Russia could destroy NATO ships in 20 mins: Admiral

That article is from ten years ago.

The Russia of 2008, awash in oil cash, is very different from the Russia of 1998...

reply to post by xmotex


ah! so it is!

well, at least these days they may have the ability to call for help?

assuming they paid their bill after all these years...

i was looking for a similar article to the OP as reported by a better known news outlet, for credibility, but the BBC has nothing on this...

I highly doubt it. Russia is all talk. If they hit a US NAVY ship they will get nuked. Even they are not that stupid. Russians play chess....You have to think 5 or 6 moves ahead. Hitting a US NAVY ship would make the much talked about LHC thing look like a good day for all of us.

Originally posted by TXMACHINEGUNDLR
I highly doubt it.

Russia is all talk. If they hit a US NAVY ship they will get nuked. Even they are not that stupid. Russians play chess....You have to think 5 or 6 moves ahead. Hitting a US NAVY ship would make the much talked about LHC thing look like a good day for all of us.

God i hope your never president if they sunk a us ship you would instantly kill billions of people not a good plan.

Great to hear everyones opinions...

Since I have so many experts following this. Does anyone know anything about this?

source

On August 21, 2008, Human Rights Watch reported a series of attacks with cluster munitions around four towns and villages in Georgia's Gori district. Human Rights Watch attributed all the strikes to Russian forces, but upon further investigation has concluded that the origin of the cluster munitions found on August 20 in two of the villages – Shindisi and Pkhvenisi – cannot yet be determined.

Human Rights Watch's finding that Shindisi and Pkhvenisi were struck by Russian attacks on August 8 was based on the accounts of nearly a dozen witnesses, interviewed separately, who said that air strikes on Georgian armored units in the area were followed by extensive cluster munition strikes. There were no Russian ground forces reported in the area at that stage of the conflict.

Human Rights Watch researchers in Shindisi on August 20 found unexploded cluster submunitions, commonly known as Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICMs), and initially identified them as Russian. However, those submunitions were later identified by the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment (NDRE), based on Human Rights Watch's photographs, as M85 DPICMs, which have not been reported to be part of Russia's arsenal. NDRE is a government-sponsored institution that does research and development for the Norwegian Armed Forces and is recognized for its expertise in cluster munitions.

On August 31, the government of Georgia informed Human Rights Watch that it had a stockpile of ground rocket-launched cluster munitions that have M85 submunitions. The Georgian government described them as being a different type of M85 submunition than those found by Human Rights Watch and stated that these were the only cluster munitions in the Georgian arsenal.

Neither Georgia nor Russia has claimed use of the M85s found in Shindisi. Russia denies any use of cluster munitions in Georgia. Georgia states that it used cluster munitions in the August 2008 conflict only during an attack on Russian military forces near the Roki tunnel.

Interesting to see if this ever gets proven one way or another. Anyone have any information regarding this?

The Moskva? Are you kidding me? That thing was scrapped in the 90's because of bad design and caught fire often. Besides, even if were still afloat it was a helicopter carrier, not a missle platform.

Moskva

Wrong Moskva.

The current Moskva is a Slava class missile cruiser.

Fast, extremely heavily armed, lots of sensors, but reportedly with poor damage control facilities. Again, the Russian's aren't as keen on force protection as we are.






[edit on 9/3/08 by xmotex]

Egads, that's a lot of missile launchers. Didn't that ship get badly damaged during the Georgia conflict though?

Egads, that's a lot of missile launchers.

It was designed as a "carrier killer", to use a salvo of 16 supersonic cruise missiles to penetrate a CVBG's defenses.

There are conflicting reports that it may have taken a small-caliber gun hit during the confrontation with the Georgians.

"Badly damaged" is pretty much out of the question, as there were pictures taken of it at anchor in Novorossiysk a day or two later, with no visible damage.

