November 10, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - There are two myths
which are deeply imprinted in the minds of most US Americans which are
extremely dangerous and which can result in a war with Russia.
- The first myth is the
myth of the US military superiority.
- The second myth is the
myth about the US invulnerability.
I believe that it is therefore crucial to
debunk these myths before they end up costing us millions of lives and untold
suffering.
In my latest piece for the Unz Review I
discussed the reasons why the US armed forces are nowhere nearly as advanced as
the US propaganda machine would have us believe. And even though the article
was a discussion of Russian military technologies I only gave one example, in
passing, of Russian military technologies by comparing the T-50 PAKFA to the US
F-35 (if you want to truly get a feel for the F-35 disaster, please read this and this). First, I am generally reluctant to
focus on weapons systems because I strongly believe that, in the vast majority
of real-world wars, tactics are far more important than technologies. Second,
Andrei Martyanov, an expert on Russian military issues and naval warfare, has
recently written two excellent pieces on Russian military technologies
(see here and here) which gave many more examples (check out
Martyanov’s blog). Having read some of the comments posted
under Martyanov’s and my articles, I think that it is important, crucial, in
fact, to drive home the message to those who still are thoroughly trained by
the propaganda machine to instantly dismiss any notion of US vulnerability or,
even more so, technological inferiority. I am under no illusion about the
capability of those who still watch the idiot box to be woken out of their
lethargic stupor by the warnings of Paul Craig Roberts, William Engdal, Dmitrii
Orlov, Andrei Martyanov or myself. But I also think that we have to keep
trying, because the war party (the Neocon Uniparty) is apparently trying really
hard to trigger a conflict with Russia. So what I propose to do today is to
connect the notions of “war with Russia” and “immediate and personal suffering”
by showing that if Russia is attacked two of the most sacred symbols of the
USA, aircraft carriers and the US mainland itself, would be immediately
attacked and destroyed.
The aircraft carriers myth
I have to confess that even during the
Cold War I always saw US aircraft carriers as sitting ducks which the Soviets
would have rather easily destroyed. I formed that opinion on the basis of my
study of Soviet anti-carrier tactics and on the basis of conversations with
friends (fellow students) who actually served on US aircraft carriers.
I wish I had the time and space to go into
a detailed description of what a Cold War era Soviet attack on a US aircraft
carrier battle group would typically look like, but all I will say is that it
would involved swarms of heavy air and sea launched missiles coming from
different directions, some skimming the waves, others dropping down from very
high altitude, all at tremendous speeds, combined with more underwater-launched
missiles and even torpedoes. All of these missiles would be “intelligent” and
networked with each other: they would be sharing sensor data, allocating
targets (to avoid duplication), using countermeasures, receiving course
corrections, etc. These missiles would be launched at standoff distances by
supersonic bombers or by submerged submarines. The targeting would involve
space-based satellites and advanced naval reconnaissance technologies. My USN
friends were acutely aware of all this and they were laughing at their own
official US propaganda (Reagan was in power then) which claimed that the USN
would “bring the war to the Russians” by forward deploying carriers. In direct
contrast, my friends all told me that the first thing the USN would do is
immediately flush all the carriers away from the North Atlantic and into the
much safer waters south of the so-called GUIK
gap. So here is the ugly truth: carriers are designed to enforce the
rule of the AngloZionist Empire on small and basically defenseless nations
(like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq). Nobody in the USN, at least not in the late
1980s, seriously considered forward deploying aircraft carrier battlegroups
near the Kola Peninsula to “bring the war to the Russians”. That was pure
propaganda. The public did not know that, but USN personnel all knew the truth.
[Sidebar: if the topic of carrier
survivability is of interest to you, please check out this Russian articletranslated by a member of
our community which is a pretty typical example of how the Russian don’t
believe for one second that US carriers are such hard targets to destroy]
What was true then is even more true today
and I can’t imagine anybody at the Pentagon seriously making plans to attack
Russia with carrier based aviation. But even if the USN has no intention of
using its carriers against Russia, that does not mean that the Russians cannot
actively seek out US carriers and destroy them, even very far from Russia.
