Russia to attack without its citizens demanding action.What would be wrong with basing these missiles at the Raf base on Cyprus surely that could help counter Iran's intentions against Nato plus provide a solution to its stand off against Israel.

Russia has said' it will strike to destroy those missiles and they know the west may react and so they are ready for the reaction = war

 

[Rimasta]

I think what is more likely than a Russian strike is continued posturing and further development and deployment of Russian strategic and tactical forces. I'm sure even Putin isn't going to start a war simply over BMD. A lot would have to happen for Russia and NATO to start trading blows. I see a new perhaps less intense Cold War in the making in our new multipolar world.