Originally posted by Sandman11
I do not underestimate Russian R&D efforts, but they are not at Soviet Union levels.
Which were higher than American levels in terms of brain power assigned. Fact is they still do great research on many areas and there is no reason to want to underestimate it.
They were also very wide spread, but included some very ineffective weapon efforts, while the US tries to make gold plated weaponry.
Very ineffective such as? Compared to the huge waste of tax payer money that is the US defense budget nothing the Russians could do could be anywhere near as wasteful with the funds in hand.
And It would seem most USSR scientists and engineers are now working for Lockheed and General Dynamics, and the head of the former Soviet Biological weapons program is now working for the US Gov where they are all paid what they are worth, instead of starving.
Some are but since the Russian efforts were normally far larger in terms of manpower/brainpower allotments i doubt losing individuals would have slowed down the programs as much as lack of funds/interest would. Do you really believe that Soviet scientist were starving and if so why have you chosen to believe that?
(not that the US was doing bad before they came over) How are you so sure that money is being "wasted"? That is only your opinion. There are a lot of "black Budget" programs we have to hide and pay for in our $500.00 cappicino machines we put in P-3s.
The money that goes into black budgets may go towards weapon systems or more likely into private hands of contractors and the like. I guess you want to assume that corruption will not happen but it would be interesting to see you prove how they can 'lose track' of a trillion odd dollars in ten years. Did that money really go towards super secret weapons or did some fat-cats just get richer? Your assumptions is quite contrary to the blatant rip-offs that the US defense industrial complex repeatedly, and blatantly, visit on the American tax payer.
It's "kinda illogical" (nothing new for you either) to assume Russian leads where no evidence of any inferiority exists outside your claims and one sided external sources with varying agenda's, like generals wanting more money for the F-22.
And this is how you addressed most all my dozens of sources. It does not matter if they were US defense personal or Secretaries of defense or WHATEVER; if the claims they made were contrary to your opinion it was clearly enemy propaganda ( I did not know the US defense sec works for the Russians?) of some sort that you did not have to bother responding to. All you ever had in response to my hard work was blanket denials and a repetitive denial of sources you never even bothered addressing. If you had the guts to list them source my source and state your reasoning for disagreeing i could respect you but the blanket denial proves you were at least smart enough to realise how stupid it would look if you typed " enemy propaganda" in response to 10 sources from widely differing perspectives. Your not serious about defending your point of view and all you have done so far as try dimiss mine with vapid denial.
"If it's Russian, it's better" is the premis. Sorry that is not good enough for me. The American Army went through Sadam's army like a hot knife through butter, and every proxy war (with other nations fighting with US against Russian made hardware) has favored the US made equipment.
And it's a rather well known fact that the equipment can not make you better at war fighting than you already are. Superior doctrine and training/command with inferior weapons can beat inferior doctrine and training/command with far superior weapon systems any day of the week and human history has proven as much time and time again. Large numbers of badly trained/led men with low morale wielding great equipment will still very likely lose against a enemy who has decided to win whatever the cost or the state of his equipment.
Vietnam/Korea/Second world war are all evidence that war is not a linear exercise where superior/inferior equipment decided the outcome.
With this in mind, the world knows who's is best. The market pays for the best and the US is still the largest arms exporter for that reason.
Well if you studied the topic you would realise that great amounts of American weapons are in fact ' given away' with various programs run by the Us government. Research export credits if you like and you might realise that the large number of weapons sold does not really mean a great amount of money is actually made. The Russians might sell less but it comes with few strings attached if you have the money in your pocked. The US will give you hundreds of millions worth of arms for little short term cost if you are willing to accept the political strings attached.
