Obama/McCain and Russia/Georgia

#76
#76
lawgator1 said:
He's a well known conservative writer and editor. In fact, he was held over as sort of the lone conservative over at the Sun Times after a re-organization. Even conservatives call him conservative: Chicago Sun Times 'Moving Forward' by Returning To Its Liberal Roots | NewsBusters.org

He's Bob Novak's editor, if memory serves.

Citing a guy like Huntley on what Obama's position is would not not quite equate with quoting Al Franken on McCain, but its's not that far from it.
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Why'd you throw me in on this? I was commenting about your criticisms of AV123 - I haven't endorsed Obama's or McCain's position on the matter and never made any claims about Huntley.
 
#77
#77
MontereyVol said:
In guerrilla warfare the opposition doesn't have a visible base to attack, Georgia does. They would still have to defend their cities from being overrun by Russians. You seem to think they can move into the breakaway provinces and and conduct a guerrilla campaign and not worry that Russia would come in and hit their civilians hard! The Russians aren't bound by our MSM's code of ethics for war.
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You have to keep reminding me of just how efficient the Russians were against the Chechen guerrillas...

This is not Che in the 1960's or Mao in the '30s and '40s. Guerrilla warfare certainly can be conducted in cities and in itself it is a great defense against having cities"overrun." On top of that, as long as Russia still wants to maintain some semblance of justification for its actions, it will not resort to the wholesale leveling of cities in order to root out an insurgency.
 
#78
#78
therealUT said:
You have to keep reminding me of just how efficient the Russians were against the Chechen guerrillas...

This is not Che in the 1960's or Mao in the '30s and '40s. Guerrilla warfare certainly can be conducted in cities and in itself it is a great defense against having cities"overrun." On top of that, as long as Russia still wants to maintain some semblance of justification for its actions, it will not resort to the wholesale leveling of cities in order to root out an insurgency.
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No, guerrilla warfare is a last defense from cities already overran (ie Paris in WWII) or the first stages of a takeover of a city (ie how the Taliban took power). It would be idiotic for a country to give in their cities so they can start conducting a guerrilla campaign. Its more to the Russians advantage to conduct a Guerrilla campaign.

Chechnya, look what guerrilla warfare did for them. They cant stop the factions from fighting each other, with the Russians gone Chechnya has become a failed state. So in that regard Russia accomplished its objective. What stopped the Soviets was the Budyonnovsk hospital hostages, so in effect, terrorism did the job.
 
#80
#80
tim said:
Now.. Is there any doubt that the missle shield will be installed?
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For all those who didn't see the threat and the reasoning for a missile defense system here you go. We thought the cold war had ended but it certainly looks like it could heat up quickly.
 
#81
#81
Russian armored vehicles are reportedly moving deeper into Georgian territory. I guess we'll see what kind of message the US sends in terms of how worthy an ally we are.
 
#82
#82
KB5252 said:
For all those who didn't see the threat and the reasoning for a missile defense system here you go. We thought the cold war had ended but it certainly looks like it could heat up quickly.
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I agree, it does look that way..
 
#83
#83
KB5252 said:
For all those who didn't see the threat and the reasoning for a missile defense system here you go. We thought the cold war had ended but it certainly looks like it could heat up quickly.
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Our missile defense system would do very, very little against Russian missiles - and I don't think it will ever be able to select warheads out of sophisticated decoy packages like the Russians can deploy. I *might* believe that it could offer us some protection from places like Iran, which is what the European MD shield is all about according to the US (not Russia - though that, too, is a lie).
 
#84
#84
TennTradition said:
Our missile defense system would do very, very little against Russian missiles - and I don't think it will ever be able to select warheads out of sophisticated decoy packages like the Russians can deploy. I *might* believe that it could offer us some protection from places like Iran, which is what the European MD shield is all about according to the US (not Russia - though that, too, is a lie).
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I bet you're wrong.
 
#85
#85
TennTradition said:
Our missile defense system would do very, very little against Russian missiles - and I don't think it will ever be able to select warheads out of sophisticated decoy packages like the Russians can deploy. I *might* believe that it could offer us some protection from places like Iran, which is what the European MD shield is all about according to the US (not Russia - though that, too, is a lie).
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I believe, and have for some time, that it was meant to send a message to Russia as well. There have been clear signs for some time now that they have been reverting back to their old ways (which they never really abandoned). It may not be fully effective but it does however send a message that we are not convinced of their intentions.
 
#89
#89
Hilarious. The Obama people should be shaking in their boots thinking that an international crisis may move front and center to this election.
 
#90
#90
"may or may not have complicated the situation."

What kind of statement is that? Just raw political garbage. I would throw her off for such trash.

Either make the statement or don't, but don't quibble into making a preposterous assertion.

By the way, I like that McCain called it like it is, as opposed to continued appeasement of Putin.
 