After all, even if they are completely outdated for a war between superpowers,
carriers still represent fantastically expensive targets whose symbolic value
remains immense. The truth is that US carriers are the most lucrative target
any enemy could hope for: (relatively) small, (relatively) easy to destroy,
distributed in many locations around the globe – US carriers are almost “pieces
of the USA, only much closer”.
Introducing the Zircon 3M22 hypersonic
missile
First, some basic data about this missile
(from English and Russian Wikipedia):
- Low level range: 135 to
270 nautical miles (155 to 311mi; 250 to 500km).
- High level range: 400nmi
(460mi; 740km) in a semi-ballistic trajectory.
- Max range: 540nmi
(620mi; 1,000km)
- Max altitude: 40km
(130’000 feet)
- Average range is around
400km (250mi; 220nmi)/450 km.
- Speed: Mach 5–Mach 6
(3,806–4,567mph; 6,125–7,350km/h; 1.7015–2.0417km/s).
- Max speed: Mach 8
(6,090mph; 9,800km/h; 2.7223km/s) during a test.
- Warhead: 300-400kg (high
explosive or nuclear)
- Shape: low-RCS with
radar absorbing coating.
- Cost per missile: 1-2
million dollars (depending on configuration)
All this is already very impressive, but
here comes the single most important fact about this missile: it can be
launched from pretty much *any* platform: cruisers, of course, but also
frigates and even small corvettes. It can be launched by nuclear and
diesel-electric attack submarines. It can also be launched from long range
bombers (Tu-160), medium-range bombers (Tu-22m3), medium-range
fighter-bomber/strike aircraft (SU-34) and even, according to some reports,
from multi-role air superiority fighter (SU-35). Finally, this missile can also
be shore-based. In fact, this missile can be launched from any platform capable
of launching the now famous Kalibr cruise missile and that means that even a
merchant marine or fishing ship could carry a container with the Zircon missile
hidden inside. In plain English what this means is the following:
1.
Russia
has a missile which cannot be stopped or spoofed by any of the current and
foreseeable USN anti-missile weapons systems.
2.
This
missile can be deployed *anywhere* in the world on *any* platform.
Let me repeat this again: pretty much any Russian
ship and pretty much any Russian aircraft from now on will have the potential
capability of sinking a US aircraft carrier. In the past, such capabilities
were limited to specific ships (Slava class), submarines (Oscar class) or
aircraft (Backfires). The Soviets had a large but limited supply of such
platforms and they were limited on where they could deploy them. This era is
now over. From now on a swarm of Zircon 3M22 could appear anywhere on the
planet at any moment and with no warning time (5000 miles per hour incoming
speed does not leave the target anything remotely comparable to even a short
reaction time). In fact, the attack could be so rapid that it might not even
leave the target the time needed to indicate that it is under attack.
None of the above is a big secret, by the
way. Just place “zircon missile” in your favorite search engine and you will
get a lot of hits (131’000 on Google; 190’000 on Bing). In fact, a lot of
specialists have declared that the Zircon marks the end of the aircraft carrier
as a platform of modern warfare. These claims are widely exaggerated. As I have
written above, aircraft carriers are ideal tools to terrify, threaten, bully
and otherwise attack small, defenseless countries. Even medium-sized countries
would have a very hard time dealing with an attack coming from US aircraft
carriers. So I personally think that as long as the world continues to use the
US dollar and, therefore, as long as the US economy continues to reply on
creating money out of thin air and spending it like there is no tomorrow,
aircraft carriers still have a bright, if morally repulsive, future ahead of
them. And, of course, the USN will not use carriers to threaten Russia. Again,
the US press has been rather open about the carrier-killing potential of the
Zircon, but what it rarely (never?) mentions are the political and strategic
consequence from the deployment of the Zircon: from now on Russia will have an
easy and very high value US target she can destroy anytime she wants. You can think
of the US carrier fleet like 10 US hostages which the Russians can shoot at any
time. And what is crucial is this: an attack on a US carrier would not be an
attack on the US homeland, nor would it be a nuclear attack, but the
psychological shock resulting from such an attack could well be comparable to a
(limited) nuclear strike on the US homeland.