[edit on 9/3/08 by xmotex]

Originally posted by dragonridr
God i hope your never president if they sunk a us ship you would instantly kill billions of people not a good plan.

tactical nukes, not a hiroshima bomb...

a tactical nuke would only destroy their fleet...

i wonder how russia would respond?

we better get those missile shields built...

reply to post by mattifikation


When did anyone say that was nice?? We are well aware that if this comes to a head, there is a chance NATO could get its butt kicked, which we know will be dangerous. On the other hand, there's 2 sides to every story. What do we NOT know about the ins and outs of the conflict? We've been conditioned since the 1950's to believe that Russia is the evil empire, but are we much different? Why do you think most of the eastern hemisphere hates us? It's basically been a battle of 2 empires, and now it's starting to look like yet another showdown between those empires. This could get ugly...

Originally posted by xmotex
Fast, extremely heavily armed, lots of sensors, but reportedly with poor damage control facilities. Again, the Russian's aren't as keen on force protection as we are.

Given that I still would not make the statement that the retired Russian Admiral did. Burke class DDGs are also very well armed, I need not mention the sensors. Your last statement is a sort of general truth so I wonder how it's defenses would stand up to a US missile salvo. Factoring in not just hard defenses but crew experience and as you mentioned, damage control.

The advantage Moskva would have is the range of it's P-500 cruise missiles - a 300nm range means that even sitting in port in Sevastopol, nearly the entire Black Sea is inside firing range. Harpoon has less than half the range, and moves at 600 knots - much easier to take down than a Sandbox moving at around 2000 knots.

This is because USN doctrine has always relied on carrier air & subs as our main ASuW weapon - but we don't have any carriers or any subs in the Black Sea (by treaty). The Russians, OTOH, have plenty of Backfires (with the nasty Kingfish carrier-killer supersonic ASM) and other air assets handy.

She's also crammed with defensive systems - 64 naval S-300's, 40 SA-8's, a 130mm DP gun, and no less than 6 (!) CIWS. She'd be very hard to hit.

Also, Moskva's not alone, she'd be supported by at least two destroyers (Kara & Kashin class), a pair of frigates, and about a dozen small, fast missile corvettes.

The two Burkes and the Spanish F-101 in the area now are the bare minimum I'd want to engage that monster with, and for all the strength of Aegis & their defensive armament, they can't match Moskva's offensive punch.

If I'm rambling on it's because I've been modeling the Black Sea in Harpoon III all week - and it's a damn scary place

Chances are, as I said before, the NATO group would get some shots off, and the Russians would also find themselves afire and sinking shortly after celebrating their kills.

[edit on 9/3/08 by xmotex]

I personally don't think a single shot will be fired by either side. It will more than likely boil down to a new full blown cold war(cold war=good for business). I bet we will probably see another wall built. The idiotic cycle is starting over again and we will be dupt again.

reply to post by Anonymous ATS



Sorry according to observers was the gearogians that used cluseter bombs when they started the war.. see you have a very twisted view of all.. american?? or european??

Only read opening comment and nothing else.

The Admiral is somewhat right. He left out the part about how NATO can destroy the Russian navy within the same time frame. Or the fact that this attack would leave a dead Russia within 30 minutes.

The Admiral is an idiot with his mind still stuck in the glorious USSR days of the cold wear politics. He is a military man, not a politician.

He got his 15 minutes, now he can go away.

in april this yr i started a thread entitled Rise of the Shanghai Cooperation. imho, their objective was to counterbalance NATO and United Nations...........in other words The United States of America. www.abovetopsecret.com...

What is the SCO position on the U.S. presence in the region? SCO members say U.S. bases in the region, established in the wake of 9/11, were not meant to be permanent and were only installed to assist the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. China and Russia have chafed at the U.S. military presence in Central Asia, an energy-rich region both consider within their sphere of influence. After uprisings in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan unseated leaders loyal to the Kremlin, Russia views the U.S. presence in the post-Soviet region, including the eastward expansion of NATO and its growing presence in Afghanistan, with increasing suspicion. Many in Moscow argue these so-called color revolutions were the work of U.S.-funded nongovernmental organizations. Beijing sees the U.S. military presence along its western border as part of Washington's strategy to contain China, experts say

www.cfr.org...

here is a youtube link. many a truth said in jest: www.youtube.com...

reply to post by manson_322


Sorry, but in each of these encounters, U.S. kill ratios were ten or twenty to one over Soviet technology. The real encounter in technology was in the first gulf war, when U.S. tanks when up against Soviet tanks, and completely out classed them. The USSR has never tried to compete with the U.S. or Britain in Naval confrontations, and with good reason. Georgia is simply out manned and out gunned, facing a Russian force far too large for technology to give them any means to overcome the odds.

