McCain/Graham obsessing over making Russia enemy

[anatta]

Orlando Sentinel23 Feb 2017

truth from lies.” He fails to realize that you can only hide reality underneath rhetoric for so long. McCain might be pleased to learn that the European Parliament recently passed a resolution to “counteract propaganda against it by third parties.” But what constitutes propaganda? Is it the worldview that establishment politicians would prefer us to adopt? Or is it the reality that they’d prefer that we not discuss?

Either way, you can bet that it has something to do with Russia, of course.

McCain and his travel buddy, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina took their neo-McCarthyist road show to Germany last week, with Graham declaring at the Munich conference that “2017 is going to be a year of kicking Russia in the a-- in Congress.” If only that improved the daily life of American voters.

Since there’s little ideological daylight between Russia and the West these days, and we can’t claim that Russia wants to turn the West communist since Russia isn’t communist anymore, I guess we have to assume that Vladimir Putin just wants to build alliances with as many countries as possible. This is a problem for McCain, who sees Western values as superior.

“And through it all,” McCain said in Munich, “we must never, never cease to believe in the moral superiority of our own values — that we stand for truth against falsehood, freedom against tyranny, right against injustice, hope against despair ...”

The Western establishment has become the new USSR. Fiscally, culturally and ideologically, Europe is a mess. That’s what happens when you take countries that never fully broke free from socialism and overwhelm them with impositions from the rest of the world.

Know who isn’t doing things that way? It’s Russia. And it’s Russia that Syria and now Libya have called upon to fix the mess left by the sort of interventionist foray that McCain consistently encourages.

Russia is the enemy to establishment fixtures such as McCain and Graham only because it’s a distraction from their own political failures.

[anatta]

Putin and Hiftar of Libya have been meeting, and it looks like Putin will back him in Libya.

See Libya thread in "off topic"

[blackascoal]

How incredibly IGNORANT.

McCain and Graham aren't making Russia the enemy .. they ARE the enemy .. a truth the entire world already knows .. including the Russians.

[anatta]

How incredibly IGNORANT.

McCain and Graham aren't making Russia the enemy .. they ARE the enemy .. a truth the entire world already knows .. including the Russians.

ROFL.
NATO expansionism did it -you ignorant war pig. This is what passes for realpolitick these days -jingoism

why the fuck do you think Putin annexed Crimea?
Because the US was meddling in Ukraine elections,and Kyiv was turning towards NATO.
Putin had to protect access to Sevastopol.

How would you like Russian troops on the US border?

Oh well Libya and Russia will work it out, and US interventionism is once again shown as being 100% worthless

[blackascoal]

Americans agree with Mitt Romney: Russia is now greatest enemy of U.S.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...americans-say/

Russian public think USA is No.1 enemy – poll
https://www.rt.com/politics/194512-r...sa-enemy-poll/

Let me guess .. it's all Hillary's fault.

[Irish]

And now liberals. They've all of the sudden become Chicken Hawks and want WW3.

[anatta]

^
^

ROFL..2014 and 2015 polls.
all that shows is Obama's inability to deal with Putin's "bad boy slouching"

[blackascoal]

And now liberals. They've all of the sudden become Chicken Hawks and want WW3.

What WW3? What war?

Keeping Russia at arms length and seeing it as an enemy has worked well for decades. There is no impending war with Russia. Russia isn't capable of winning such a war, and Russia knows it. The US has the greatest conventional military in the world .. without NATO .. and Russia knows that.

Military power comparisons, USA vs Russia
http://www.globalfirepower.com/count...pare+Countries

The US has more nuclear weapons, and the Russians know that. Mutually assured destruction keeps that all in check.

US and Russian militaries have been engaging in joint operations since 2010.

There is no real threat of war .. and kissing Putin's ass wouldn't avoid one if there was a threat.

You lemmings have simply been told that Russia is now your friend by your orange cult leader who yearns to do business there .. and you're just too damn dumb to figure that out.

[anatta]

US/Russian joint exercises have been geared towards counter-terrorism -they are extremely limited.
**
Compare that to: this is absolute Cold War 2.0 behavior. look at this crap-speak.
"there is no threat of war" my ass.