This, on one hand, will greatly inhibit
the Russian willingness to strike at US carriers as this would expose Russia to
very severe retaliatory measures (possibly including nuclear strikes). On the
other hand, however, in terms of “escalation dominance” this state of affairs
gives a major advantage to Russia as the US does not have any Russian targets
with an actual and symbolic value similar to the one of a US carrier.
There is another aspect of this issue
which is often ignored. Western analysts often speak of a Russian strategy of “deterrence by denial” and “Anti-Access Area Denial” (A2AD). Mostly this
is the kind of language which gets you a promotion and a pay raise in US and
NATO think tanks. Still, there is a grain of truth to the fact that advanced
Russian missiles are now providing Russia with a very cheap way to threaten
even fantastically expensive US assets. Worse, Russia is willing (eager, in
fact) to export these (relatively cheap) missiles to other countries. I find it
amusing to see how US politicians are in a state of constant hysteria about the
risk of nuclear proliferation, but fail to realize that conventional anti-ship
missiles are a formidable, and much more likely, threat. Sure, there are
missile export limiting treaties, such as the MTCR, but they only apply to missile with a
range of over 300km. With modern ballistic and cruise missiles becoming
smaller, deadlier and easier to conceal and with ranges which are (relatively)
easy to extend, treaties such as the MTCR are becoming increasingly outdated.
The bottom line is this: as long as
deterrences holds, attacking US carriers makes no sense whatsoever for Russia;
however, as soon as deterrence fails, attacking US carriers, anywhere on the
planet, gives Russia an extremely flexible and powerful escalation dominance
capability which the US cannot counter in kind.
Striking at the Holy of Holies – the US
“homeland”
If you thought that discussing striking US
carriers was bad, here we are going to enter full “Dr Strangelove” territory
and discuss something which US Americans find absolutely unthinkable: attacks
on the US homeland. True, for the rest of mankind, any war by definition
includes the very real possibility of attacks on your own towns, cities and
people. But for US Americans who are used to mete out violence and death far
away from their own peaceful towns and cities, the notion of a devastating
strike against the US homeland is pretty much unthinkable. On 9/11 the loss of
3000 innocent people placed the vast majority of US Americans into a total
state of shock which resulted in a massive over-reaction at all levels (which
was, of course, exactly the purpose of this false flag operation by the US and
Israeli deep states). Just as with carriers, the dangers of a US over-reaction
should serve as a deterrent to any attacks on the US homeland. But, just as
with the carriers, that is only true as long as deterrence holds. If the
Russian territory becomes the object of a US attack this would clearly indicate
that deterrence has failed and that the Russian armed forces should now switch
from a deterrence mode to a war-fighting mode. At this point, the US American
over-reaction to begin attacked or taking casualties could, paradoxically,
result in a last-minute wake-up call indicating to everybody that what will
come next will be truly devastating.
Introducing the RS-28 Sarmat
intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)
Though officially very little is know
about the Sarmat and the Yu-71, the reality is that the Internet has been full
of educated guesses which give us a pretty clear idea of what kind of systems
we are dealing here.
You can think of the RS-28
Sarmat as a successor of the already formidable RS-36
Voevoda (SS-18 Satan in US classification) missile: it is a
heavy, very powerful, intercontinental ballistic missile with multiple
independently targetable reentry vehicle (warheads):
- Weight: 100 tons
- Payload: 10 tons
- Warheads: 10 to 15
- Hypersonic glide
vehicles: 3-24 (that’s the Yu-71 we will discuss below)
- Range: 10’000km
- Guidance: Inertial ,
satellite, astrocelestial
- Trajectory: FOBS-capable
That last line, about being FOBS-capable,
is crucial as it means that, unlike most Soviet/Russian ICMBs, the Sarmat does
not have to fly over the North Pole to strike at the United States. In fact,
the Sarmat could fly over the South Pole or, for that matter, in any direction
and still reach any target in the USA. Right there this capability is, by
itself, is more than enough to defeat any current and foreseeable US
anti-ballistic missile technology. But it gets better, or worse, depending on
your perspective: the Sarmat’s reentry vehicles/warhards are capable of flying
in low orbit, maneuver, and then suddenly plunge towards their targets. The
only way to defeat such an attack would be to protect the USA by a 3600 coverage
capable ABM system, something which the USA is decades away from deploying. And
just to add to these already formidable characteristics, each Sarmat can carry
up to 3-24 (depending on who you ask) Yu-71 hypersonic glide vehicles.