Though the United States dominates the global arms trade, its arms exports receive finance from export credit-like programs run out of the U.S. Department of Defense rather than U.S. ECAs, with some exceptions. However, most European countries use their ECAs.27 For example, although arms represent only 2 percent of the United Kingdom's exports, in 2000-2001 defense exports represented nearly half the portfolio of the U.K.'s ECA, the ECGD; and the arms business accounts for a massive portion of its outstanding claims.28 Major recipients of ECGD-supported arms exports have included South Africa, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.29 The ECGD promoted the sale of Hawk jets to Indonesia despite their being used in the brutal suppression of East Timor. And in South Africa, facing an ECGD-backed purchase of over $1 billion worth of fighter jets, church and human rights groups have argued that the country's large weapons procurement program directly contradicts its development needs.3
www.foodfirst.org...
I could find some better sources but i would rather spend my evening more constructively.
As such, it makes perfect logical sense that the US does not have to even advertise, as opposed to Russia, who has to exaggerate it's claims on weapons capabilities to get customers. Let's see some US equipment take a bad defeat before you make too many claims to Russian technological superiority.
The logic used in this reasoning is so basically flawed ( it's not your fault your ignorant and do not see the larger economic picture) that it's not really worth responding to. Let's just say the world is a far more complex place than you think it is. Stop accusing me of not being able to understand complexity when you seemingly think weapon sales happens independent of political and economic realities.
I have never made that claim, but you have, repeatedly, how if it's Russian, it is better, and Russia will win any major conflict.
I have sometimes, for effect, used words to describe Russian weapons that in biased minds would create the impression that i think they are better than even i would give them credit for. My claim rested on the premise that strategic planners in the US would have had to deal with far more unknowns, in planning for a nuclear exchange, than the USSR/Russia would have and that reality would have given them a clear strategic edge independent of weapon system performances. I tried to build a case that their Sam's were in fact dual use weapons and that coupled with their largely mobile and re loadable ICBM forces and civil defense network they would probably ( more than 50% chance) have won a nuclear exchange if those were in fact the prime movers. There are obviously many factors beyond that which i tried to include but i think i did state it as opinion when i made the claim that they would win. I proceeded to address each of your major objections showing how they did not affect that opinion of mine. If you want to bring new claims or address my earlier one's you are free to do so but as it stands you have brought no evidence that my original statement was not in fact largely or at all inaccurate.
I have actually agreed with you on some points, for example that there were "Dual use" SAMS in Russia, but disagree as to their effectiveness.
Well you would have been a fool to disagree with everything i said as the evidence is so damn overwhelming in some instances that even you had to accept it. The fact that you ridicule me on other points, when i brought the same amount of undisputed evidence( by you at least), is what got me rather angry at you. While accepting evidence do not require work on your side disputing mine does and if you are not willing to get involved and do your share you MUST consider/keep in mind that evidence when trying to build the larger view. If your logic reasoning process works any other way your never going to be the wiser.
Also the mystery of Yamantau mountain. So don't say I am the one who is stubbornly and blindly patriotic.
Since i am not Russian and you are apparently American i think the patriotism thing applies more accurately to you. If you did not figure out where i am from in all those responses i can but wonder if you read much of the source material i supplied. Makes me wonder just how serious you are about this 'discussion'.
Given the US's armed forces record against major armies on the battlefield within the last couple decadesI think you underestimate the US, but that is your opinion.
Well i looked at that record and i came away extremely unimpressed. While i understand the role US politicians played in undermining the US 'defense' ( read rabidly offensive) forces i still noted how even small scale conflicts were mismanaged. If the men directly in charge of the armed forces could not wield enough political power to actually get the political backing to WIN the wars how well did they do when it came to weapons procurement and training standards? One can but wonder and i certainly do.
The A-6 was a wonderful medium range low altitude bomber. Yes some small arms fire brought down a few of them, but the vast majority of them flew under the radar coverage and attacked their targets. There were losses, but that is war. It was rare though that small arms brought down an Intruder.
Well i never said small arms fire. What i said was that these long range Sam's forced attack aircraft lower thus exposing them to short range manpads and old fashioned steel-wall AA and others.
The Tornado also specializes in low altitude attack, as the F-15E. Today that Billion Dollar S-400 system can be overwhelmed eventually.
