Russia is to supply Iran with a new and lethal anti-aircraft system capable of shooting down American or Israeli fighter jets in the event of any strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Iran has confirmed that Russia had agreed to deliver the S-300 air defence system, a move that is likely to irk the Bush administration and gives further proof of Russia and Iran’s deepening strategic partnership…
“It’s purely a defensive system. But it’s very effective. It’s much better than the US system. It has good radar. It can shoot down low-flying cruise missiles, though with some difficulty.”
I hope you didn’t actually believe that our imperial government’s policy of regime change was going to be accepted without a murmur.
Coupled with the Bush version of Star Wars, the good old days of military escalation are back in place. Including larger guaranteed profits for the military money-boys – of course.
Russia thinks it’s ok for Iran, the same country with an avowed aim of killing Americans and wiping Israel off the map, with an anti-missile/aircraft system
They did the same thing in the cold war. Despite the show Putin puts on, he stills considers the US to be the enemy of Russia.
Is the Soviet Union that hard up for currency
Yup!
As for a weapons race, you haven’t been paying attention to China or Soviet developments, they have both been improving their weapons systems since the Cold-War was supposed to have ended
A fact, I bet few Americans know about and many Democrats are trying to ignore.
Re: Post 11.
“It can deploy and launch without preparation in under 5 minutes … ”
LOL
Just the mechanics of moving into the site will take longer than 5 minutes. And if the battery is already there, it’s not “without preparation”.
As for the electronics:
It takes time to load tactical software into the computers.
You can “cheat” and run vehicle power to the ovens for the high stability quartz crystal oscillators to eliminate the 5 to 10 minute warmup time. What you CANNOT do, however, is simply turn on a high powered radar transmitter from a cold start and be ready to go.
“It uses a phased array antenna target guidance system, for rapid target acquisition. That pretty much puts anything, including so-called stealth aircraft, on the menu.”
Phased array antennas do provide some interesting enhancements to an air defense missile battery, but they are not a magic bullet against stealth aircraft. And they have one huge disadvantage: they cannot cover a full 360 degree circle.
Low flying aircraft can sneak in with cluster bombs and destroy the site with one pass. So you need to emplace short range air defense equipment around it to try to force attacking aircraft up into what we call the missile envelope.
And that leads to the big strategic disadvantage. If you see one, you know there’s a high value target somewhere close.
Re: Post #20
“The really twisted part is there are more of us than there are war mongers, go figure…”
The problem here is that Arab and Persian Muslims are not rational by Western standards.
The fact of the matter is the US wants geopolitical/military domination of the entire middle/near east, as well as Iran’s oil.
And Russia (along with China) simply isn’t going to allow it. Russia is growing steadily and rapidly stronger financially, economically and in technological/military sophistication, while the US is already bankrupt(it’s only the hundreds of billion of $$$$ that the Federal Reserve keeps creating out of thin air and pumping into the US financial system that keeps the US afloat.
America, like Ancient Rome is dying, with military adventures around the globe and a bankrupt system that will implode and collapse before too long.
Russia is in the catbird seat, and they know it!
“…irk the Bush administration and gives further proof of Russia and Iran’s deepening strategic partnership…”
Russia is selling the missiles for the money. If George Bush said he wanted some, they would sell them to him too. The whole inference of a strategic alliance is baloney.
These days Russia is about the cash.
Dan
#24 yeah, Russia and China are the good guys. You have it right.
And people are not scared of low neuron count people.
Every nation has a right to self-defense.
The Bush Regime gripes about the wierdest things! Rumsfeld complained that Venezuela was buying rifles….RIFLES! Whats next, bayonets??!?!?
Who is scared of Iran, nobody really, but when the war drums sound, the aggressor always has to think up an excuse, like when Hitler said Poland was planning an invasion of germany….and conveniently left out the fact that Poland only had biplanes and horse cavalry.