Introducing The Yu-71 (aka “Object 4202) hypersonic
glide vehicle (HGV)
Yet again, this is hardly a topic not
covered in the media and you can find numerous articles describing what a
hypersonic glide vehicle is and how it can be used. (the best article I could
find in English was by Global Security, it is entitled “Objekt 4202 / Yu-71 / Yu-74”).
Here is a summary of what we think we know
about this HGV:
- Max Speed: from Mach
5, according to Scott Ritter, to Mach 9,
according to a quasi official Russian source, to Mach
15, acccording to Sputnik, to Mach 20 (that’s
7 kilometer per second, or 25’200kh/h, or 15’000mph), according to Global Security. Whatever the true speed,
it will be fantastic and far, far beyond the kind of speeds current or
foreseeable US anti-missile systems could hope to engage.
- Hypermaneuverability:
Russian sources describe the Yu-71 as “сверхманевренная боеголовка” or
“hypermaneuverable warhead”. What that exactly means in turns of sustained
Gs does not really matter as this is not about air-to-air combat, but
about the ability to perform sudden course changes making it close to
impossible for anti-missile systems to calculate an engagement solution.
- Warhead: nuclear and
conventional/kinetic.
That last line is very interesting. What
it means is that considering the speeds attained by the Yu-71 HGV it is not
necessary to equip it with a conventional (high explosive) or nuclear warheard.
The kinetic energy generated by its high speed is sufficient to create an
explosion similar to what a large conventional or small nuclear warhead could
generate.
Bringing it all together now
Did you notice the similarities between
the Zircon missile and the Sarmat+Yu-71 combo?
In both cases we have:
1.
an
attack which can come from any direction
2.
speed
of attack and maneuver capabilities which make interception impossible
3.
the
capability for Russia to destroy a very high value US target in a very short
time
It is amazing to see that while US
decision makers were talking about their Prompt Global Strike program, the
Russians actually developed their own version of this capability, much faster
than the USA and at a fraction of the cost.
These are all ideal ways to “bring the war
home” and to encourage a country which enjoyed total impunity for its policies
to being seriously thinking about the consequences of messing around with the
wrong people.
To make things even more potentially
dangerous for the USA, the very same geography which protected the USA for so
long is now becoming a major vulnerability. Currently 39% of the US population
lives in counties directly on the shoreline. In fact, the population density of
coastal shoreline counties is over six times greater than the corresponding
inland counties (source). In 2010 the US Census Bureau produced
a fascinating report entitled “Coastline Population Trends in the United States: 1960 to
2008” which shows that the coastal counties provide an “intense
concentration of economic and social activity”. In fact, a very large number of
US cities, industrial centers and economic hugs are located near the USA
coastline making them all *ideal* targets for Russian conventional cruise
missile strikes which could be launched from very long distances (including
over open water). And we are not talking about some future, hypothetical,
cruise missile, we are talking about the very same Kalibr cruise missiles the
Russians have been using against the Takfiris in Syria. Check out this very
well made video which explains how Kalibr cruise missiles can be hidden pretty
much anywhere and used with devastating effect on military and/or civilian
targets:
The reality is that the US homeland is
extremely vulnerable to any kind of attack. This is only in part due to recent
Russian advances in military technology. For example, the “just on time”
manufacturing or delivery practices which are aimed to minimize costs and
inventory are, from a strategic/military point of view, extremely dangerous as
it take very little disruption (for example in the distribution network) to
create catastrophic consequences. Likewise, the high concentration of some
industries in specific areas of the United States (oil in the Mexican Gulf) only
serve to further weaken the ability of the United State to take any kind of
punishment in case of war.
Most TV watching Americans will dismiss
all of the above by saying that “anybody come mess with us and we will kick
their ass” or something equally sophisticated. And there is some truth to that.
But what this mindset also indicate is a complete mental inability to operate
in a scenario when deterrence has failed and the “other guy” is coming for you.