Everything can be overwhelmed imo but they still lost Two Tornado's in the first days of the gulf war trying to do low level bombing against airfields. I am not saying that the damn S-400 is invulnerable as much as i am saying that they are getting better far faster than the weapons that will have to be used to kill them.
How about 100 cruise missiles with the same time on target?
The S-300 could shoot down cruise missiles so maybe you could saturate the target or maybe you just use up all your cruise missiles in the first few days trying to kill radar's that can displace in mere minutes and certainly long before your cruise missile gets there. Whatever you do your still attacking the air defense instead of other things thus buying the enemy time. A good defense buys you time to stage a attack elsewhere but if defense is all your going to bring to the conflict it will probably not work and ESPECIALLY not when you are the weaker power.
Or maybe JASSM's, whose stealth and low level would make engagement difficult. It's all economics ultimately, and tactics with lower cost weapons like JASSMs, JADAMs, HARMs, and Cruise Missiles will overwhelm any defense complex, dollar for dollar.
Offense is always going to be more expensive than defense. The infrastructure you need to attack is simple more costly than the one you will need in defense and it is kind of silly arguing that the Iraqi's or North Vietnamese ever had a chance anyways. We will not even mention the type of training that offense required compared to defense.
The attackers are cheaper than the defenders. A billion dollars of attacking weapons will defeat a billion dollars of defending weapons in the example above with tactics and training that goes on at Nellis, and Red Flag.
Well i just disagree on that score and if you want to argue dollar costs of offense over defense your free to start doing so and you can start by listing the industrial base required to construct modern fighter planes compared to the infrastructure required for Sam's and the like. I think it will be interesting to try prove my point in terms of dollar value's of the systems.
You do not think Nellis AFB cost a heap of cash to construct and that the fighter pilots in those planes spend hundreds of hours to train for the mission? It's a incredibly costly business to keep a modern air force effective ( well practiced with modern equipment) while the main cost towards a air defense system is the initial cost. There is no comparison cost wise as you will soon realise when you start putting the numbers on paper as i have.
No, I can and have in the past found plenty to refute your claims and posts before, just as I have seen others do.
It would be absolutely AWESOME if you could source me back to even ONE such a incident ( should be easy, right?) if putting down one source will not strain you too much. You can also source that ' seen other's do' if you like as my record is pretty clean last i checked. It's what happens when one sticks to the facts and leave opinions to others.
You just claimed you didn't like my sources. I don't like yours.
The difference here is that i clearly stated why i objected to each source with evidence to back why. You used blanket denials to address half a dozen or more sources even thought the basic premise of such denial frequently did not even apply to ONE source. You were never seriously interested in debate as debates is about addressing EACH and EVERY claim made with logical counter claims or concessions. You never realised that conceding a invalid premise/point lends credibility to your entire argument as readers will realise your in it for the knowledge and not the 'glory'. Until your willing to go back and address all those dozens of claims point by point you will not have a shred of credibility with me.
I might go beyond the 30minutes or so I have spent on you tonight, but the way you treat people, you are not worth it.
I did the right thing for as long as a human being could while you ignored my claims and stuck to repeating the same old lies i just spent hours carefully addressing with dozens of sources. Your lying now as you lied then and i for one will keep pointing that fact out. If the mods could get off their mostly lazy ( anything longer than a page seems to = yawn, 'id-rather-not-read-that-much') behinds you would have been banned AGES ago. Even structuring your post was too much trouble for you.
I think most will agree with me on that point, and I am suprised you have not been banned yet.
Well i am far more surprised that your still here. :0 Fact is my posting record reflect the fact that i do not go around seeking for trouble or insulting people who know less than me if their willing to learn and consider my points. You have never been interested in what i have to say when in contradicts what you have chosen to believe and have gone our of your way to avoid having to address my claims in a pointed, accurate fashion.
It is difficult to engage anyone seriously on such juvenile terms, and either you are very young, or you are not well.Either way, believe it or not, I hope the best for you.