European Reassurance Initiative Shifts to Deterrence
Russian malign influence and aggression against NATO and its allies is a key factor in Europe’s instability and drastic changes in its strategic environment, Allvin said. Following Russia’s attempt to annex Crimea and its activities in Ukraine, he added, the potential for Russia to “further advance its military adventurism into NATO countries has demanded a strong response.”
https://www.defense.gov/News/Article...-to-deterrence

this is an extra $4b on top of the billions and billions wasted in Europe

Oh yeas and Russia now has more nukes -for what it's worth (notmuch)

[Bill]

Even real cons believe it

CPAC

[anatta]

[anatta]

***

The technologies of war developed since the end of the Cold War (and indeed, in the last decade of the Cold War) remain untested in high intensity combat against sophisticated, resourceful opponents. The NATO alliance (and its most powerful members, in non-alliance conflicts) have soundly beaten foes with aging air defense systems, non-existent air forces, and trivial offensive capabilities.

It remains to be seen, however, how effectively NATO would fight against a determined, well-trained opponent with relatively modern technology. Recent events in Ukraine have, for the first time since the Cold War, raised the spectre of direct conflict with Russia. If diplomacy fails and politics push the alliance into war, these are the weapons NATO will need to worry about the most.

Iskander Ballistic Missile:

In the final years of the Cold War, the Soviet Union developed short-range conventional ballistic missiles capable of striking, with great precision, airbases and staging areas well behind NATO lines. The American answer to this was theater missile defense, which (as experience in the Gulf War demonstrated), would not have stopped the opening Soviet volleys.

Anti-ballistic missile systems have improved since the 1980s, but so have Russian missiles. The Iskander-M has a range of 400km, can carry a 700kg warhead of several varieties, and has a circular error probability of around five meters. This makes it deadly to airfields, logistics points, and other stationary infrastructure along a broad front of conflict. Especially given the irregular and broken nature of Russia’s border with NATO, the Iskander gives the Russian military the opportunity to threaten targets deep in Europe.

The Iskander has the capability to retarget in flight, making it possible to engage mobile targets (including ships). It also has a set of built-in evasive maneuver techniques designed to make targeting from missile defenses difficult. In short, the Iskander can threaten to do to NATO forces what NATO forces typically do to everyone else.

The Iskander can put pressure on NATO missile defenses, but also on NATO air forces. Jets operating from forward bases will immediately come under threat of attack, or at least immobilization. If positioned in Kaliningrad, Iskander launchers could threaten a wide array of military and political targets across NATO.

Consequently, we can expect that NATO would target mobile Iskander launchers in the first stage of any conflict. As the history of tracking and destroying mobile missile launchers has been sketchy at best, however, NATO would have to be wary of SRBM attacks deep into the war. And successful attacks against the Iskander launchers depend on the achievement of air superiority over the theater of operations.

Su-27 Flanker Family:

Designed as the USSR’s answer to the F-15, the first Flankers entered service in 1985, but production troubles kept their numbers low until the early 1990s. At that point, the collapse of the Soviet Union significantly reduced the overall production run. The aircraft of the Flanker family combine size, range, speed, and wicked maneuverability into a single deadly platform. With gaunt, unforgiving lines, the Flanker is not a beautiful plane, but its appearance does suggest danger.

The Russian Air Force continues to operate several hundred Flankers in various configurations. The basic Flanker frame has proven remarkably flexible for upgrade, and has become the platform of choice for discerning fighter customers. Variants of the Flanker include the Su-30 multi-role fighter, the Su-33 carrier-based fighter, the S-34 fighter-bomber, the Su-35 air superiority fighter, and several Chinese knock-offs.

he Flanker has never met the most advanced Generation 4 and Generation 4.5 aircraft in combat, and it obviously has never engaged the F-22. Nevertheless, we can expect that it will give fits to pilots of Eagles, Vipers, and Typhoons, and may even cause problems for Raptors. The Russian Air Force has developed tactics for using Flankers to fight stealth fighters that concentrate on taking advantage of the plane’s remarkable maneuverability to survive the first missile attack. Moreover, the Flanker is heavy and fast enough to hit hard and then retreat to safety before any NATO fighters can catch it.

S-400 Surface to Air Missile System:

The entire Western way of war depends on the achievement of air supremacy. NATO forces have not fought against a modern, capable air defense system in a very long time. During that time, the cost of NATO fighter-bombers has metastasized, making the loss of a single aircraft very nearly a national fiscal catastrophe.

