Anonymous wrote:For some reason, the idea of "system integration" is seldom mentioned when people go OOOO and Ahhhh over spec sheet performance of Russian weapons. "System integration" makes or breaks weapon systems. I would say system integration has broken far more weapon systems than it has ever made, and continues to break weapon systems at will, even those most important projects made by the most experienced and well funded developers. Some examples regarding next generation imaging spy satellites and littoral combat ships in the current US defense establishment comes to mind. Russia was never particularly good at it, and Russian firms now trying to rake in the dollars on international arms market with fancy sounding gadgets no longer has the backing of the mighty Soviet military establishment to bother much with comprehensive system integration.
How much do the Russian debug their new Su-35?
Indeed and How many F35 do we have in service ?
Dave Wooley
Whether F-35 is deeply flawed is yet to be seen. But I bet whatever problems F-35 will turn out to have it would still have benefited far, far, more from a cohesive and systematic approach to system integration than the gadgets the Russians are flaunting on the international market.
I am not saying Americans weapons are great. What I am saying is American weapons probably is capable of being much closer to the combined "Technology-Operability" frontier than Russia would be capable of right now as a result of investment in things that does not show up brightly on brochures in the International arms market. American equipment are scrutinized by people whose life would depend on it and who has experience about what can kill them in battle, and they had access to people who knows how to make changes should issues arises. Russian weapons are optimized to catch the eye of well funded foreigners whose lives the Russians don't care too much about, and those people have limited experience about what counts when shots starts to fly.
Without comprehensive scrutiny and support of a strong and well funded domestic military establish backed by continuous organizational experience, I bet the Russians might approach the US in either technology, or operability, but not both.
Out of my depth here, but I would say that historically Russian vs American weapons systems have not fared well when utilized by proxies. Mitigating that comment is that the Israelies seem to have been better prepared, trained & led than their opponents. And there have been surprises such as the Styx, the F-4's unperceived need for guns, etc. I would think that it would take a few years for the Russians to catch up but that the US should be alert to developments from Russia & China. Of the two, I think the Chinese are more of a threat to develop modern weapons systems due to their booming economy. They are further behind in military technology & have to rely on Russian equipment & technology, but are progressing so fast. They have the financial means, the industries, the engineering & computer personnel base, and the political will to build a modern world-class navy.
Dave Wooley wrote:
Yes Werner it was one of those poor Russian Air defence networks that downed the F117 over Begrade.
Dave Wooley
If you know the aircraft's mission and route ahead of time like the Yugoslavs, you could probably shoot it down with a Cessna 150 and a slingshot. The recent defeat of the Syrian Air Defense System (one of the most powerful systems in the world, and composed of equipment of recent Russian manufacture) is another kettle of fish altogether. Like it or not, that was the real news that came out of the bombing of the Syrian nuclear facility on the Turkish border. Twenty year old Israeli planes of American manufacture completely foiled a state of the art Russian system.
The Serb air defence network if you are correct should not have known in advance the planed course of an F117 . To me that means only two things good Serb intel or bad Nato communications . I think neither . but the Russian air defence equipment was able to detect the F117. As for the so called "much vaunted" Syrian Air Defence well if you were a Russian , would you give the Syrians the best you have, friends or no friends ?
Dave Wooley
Dave Wooley
gs wrote:Out of my depth here, but I would say that historically Russian vs American weapons systems have not fared well when utilized by proxies. Mitigating that comment is that the Israelies seem to have been better prepared, trained & led than their opponents. And there have been surprises such as the Styx, the F-4's unperceived need for guns, etc. I would think that it would take a few years for the Russians to catch up but that the US should be alert to developments from Russia & China. Of the two, I think the Chinese are more of a threat to develop modern weapons systems due to their booming economy. They are further behind in military technology & have to rely on Russian equipment & technology, but are progressing so fast. They have the financial means, the industries, the engineering & computer personnel base, and the political will to build a modern world-class navy.
To add . It could be seen that the new Military /economic axis of India , Russia and China will be hard to match in the years to come. Together their combined resources could tilt the ballance of naval power.
Dave Wooley
It's not really fair to compare the F-35 and the Su-35 as they really demonstrate the same symptoms of command procurement.