#91
#91
TT may mean dummy warheads? There are missiles that deploy dozens of false warheads along with the real thing, and I think TT thinks our defense system would have a hard time selecting which warheads to fire at amongst all the false targets.

Simple answer is to destroy before seperation.
 
#92
#92
The irony is that Obama's current statements mirror those of McCain. Their claim is that his position evolved to this point as he learned the "facts on the ground". Wasn't he (Obama) shooting from the hip with his Iraq policy? Could it be that McCain understands the facts better since he's been engaged in this issue for a long time and consistently? Since Obama is now mirroring McCain's position is that an admission that McCain had this one right?
 
#93
#93
BigPapaVol said:
I bet you're wrong.
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About which aspect? I'm fairly certain of the current capabilities. My future predictions are just that, so I could be wrong...I'm just basing them on basic physics, the ability of an enemy to counter our defensive maneuvers, the massive number of nuclear weapons involved, and the tremendous physical and psychological differences between conventional and nuclear arms.
 
#94
#94
This is laughable! From the reports I've heard McCain made the calls to find out the situation on the ground in Georgia, to find out who the aggressor was, what kind of diplomatic action had been taken and then formed his opinion and released a pretty concise statement on the issue. Sounds like the Obama express is suffering from a little experience envy and since they got out done on this they want to infer that McCain could have made the situation worse. Moronic!
 
#95
#95
MontereyVol said:
TT may mean dummy warheads? There are missiles that deploy dozens of false warheads along with the real thing, and I think TT thinks our defense system would have a hard time selecting which warheads to fire at amongst all the false targets.

Simple answer is to destroy before seperation.
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Yes, that is what I mean. The problem is that the current strategy of our missile defense system is exo-atmospheric hit-to-kill. That is specifically the type of system I am talking about when I say that I don't think it will ever work. While it might be possible to hit before separation, this would probably require endoatmospheric intercept - but on the firing end. I'm not sure about the time required to do that....it takes a good amount of time to acquire and then track sufficiently to launch the interceptor, plus the time required for intercept. I believe that is why we have pursued exo-atmospheric missile defense.
 
#96
#96
BigPapaVol said:
I think we know where many of the decoys are and I think the technology is much better than anything actually available for guys like TennTradition to read.
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As MV alluded to...I'm talking about discernment...picking a warhead out of 20 or more decoys. Our current hit-to-kill strategy will never work in that scenario. If we completely change our approach, including putting nuclear weapons in space back on the table, then we may be able to come up with something - but that comes with serious political cost. It isn't that I don't like the idea of defending ourselves. If we could develop an effective shield, it would be great. But, I can also see that we are currently going down a road that will be only moderately productive. Exo-atmospheric hit-to-kill is not going to happen against sophisticated targets, in my opinion.
 
#99
#99
I can't say I am all that familiar with which model they want in Europe. But, it should be linked in to other systems for detection at launch, the interceptor is able to fire at several stages in the missiles trajectory based on the data feed, along that trajectory the interceptor will start seeing it as well. Multi-stage firing is the fail safe for accuracy of hitting the target, if it misses the first time it still has time to fire again at the target. Or another interceptor complies and fires at it at a predetermined time from the master interceptor.
 
#100
#100
MontereyVol said:
I can't say I am all that familiar with which model they want in Europe. But, it should be linked in to other systems for detection at launch, the interceptor is able to fire at several stages in the missiles trajectory based on the data feed, along that trajectory the interceptor will start seeing it as well. Multi-stage firing is the fail safe for accuracy of hitting the target, if it misses the first time it still has time to fire again at the target. Or another interceptor complies and fires at it at a predetermined time from the master interceptor.
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Yeah. That makes sense. We rely pretty heavily on satellite detection of launch (using IR). So, we get a very early launch notice. We have to wait until the missile makes it's way over the horizon before we can get a trajectory, though - but this is the advantage of placing the forward x-band radars in places like the black sea or extreme eastern Europe. While we could launch an interceptor as soon as we detect launch, the chances of it being anywhere in the area we need it to be aren't all that great - and we would probably be better off with one of the later-firing interceptors than the first. But, let's say that we do get initial trajectory information from FXB radar and then let the next 2 or 3 interceptor missiles make their way to the target. Do you really think that we can make acquisition before separation of the warhead package from the last stage of the carrying missile? Because otherwise it would seem extremely difficult to use the IR sensors aboard our kill vehicles to pick out a relatively cool warhead package when it is not completely out of our atmosphere. Perhaps our radar would be sufficient, but that is certainly not the approach that we've been taking within the missile defense agency.

There must be some pretty serious technical difficulty with doing it in this manner or we would not continue to throw billions into the black hole that is exo-atmospheric hit-to-kill. I imagine that it is harder to obfuscate these drawbacks (to an early intercept) than it is for the exo-atmospheric intercept.
 
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