It might be difficult to engage me but since it never avoided ANY of your points or statements at least you could have used the opportunity to convince me. What you in fact did was just repeat the same claims numerous time after i just finished explaining my point of view relating to EACH claim you made. If sticking to facts and trying to arrive at logical conclusions is what juvenile,'young' or un-well people do then i guess i am guilty of all that. I always assumed that arriving at conclusions by supporting all my statements and addressing the claims/facts/statements of others were the way one conducted yourself in discussion. You might want to advise me on what you suggest i do if that is not in fact what one should be doing.
Of course I expect your insulting, demeaning and irrelevent response to claim I have not looked at the true facts you present (which I have, and I reject as Russian propaganda ), but what you don't realize that you are not the expert you claim you are, unless you want to reveal something to add credibility to yourself???
Well i do not know if you have looked at the facts as you never address my statements and quotes/ sources in a pointed fashion. Since you are not willing to commit to defending your prior claims i really have no idea what you make of the evidence presented by myself. I would like to ask how the claims made by prominent American defense/intelligence establishment figures can be consider Russian propaganda as i always thought they were actually working for the sides paying them. Now i realise there are high level spies but it would be interesting to see you prove how so many American defense secretaries were working for the Russians. I might be proved extremely ignorant on all scores but that can hardly happen when you never address my claims and thus expose that ignorance. The fact seems to be that you are the more ignorant of the two of US as i did address your claims and proved them mostly inaccurate and false.
Are you an expert? Are you involved in "classified" projects and please expand on that subject, because we all want to hear.
Well there is no way i can describe myself as a expert as all i have done so far is source material and arguments from experts and then try put it together in the most logical fashion. Now since i rely on the expertise of others i will assume all their mistakes in my arguments if i use them as sources and my arguments should then be easily proven false. If i however pick the right sources and use them towards deductive reasoning i should come up with theories that can be defended in detail. Since you have offered nothing in the way of logical counter-claims there is no reason for me to change my theory till such time as i find evidence that suggest i should alter it.
Your "classified projects' and 'secret data' nonsense is growing old as we have to make do with what we have on paper before us. If you can not introduce even ONE source on the Internet to support a claim odds are there is nothing to talk about. Information leaks out and it lands somewhere on the Internet in some obscure discussion board for people to make the basis of their thinking and claims but if you can not cite where you got a idea from your just wasting time and energy on nonsense.
Tell us why we should believe you above the oposite opinion out there, because there are many.
Because i support my claims far better than ANYONE even came close to trying to do relating to SAM's/ABM's being currently in large scale service in Russia. If you want to believe something that is fine but when you make specific claims on a public board the idea is to defend them and eventually go wherever the evidence leads you. If you can not follow the evidence trail you can not make mistakes or learn from them. There is few greater flaws than sticking to a opinion/fact/idea simple because it was the first one you had on the topic.
Or are you like most others here, amatures as I am searching the haze between fact and fiction, trying to find the truth, amongst a lot of static, which you are so good at spewing...
I am like others here if that is what those others are doing without me ever catching them in the process. Fact is i rarely find ANYONE on this forum who sources their ideas and theories as diligently as i do. My train of thought is evidence in my sources and if such sources is disputed or proven false my train of thought has been proven to change. That is all i ask of everyone on the forum. Basically that means that if my mind is not changing your arguments are not working and odds are i will be showing you why they are not doing so so that you may once again know why i am not changing my mind on the subject. Again that is all that we should demand of each other.
So please, do me the favor of not responding to my post. Don't "waste" your time, as you say. (I bet you can't control yourself, and will)
I just wasted a great deal of my time doing just that.
When it comes to serial spammers like you i can never prevent myself from responding as you guys are intelligent and educated enough to do better than your current ignorance would indicate you are. At least i am not spending time trying to save whales or puppies from their own small brains.
Stellar
Your above sceanrio doesn't exaplain any of that. 