An S-400 battery has three kinds of missiles, each intended to engage aerial targets at different ranges. The longest ranged SAM can engage at 400km, with shorter-ranged missiles compensating with enhanced capabilities for killing fast, maneuverable targets. The S-400 can also engage ballistic missiles, although it’s unlikely that NATO would use such weapons. The sensor systems of the S-400 are thought to be extremely effective, especially as Russia can layer S-400 defense zones in nearly every conceivable theater of conflict. Positioning the S-400 at Kaliningrad could endanger NATO air operations deep into Europe.

In combination with the Iskander and the Flanker, these missiles would make the job of NATO air forces in the early days of a conflict very difficult, indeed. Russian sensor systems (ground and air) exceed the capabilities of any opponent that NATO countries have fought in the last twenty-five years. The SEAD (suppression of enemy air defense) mission against an integrated air defense network (Russia has a wide variety of shorter-range systems for point defense) would prove extremely treacherous.

At least in the early days of the war, the S-400 and its associated systems could neutralize NATO airpower, undermining one of the central pillars of the Western way of war.

Akula class Submarines:

NATO forces developed an extremely capable anti-submarine system during the Cold War, including aircraft, attack submarines, stationary sensors, and surface ships. The collapse of the Soviet Union dramatically reduced the Russian submarine threat, with the eventual consequence of a reduction of NATO anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities. While NATO forces (and especially US forces) have continued to pursue ASW, they no longer can draw upon the resources they enjoyed during the Cold War.

And yet Russian submarines remain. In the 1980s and 1990s, the USSR and Russia built fifteen Akula (Shcuka-B) class submarines, nine of which remain in service. Extremely stealthy for Soviet subs of their period, the Russian Navy has upgraded the boats with the latest quieting technology. Perhaps most importantly, the Akulas carry a massive array of weaponry, including torpedoes and cruise missiles. The cruise missiles can strike both sea and land targets, putting much of NATO’s coastline at risk.

The best NATO subs can still track and defeat the Akulas, although the latter’s high speed makes catching them an iffy proposition. But even if NATO can sink the Russian subs, they can still wreak an enormous amount of havoc before they submerge for good. This could mean killing a carrier, or simply causing enormous, unexpected damage to critical infrastructure ashore.

In five years, as Russian diesel-electric technology continues to develop, the Lada class may replace the Akulas, at least in context of the narrow contours of a NATO-Russian conflict. For now, however, the enduring stealth and massive armament of the Akulas continues to present a threat, not only to NATO shipping, but also to NATO land installations.

Spetsnaz:

During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union conceived of special operations forces primarily in terms of support of conventional operations. Even at the time, however, the Soviets interpreted this mission more broadly than NATO. Spetsnaz (an umbrella term that has come to encompass special forces operators under several organizational designations) were expected to undertake offensive operations concentrating on the sabotage of communications, the preparation for conventional advance, and even the wreaking of political havoc.

As with all other elements of the Russian military, the special forces deteriorated in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, the Russian Army took advantage of the Chechen insurgency to reconstruct and redevelop its own commando/special forces capabilities. It has built these units into a formidable military and political tool, capable of having an impact on all areas of warfare. This reconstruction took place parallel to the expansion of Western special forces under the aegis of the War on Terror; indeed, NATO and Russian special forces sometime undertook joint training exercises to improve effectiveness.

As they now exist, Russian special forces represent a major problem for the West at all levels of escalation. In the event of conflict, we could expect Russian special forces to operate at various stages of the conflict, as they have during the Ukraine crisis. If war develops over a border dispute between Russia and one of the Baltics, we will undoubtedly find Russian special operators there ahead of us. In the case of general war, special forces may deploy from submarines or other vehicles to launch attacks throughout NATO’s depth.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the...r-18702?page=3

[anatta]

here are five NATO weapons that will be used to deter Russian aggression in Europe.

Virginia-class Submarines:

While Russia has invested in some very capable new submarines, the United States Navy and its fleet of Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines still dominate beneath the waves of the Atlantic. Indeed, the United States’ fleet of Virginia-class boats will continue to grow and improve.

On Tuesday, U.S. defense secretary Ashton Carter said that the latest defense “budget invests over $8.1 billion in 2017, and more than $40 billion over the next five years,” giving the United States the “most lethal” submarine force in the world. “And it not only buys nine of our most advanced Virginia Class attack submarines over the next five years, it also equips more of them with a versatile Virginia payloads module, which triples each submarine's platform strike capacity from twelve Tomahawk missiles to forty.”