Originally posted by SRTkid86
no actually, Russia has more people, and the US has A LOT more toys, and MUCH BETTER toys at our disposal...

The Russian population is smaller and they have plenty of destructive toys themselves.

i honestly don't know where you guys are getting your information but you should prolly make sure that the source isn't some Russian/anti-american rhetoric peddler.

" i honestly don't know where you guys are getting your information but you should prolly make sure that the source isn't some American/anti-Russian rhetoric peddler "

because there is no way that a country who JUST BARELY started to get money to put into their military, has ANYTHING on a country that has been consistently, and constantly developing it's military since the early 1940's.

The Russian government never stopped spending on their armed forces ( by looking at upgrades and underground activity at some places) and we wouldn't know either way as we have no good ways to validate their expenditure or lack thereof.

Originally posted by SRTkid86
im pretty sure the Smith and Wesson M4 is a far superior assualt rifle than a 50 yearr old, albeit tried and true, reliable, and accurate gun. but you are dreaming if you think for some reason that russia is better equipped than they US, they haven't been dumping a fraction of what we do into military R&D

And various countries have proved that you can spend a fraction of what the US does and still have very potent military forces. Do you need examples or do you think you can go read about Vietnam, Korea and Serbia?

you also seem to be forgetting our black budget for top secret mililtary developement... we have A LOT that the world doesn't know about, and we are just waiting for the right time to turn it loose on someone who gets uppity and starts thinking they have a chance...

And as we all know the Russian government has no underground cities filled with factories enough to employ at least 50 000 people that we can observe to be living nearby.

According to the CIA report, construction work is continuing on a "nuclear-survivable, strategic command post at Kosvinsky Mountain," located deep in the Ural Mountains about 850 miles east of Moscow. Satellite photographs of Yamantau Mountain, also located about 850 miles east of Moscow in the Urals near the town of Beloretsk, show continued digging at the "deep underground complex" and new construction at each of the site's above-ground support areas, the CIA stated. Yamantau Mountain means "Evil Mountain" in the local Bashkir langauge.

Peter Pry, a former CIA analyst and author of a new book on Russian nuclear operations, said the continued construction of the Russian strategic defense sites is ominous and cannot be dismissed by U.S. officials as "inertia" from Cold War-era strategic policies. "It shows they take the threat of nuclear war so seriously that they're willing to spend scarce resources on it," Mr. Pry said, adding that he was not familiar with the CIA report. "These things are tying down billions of dollars in rubles that could go into other enterprises the Russians need - for example, providing housing for Russian military officers." Mr. Pry said Russian press reports say the underground facility at Yamantau Mountain covers an area as large as the Capital Beltway.

www.fas.org...

According to one recent account ["We Keep Building Nukes For All the Wrong Reasons", By Bruce G. Blair, The Washington Post Sunday, May 25, 2003; Page B01] "... the Yamantau and Kosvinsky mountains in the central and southern Urals ... were huge construction projects begun in the late 1970s, when U.S. nuclear firepower took special aim at the Communist Party's leadership complex. Fearing a decapitating strike, the Soviets sent tens of thousands of workers to these remote sites, where U.S. spy satellites spotted them still toiling away in the late 1990s. Yamantau is expected to be operating soon. According to diagrams and notes given to me in the late 1990s by SAC senior officers, the Yamantau command center is inside a rock quartz mountain, about 3,000 feet straight down from the summit. It is a wartime relocation facility for the top Russian political leadership. It is more a shelter than a command post, because the facility's communications links are relatively fragile. As it turned out, the quartz interferes with radio signals broadcast from inside the mountain. Therefore the main communications links are either cable or radio transmitters that broadcast from outside the center."

www.globalsecurity.org...