It would be ideal if military systems could be delivered in the way Boeing delivered the 777.
If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.
Dave Wooley wrote:The Serb air defence network if you are correct should not have known in advance the planed course of an F117 . To me that means only two things good Serb intel or bad Nato communications . I think neither . but the Russian air defence equipment was able to detect the F117. As for the so called "much vaunted" Syrian Air Defence well if you were a Russian , would you give the Syrians the best you have, friends or no friends ?
Dave Wooley
Dave, the events of the 117 shootdown are well established and a triumph of Humint and air observation. The Serbs had an agent inside the air tasking facility, and they had agents in Italy just off the Aviano runway, and along the Dalmation coast with cell phones calling in their aircraft spots.
This 1999 article illustrates that even at the moment of shootdown the military knew it wasn't an "ordinary" interception, especially in terms of USSR doctrine.
If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.
Didn't Madelin Albright once get caught saying that no one nation deserved to be as blessed with natural resources as Russia? I've read Putin took that quote very badly when he heard it and has mentioned it in some of his recent anti western speeches at home.
In any case, I think at one time the USA was a major oil producing nation and much of our 20th century economic dominance was built on cheap domestic oil and the ability to export it as well. WWII comes to mind when America was awash in domestic cheap oil. It helps to have such a resource.
Didn't Madelin Albright once get caught saying that no one nation deserved to be as blessed with natural resources as Russia? I've read Putin took that quote very badly when he heard it and has mentioned it in some of his recent anti western speeches at home.
In any case, I think at one time the USA was a major oil producing nation and much of our 20th century economic dominance was built on cheap domestic oil and the ability to export it as well. WWII comes to mind when America was awash in domestic cheap oil. It helps to have such a resource.
Bob B.
Aready the scramble for the Arctic reserves has started in earnest and Russia has has made its claim .
Dave Wooley
bengtsson wrote:
Didn't Madelin Albright once get caught saying that no one nation deserved to be as blessed with natural resources as Russia?
Bob B.
The flip side is no one nation deserves to suffer as much human misery as had the Russians.
Nearly all of it self-inflicted.
If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.
Anonymous wrote:For some reason, the idea of "system integration" is seldom mentioned when people go OOOO and Ahhhh over spec sheet performance of Russian weapons.
The Russians were notorious for adding whatever shiny new equipment was available to new ships or ships being rebuilt. The modified Kashin class missile cruisers were equipped with a new variable depth sonar system despite the ships carrying minimal ASW weapons and nothing that could adequately exploit the added capabilities of the VDS system.
The Russians were also big on redundancy because all of their weapons and sensors were single-use only. A SA-N-3 launcher could fire a SA-N-3 missile and nothing else.
Russian ships were always badly overloaded and overcrowded at the expense of crew accomodations because their ships weren't intended to undertake the same long-range deployments as their U.S. counterparts.
Also, in the early 1980s, there were ships the sailors termed "Doves of Peace", because not a single weapons system aboard ship actually worked!
When a Slava visited Norfolk at the beginning of the Glasnost era, visitors noted that the screws which lifted the giant SS-N-12 missile tubes were painted shut and obviously useless. There was an abundance of flammable materials aboard and an elevator took officers from the wardroom to the bridge so they would not arrive exhausted.
If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.
Werner wrote:Also, in the early 1980s, there were ships the sailors termed "Doves of Peace", because not a single weapons system aboard ship actually worked!
When a Slava visited Norfolk at the beginning of the Glasnost era, visitors noted that the screws which lifted the giant SS-N-12 missile tubes were painted shut and obviously useless. There was an abundance of flammable materials aboard and an elevator took officers from the wardroom to the bridge so they would not arrive exhausted.
The Russian navy is famous for slathering thick coats of new paint on everything for any state occassion, and adding such quesi-Victorian touches as neat white cheat lines for visual impact. Notice the paint on the Slava on that occasion is so new that hasn't lost its gloss. The whole ship was also said to stink of paint solvents. The painted screw jack is probably a result of prettying up process just prior to the visit.
Best evidence is the ship, which was delivered from Ukraine without engines, is still engineless. The fact that the flight deck is now being refurbished while the hull is engineless suggests there is no intention of ever fitting engines.