F-35 Joint Strike Fighter:

Though the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is years behind schedule, plagued with unending technical glitches, incurred massive cost overruns and will likely never deliver the capabilities that were originally promised, the stealthy new jet looks likely to become a formidable weapon in time. The F-35 won’t be the fastest, most maneuverable or even the best-armed aircraft on Earth—by many of those measures it’s sorely outclassed by current and even previous generation warplanes—but it has some key advantages.

The Joint Strike Fighter’s strengths are its stealth and sensors, which will allow it to penetrate and strike areas beyond the reach of conventional fighters while also collecting a detailed intelligence picture. The F-35 is also equipped with potent electronic warfare systems, which should prove to be useful.

With its operational requirements documents having been drawn up as the Cold War was ending, the F-35 is less than ideal for dealing with today’s ultra high-end threats emanating from Russia and China. As such, the F-35 is not a perfect or even necessarily a good aircraft, but it is the jet America has chosen to invest in for better or worse. American and allied aviators will have to make it work—and make it work in Europe.

Long Range Strike Bomber:

Given Russia’s prowess at developing air defenses—particularly its efforts at developing low frequency radars that are capable of tracking fighter-sized stealth aircraft—the Long Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) that is being developed over the next decade will be critical to holding targets deep inside Moscow’s heartland at risk.

While the LRS-B program is extremely secretive and is currently under protest, it is known that the requirements for the new stealth bomber call for it to be able penetrate into the densest of air defenses—even those backed by low frequency radar. That means that the new bomber will almost certainly be a flying wing design and might incorporate some electronic and cyber warfare capabilities to blind the lowest frequency VHF radars that it can’t evade with shaping alone.

Leopard 2:

The Leopard 2A7 is the latest in a long lineage of German tanks designs that started with the diminutive Panzerkampfwagen I—and it will continue to remain the backbone of the Bundeswehr and other NATO powers.

Though it first entered service in 1979, over the years, the Leopard 2 has been improved with a longer L55 cannon that offers far better performance against more heavily protected enemy tanks. One of the self-imposed limitations of the Leopard 2 is the fact that Germany refuses to use depleted uranium for its tank rounds—which means that the Bundeswehr has to find alternative materials. As such, German tank rounds are made out of tungsten—which does not quite offer the performance of a depleted uranium sabot round like the U.S. Army’s M829A3 or future M829E4 (A4 when operational).

Because of the limitations of tungsten ammunition, the Bundeswehr has some doubts as to the ability of its penetrator rounds to punch through the armor of the latest Russian tanks. Specifically, there might be instances where German ammunition might not have enough kinetic energy to ensure a kill against the T-80, T-90 and obviously the new T-14 Armata.

One option for the Germans is to test and certify American ammunition like the M829 series or develop its own depleted uranium sabot rounds. However, there are political and technical challenges that would have to be overcome. Firstly, there is strong political resistance to developing depleted uranium ammunition in Germany. Secondly, using American ammunition might be difficult since those rounds are built to such tight tolerances—it’s not clear if the M829 would be compatible with the longer L55 barrel on the newest Leopard 2 variants.

Boeing AH-64E Apache:

The Boeing AH-64A Apache helicopter gunship was first introduced in 1986 as a weapon to blunt an anticipated Soviet armored spearhead punching through the Fulda Gap in what is now central Germany. The Apache proved itself an able tank killer during the 1991 Gulf War, decimating Iraq’s beleaguered forces.

Since then, the Apache has undergone many modernizations—adding ever improving sensors and weapons. But like its predecessors, the newest Apache models can carry sixteen Hellfire anti-attack weapons—or enough to wipe out a company of tanks in a single salvo.

While the Apache has mostly been used to fight insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years, the powerful gunship retains its formidable anti-tank punch.

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the...-use-war-18702
10 Killer Weapons Russia and NATO Would Use in a War

[christiefan915]

Even real cons believe it

CPAC

I know, huh! I started a thread on this, no replies yet.

[cawacko]

The world is upside down to me. The right loved and liberals hated when Reagan called the Russians the evil empire. In 2012 Romney rightfully called out Russia and Obama said his 'the '80's called and wants their foreign policy back' and liberals ate it up.

Now we have people on the right supporting Russia and liberals declaring them an enemy? What the hell is going on???