A 1997 CIA report states, "The command post at Kosvinsky appears to provide the Russians with the means to retaliate against a nuclear attack."[11] According to Bruce Blair, "Kosvinsky is regarded by U.S. targeters as the crown jewel of the Russian wartime nuclear command system, because it can communicate through the granite mountain to far-flung Russian strategic forces using very-low-frequency (VLF) radio signals that can burn through a nuclear war environment."[12] Additionally, unlike the facility at Yamantau, this command center plays a critical role in Russia's 'Dead Hand' communications network, and is designed to ensure semi-automatic retaliation to a decapitating strike.[13] Blair argues,

Kosvinsky came on line recently, which could be one explanation for U.S. interest in a new nuclear bunker buster. If there's a new item on the target list, U.S. strategy requires a weapon to destroy it. Even with a "robust nuclear earth penetrator," … destroying Kosvinsky is not an easy assignment; the command center is protected by roughly 1,000 feet of granite. More importantly, why would we want to if Russia is no longer the enemy?

www.ccc.nps.navy.mil...

It is now known that the Soviet Union used secret underground bases in Eastern Europe to conceal nuclear missiles at the end of the Cold War, as an integral part of its nuclear war-fighting strategy. In all, some 73 SS-23 missiles, packing a nuclear punch 365 times the bomb that detonated over Hiroshima, were hidden by the Soviets in violation of the INF Treaty, which went into force in June 1988.

If war had broken out those missiles would have given the Soviets an overwhelming strategic advantage against the United States, allowing them to decimate NATO forces in Europe in a surprise attack. The last of these missiles will be destroyed by the government of Slovakia, under a grant from the United States.

www.viewzone.com...

a jet skimming the upper atmosphere moving at mach 4+ carrying a large payload of nuclear weapons to drop off on Moscows doorstep would end this conflict pretty quickly

Sure, and maybe those 'UFO's" ( i think their not so hard to indentify) that always seem to find the Shuttle so interesting might very well not be American or alien? Right....
If we are going to speculate about who's keeping the biggest secrets lets as i have spent some time doing just that.

Stellar

Originally posted by C0bzz
And America only needs 1 nuke to destroy Moscow? What's your point? Imagine, if Bush came out and said, "We only need one nuke to take out Moscow", Ridiculous huh.

Well that would be silly as it's been well known since the 70's that it would take quite a few more than that.

By the end of the 1960s, targeting may have focused on Moscow, with all the missiles of a nuclear submarine committed to destroying the ABM system and the city. The capability of the Moscow ABM system might have limited the flexibility of British targeting by tying down most of the deployed force. Polaris appears to have been judged much more effective against the SA-5B Gammon interceptors of the Tallinn system. A 1970 study published by the British Atomic Energy Authority concluded that SA-5B interceptors were not a threat to British Polaris missiles, and that it would take only two Polaris missile payloads to saturate a standard SA-5B battery.

In 1972, the British government decided to develop a new front end for the Polaris missiles "designed specifically to penetrate [the] anti-ballistic missile defenses" around Moscow. This improved system, called Chevaline, was deployed in 1982. It carried pen-aids and three 40-kiloton maneuverable reentry vehicles that were "hardened" against the radiation effects of the nuclear ABM interceptors.

The Chevaline tied British targeting to Moscow. That changed in 1998, when Britain deployed Trident D5 missiles on four Vanguard-class SSBNs, returning flexibility to the war planners. "It is more than just the destruction of Moscow," said Field Marshall Nigel Bagnall, British chief of general staff from 1985 to 1988, "it is the destruction of the command and control system."

From late 1970 (when the British SSBN force became operational) through 1996 (when the Chevaline's operational deployment ended), the combined number of U.S. and British weapons assigned to suppress the Soviet ABM system may have been well over 200 warheads.

www.thebulletin.org...

Truth be told, it's in neither of the sides best interests to do these suicidal acts -

If they believe them to be suicidal maybe but if they feel they have in fact prepared their country well enough.....

Mr. Lee's analysis is complex. To vastly simplify, he says he has evidence that Russia's surface-to-air interceptor missiles carry nuclear warheads and therefore are capable of bringing down long-range ballistic missiles, not just aircraft and shorter-range missiles, which is their stated purpose. Russia has 8,000 of these missiles scattered around the country, and Mr. Lee says he has found numerous Russian sources that describe how successive generations of SAMs were in fact designed with the express intention of shooting down ballistic missiles, which is illegal under the treaty.

www.opinionjournal.com...