So at best the hull is being prepared to act as a sort of stationary floating training aid for flight operations. The ship itself is probably no being intended for actual sea service.
Russian military expansion in the 1980s was borne on the shoulders of stolen technology, like this Russian knock-off of the DEC pdp-11:
Is there any reason to believe that in the extremely impoverished era between 1990 and 2005, Russia was able to develop the state of the art in all the infrastructure that goes into military equipment nowadays?
If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.
If my statement is false, please show the evidence. I have provided an image of the Elektronika knock-off of the pdp-11 J-11 CPU (which is still the state-of-the-art in CMOS CPUs). The next chip, called the DEC C-VAX, has the words "DEC - When you care enough to steal the very best" on the perimeter of the die, because they knew the Soviets were stealing everything.
I have a few DEC systems. The legend "The FBI investigates every theft of DEC products" appears on the papers next to the list of countries to where export is forbidden.
If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.
Globalsecurity wrote:The 24 September 1958 Chinese acquisition of an American AIM-9B Sidewinder missile marked the beginning of a breakthrough in the development of Soviet air-to-air missiles. The missile, fired from a Taiwanese F-86 Sabre aircraft, lodged without exploding in a Chinese MiG-17. The missile was sent to Toropov's engineering office to be copied, and the product the K-13, long the most popular Soviet air-to-air missile. The Sidewinder had a number of valuable features, not least of which was the modular construction that facilitated ease in production and operation. The simplicity of the AIM-9 was in marked contrast to the complexity of contemporary Soviet missiles. The Sidewinder's infrared-guided homing head contained a free-running gyroscope and was much smaller than Soviet counterparts, and the steering and in-flight stabilization system were equally superior. Gennadiy Sokolovskiy, later chief engineer at the Vympel team, said that "the Sidewinder missile was to us a university offering a course in missile construction technology which has upgraded our engineering education and updated our approach to production of future missiles."
Globalsecurity wrote:
In 1968 the Soviets acquired an American AIM-7M Sparrow, which was similar to the R-23 class of missiles the under development, and the Vympel team copyied the Sparrow under the designation K-25. Several of these missiles were tested, but Soviet R-23 missile was sent to production, and work on the K-25 ended in 1971. The R-23 and R-24 missiles were superior to the K-25 Sparrow-ski in versatility and range, as well as interference immunity, signal processing logic, and other characteristics. Nevertheless, analysis of the Sparrow missile design were helpful in later work on the the R-27 missile: on its hydraulically driven closed-loop servomechanisms and aerodynamic system with movable wings.
If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.
Werner wrote:If my statement is false, please show the evidence. I have provided an image of the Elektronika knock-off of the pdp-11 J-11 CPU (which is still the state-of-the-art in CMOS CPUs). The next chip, called the DEC C-VAX, has the words "DEC - When you care enough to steal the very best" on the perimeter of the die, because they knew the Soviets were stealing everything.
I have a few DEC systems. The legend "The FBI investigates every theft of DEC products" appears on the papers next to the list of countries to where export is forbidden.
The statement with the mostly negative merit is "Russian military expansion in the 1980s was borne on the shoulders of stolen technology". Judging from the subsequent thrust of your argument it was your intention to state that the Soviet Union of 1980s was incapable of building a broad spectrum of competitive military force using domestic R&D and normal high level intelligence of main thrust of the technical progresses by their opponents. That was very evidently not true. The fact that aspects of their hardware developments may have been eased or sped along by theft does not alter the fact that the rest of developments were, just by themselves, more than sufficient to make Soviet Union a military technology superpower. I think they've demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that they can, using purely domestic R&D produce weapons as capable, serviceable, and up-to-date as those of almost any other nation. Just in the naval field, examples of their capacity to keep abreast of the US in some fields, and offset backwardness in some fields with unmatched advances in others, were numerous. Their titanium submarine and liquid metal cooled reactors technologies were prodigiously difficult feats unmatched by any others. Their wake homing technology was unmatched and described with envy the USN. The autonomous landing technology of their Yak-36 is something the US is only now beginning to match. Their short range close in missile defenses were also something that lead the USN by up to 30 years.
All these suggests that the former Soviet military R&D capacity does not form a good basis for any low estimate for current Russian military R&D capacity, as you attempted to imply.