That mindset is the prerogative of civilians. Those tasked with the defense of
their country simply cannot think that way and have to look beyond the
“threshold of deterrence”. They will be the one asked to fix the bloody mess
once the civilians screw-up. Georges Clemenceau reportedly once said that “War
is too serious a matter to entrust to military men”. I believe that the
exact opposite is true, that war is too serious a matter to entrust to
civilians, especially the US Neocons (the vast majority of whom have never
spent any time in uniform) and who always make it sound like the next war will
be easy, safe and painless. Remember Ken Adleman and his famous Iraqi “cakewalk”? The very same kind of scum is in
power today and they want us to believe that the next war will also be a
cakewalk or that being on a high speed collision course with Russia is
something the USA can afford and should therefore engage in. The combined
effect of the myth of US military superiority with the myth about the US
invulnerability result in a US American sense of detachment, or even impunity,
which is not at all supported by fact. I just fervently hope that the people of
the USA will not find out how mistaken they are the hard way.
In the meantime, the Russian Chief of
General Staff, General Gerasimov, has announced that Russia had completed what
he called a “non-nuclear deterrence system” based on the Iskander-M, Kalibr and
X-101 missiles. According to General Gerasimov, the Russian armed forces now
have enough high-precision weapon systems to strike at any target within a 4000km
range. Furthermore, Gerasimov declared that the number of platforms capable of
launching such missiles has increased twelve times while the number of high
precision cruise missiles has increased by a factor 30. General Gerasimov also
explained that the combined capabilities of the Kalibr cruise missile,
the Bastion mobile coastal defense missile
system and the S-400 air defense system made it possible for Russia to fully
control the airspace and surface of the Baltic, Barents, Black and
Mediterranean seas (talk about A2AD!). Gerasimov concluded his briefing by
saying “the development of high-precision weapons has made it possible to
place the main burden of strategic deterrence from nuclear to non-nuclear
forces”.
To fully evaluate the implications of what
Gerasimov said please consider this: deterrence is, by
definition, the action of discouraging an action or event through
instilling doubt or fear of the consequences. So what Gerasimov is really
saying is that Russia has enough conventional, non-nuclear, capabilities to
inflict unacceptable consequences upon the USA. This is something absolutely
new, a fundamental game changer. Most importantly, that is the official
declaration by a senior Russian official that the USA does not have any
technological superiority and that the USA is vulnerable to a devastating
counter-attack, even a conventional one. In one short sentence General Gerasimov
has put to rest the two most important myths of US geostrategic theory.
Keep in mind that, unlike their US
counterparts, the Russians typically like to under-evaluate Russian military
capabilities. You will find the Russia media bragging about how “totally
awesome and best in the world” Russian weapons systems are, but military
personnel in Russia still has a corporate culture of secrecy and
under-reporting your real capabilities to the enemy. Furthermore, while junior
officers can say pretty much anything they want, senior officers are held to
very strict rules and they have to carefully weigh every word they say,
especially acting officers. So when the Chief of Staff officially declares that
Russia now has a conventional strategic deterrence capability – you can take
that to the bank. It’s real.
Alas, the western media is still stuck in
the “full idiot” mode we saw during the transit of the Russian aircraft carrier
from the North Atlantic to the Mediterranean: on one hand, the Admiral
Kuznetsov was presented as a rusty old bucket while on the other NATO forces
constantly shadowed it as if it was about to strike London. Likewise, US
politicians present Russia as a “gas station” while, at the same time, stating
that this “gas station” has the capability to decide who lives in the White
House. This kind of reporting is not only unhelpful but outright dangerous. One
one hand the “the Russians are backward brutes” fosters an arrogant and cocky
attitude. On the other hand, constantly speaking about fake Russian threats
results in a very dangerous case of “cry wolf” in which all possible Russian
threats (including very real ones) are dismissed as pure propaganda. The
reality is, of course, very different and simple in a binary way: Russia
represents absolutely no threat to the United States or anybody else (including
the three Baltic statelets). But if some western politician decides that he is
smarter and stronger than Napoleon or Hitler and that he will finally bring the
Russians to their knees, then he and his country will be destroyed. It is
really that simple.