Immediately prior to the signing of the ABM treaty, the Soviets had developed a surface-to-air missile, the SA-5, which was observed to have a peculiar trajectory. The SA-5 was fired high above the atmosphere and then would descend to intercept and destroy enemy bombers. While technically such a trajectory could not be ruled out, logically, however, it could not be accepted as this type of trajectory represents the least efficient way to shoot down enemy aircraft. On the other hand, the SA-5?s trajectory would be just the ticket for shooting down incoming ballistic missiles which themselves travel above the atmosphere. Taking this into account, the SA-5 had to be an ABM weapon. But with the ABM treaty almost in hand, this fact was ignored and the treaty went into effect. The treaty remains in effect, limiting development of a U.S. ABM system. Meanwhile, Russian dual-purpose (anti-aircraft/anti-missile) missile systems like the SA-5 continue to exist.

www.thenewamerican.com/node/1076

5

However, Soviet and Russian sources, including former Premier Alexei Kosygin and the Chief Designer of the original Moscow ABM system, confirm that: the SA-5 and SA-10 were dual purpose antiaircraft/missile systems (SAM/ABMs), and that the Hen House and LPAR radars provided the requisite battle management target tracking data. These and other sources cited in The ABM Treaty Charade are not exhaustive.

Nevertheless, CIA has not revised its position on this issue, nor have the U.S. Congress and the public been informed that the ABM Treaty was a valid contract from beginning to end.

In the late 1960s the U.S. sacrificed its 20-year technological advantage in ABM defenses on the altar of "arms control." As Russian sources now admit, the Soviet General Staff was in total control of Soviet "arms control" proposals and negotiations, subject to Politburo review, which was largely pro forma. The Soviet military's objective was to gain as much advantage as possible from "arms control" agreements (SALT).

www.jinsa.org...

Some critics of Pentagon policies argue that the U.S. is no longer capable of fulfilling these three imposing tasks, especially that of deterring a Soviet nuclear attack. Major General George Keegan Jr., recently retired as the Air Force's chief of intelligence, has charged that "the Soviets are capable of initiating, waging, surviving and emerging with a unique advantage from a global [nuclear] war." As evidence, he points to the Russians' allegedly extensive civil defense program

www.time.com...

Soviet Union. The role civil defense plays in Soviet strategy is significant. Based on the view that nuclear war is a clear possibility and that civilization is protectable, the Soviets have implemented a massive and thoroughly integrated civil defense effort.22 Soviet leaders have shown interest in civil defense for many years, but they enhanced their efforts following the 23rd Party Congress in 1966. Despite SALT I agreements in 1972, the U.S.S.R. further intensified its civil defense program. CD currently ranks as a separate force organizationally equal to other Ministry of Defense Forces. The CD chief, General of the Army Altunin (four-star rank), is also Deputy Minister of Defense with three CD deputies of colonel-general (three star) rank serving under him. A Stanford Research Institute (SRI) study23 in 1974 stated that there were at least 35 to 40 active list Soviet army general officers holding posts in the Soviet CD system, which is intricately organized in the 15 constituent republics of the U.S.S.R. The SRI report mentioned a three-year CD military officer candidate school that might indicate the Soviet interest in a continuing civil defense program.

The Soviets spend the equivalent of more than $1 billion annually (the CIA in Soviet Civil Defense estimates approximately $2 billion) on their CD program and have conducted some tests of their city evacuation plans. Although the extent of these tests is not fully known, they concentrate efforts on protecting political and military leaders, industrial managers, and skilled workers. Professor Richard Pipes of Harvard sees the CD organization under Altunin as "...a kind of shadow government charged with responsibility for administering the country under the extreme stresses of nuclear war and its immediate aftermath."24

The potential lifesaving effectiveness of the Soviet CD program is not a matter of unanimous agreement. However, several studies estimate casualty rates as low as two to three percent of the Soviet population in the event of nuclear war.25

www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil...

they're only fantasy situations stating the militarily plain obvious in order to provoke fear, promote propaganda, and for MONEY.

Does this even qualify as 'news'?

And this is quite true. Having created the conditions by which the US is being rapidly disarmed ( by pretending to focus on high technology while spreading disinformation about Russian disarmament) legitimate fear will result form the same old lies of supposed MAD. The only thing MAD guarantees is that people will be driven mad with insecurity and fear...

Stellar