Politics: The Undiscovered Country

[Zoraptor]

US deploying Patriots to Saudi to defend Abqaiq. Patriots, of course, don't work against drones or cruise missiles since they're anti ballistic missiles and AA systems...

1 hour ago, Gromnir said:

 it's the people who decide to ban the stuff, through their elected representatives. 

Yes, and 'the people' through their elected representatives porkbarrel for their largest donors, gerrymander, vote politicians pay rises, gold plated retirement schemes and benefits and resist campaign finance reform and term limits. That's just the well earned gratitude of the people towards the civic minded and generous politicians who carry out the people's will at great personal cost.

Literal lol.

Politicians vote for what they think will get them re-elected- or even more realistically, what they think will make sure the other guy(s) don't get elected. If that reflects the will of the people it's purely coincidental and utterly theoretical. Term limits would help with that somewhat, some sort of finance reform would be better, but ultimately the bulk of people who want to be politicians simply do not want to be politicians to reflect 'the will of the people' and that won't change.

[Gfted1]

I appreciate your deep well of knowledge of military technology. What, if any, system does the US have for drones / cruise missiles?

[Gromnir]

READ: Inspector General letter on whistleblower complaint

recognizing how the whistleblower did not personal observe and listen to the call 'tween trump and the ukraine prez, the ig  nevertheless states,"other information obtained during the ICIG's preliminary review, however, supports the Complainant's allegation..."

am suspecting this line gets much attention in next days.

as for gifted, am taking blame 'cause am not surprised by your read and math fails, or the deflection or the absurdity. we know where is going from start. sure, you being perplexed by fact there is more than one person in the executive branch in spite o' all authority being vested in one office or not knowing how costs o' property raises overall cost o' living and average income totals in nyc is individual baffling and surprising, but your consistency is guaranteed.

as for zor, we already mentioned money as the real problem. campaign finance legislation were passed and declared unconstitutional and other efforts at curbing money influence has similar failed.  again, already mentioned. 'course term limits, w/o money limits, actual embolden lobbyists as junior legislators w/o diehard constituency is more reliant on pac money and not less. so preach to the choir? 

'course if one were to dismiss entire representative democracy experiment it would be equal silly. huge amount o' legislation gets passed each term and imply money motivates all or even most legislator efforts is appealing to the reddit conspiracy crowd, but doesn't have much factual support. yeah, am sure gited's imagined laundry pods ban would have proctor and gamble money influencing votes, but so too would there be the testimony o' teary-eyed idiots who would appeal direct to Congressman 'cause their "baby" (a 20-something attending _____ community college next fall) had to die unnecessarily 'cause o' tide pods and social media pressure. democracy is ugly, but is better than alternatives, or so the saying goes. even so, out-of-control washington money is a big problem which term limits would only partial and indirect address.

HA! Good Fun!

Edited September 26, 2019 by Gromnir
left out "legislation"

[smjjames]

11 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

US deploying Patriots to Saudi to defend Abqaiq. Patriots, of course, don't work against drones or cruise missiles since they're anti ballistic missiles and AA systems...

Was it ever said how big the drones were? Something aircraft sized should be able to be shot down with a missile, but for smaller stuff it would probably be easier to take it down by electronic warfare methods than throwing a missile at it.

16 minutes ago, Gfted1 said:

at zoraptor: I appreciate your deep well of knowledge of military technology. What, if any, system does the US have for drones / cruise missiles?

I know there are electronic warfare stuff, but I don't know of any missiles specialized in taking out drones. No clue about cruise missiles, other cruise missiles?

[Malcador]

 

2 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

I appreciate your deep well of knowledge of military technology. What, if any, system does the US have for drones / cruise missiles?

Guess it'd be the Standard family, or an intercepting fighter.  For drones, they should rip off the Tunguska, maybe, heh. 

[Zoraptor]

They'd want to rip off the Pantsir, it's more advanced and has a wider use scenario. Tunguska is still decent, but it's old.

Basically, Patriots just plain aren't designed to target drones and CMs. If you want a system to target ballistic missiles and aircraft the trade off for that is that they will be poor at shooting low altitude and smaller munitions. Which is also true for the Russian S400- technically, it does have a missile variant designed to shoot down CMs and drones but practically you want a specialist solution (eg Pantsir) to do it as has been used effectively to defend against regular drone swarm and bulk missile attacks on Hmeimem in Syria. If nothing else shooting down a $200 drone carrying a $100 payload with a $50000 missile is costly, so using a 30mm cannon or cheap missile is way more efficient, albeit the Yemeni/ Iranian drones used at Abqaiq would have been more expensive than a balsawood HTS special. This does also mean that Abqaiq being hit isn't a problem with Patriot, except perhaps its radar if they were relying on it, the systems which should have been defending it against such an attack were Shahine and Skyguard systems, French and Swiss shorter range point defence. But even then they can only defend effectively if they can see the incoming attack and the operators are competent and alert. With Saudi operators none of the those are likely, so at least US operators and radars should increase the Shahine and Skyguard's effectiveness.

In terms of size you can check out the Saudi demo event if you like. They're decent sized drones of around 2ish metre delta wing , and the Quds 1 is ~5m length and around 60cm width from memory

What exactly the US could deploy depends on how the drones and CMs operated. Definitely EW stuff if they're being actively guided, but if they were fire and forget then an EW solution is far more difficult and active measures against low flying and possibly decently stealthed munitions has problems too. The fundamental problem is that US point and missile defence, except naval, is mostly predicated on targeting ballistic missiles. That's understandable with air dominance as you can simply bomb launchers and if needed shoot down slow drones and CMs with planes or AAA as was done with V1s in WW2. The systems that Saudi could deploy quickly to fix the problem are probably Israeli (albeit untested against drone swarms and CMs) and Russian and they both have political problems associated with them.

[smjjames]

Could they discreetly buy Israeli designs? There’s also the Iron Dome stuff, which was US built if I recall, or at least US funded. Though good point on being untested against drones and cruise missiles.

[Malcador]

Iron Dome is all Israeli if I recall.  But then again, that is US funded partially anyway.

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, smjjames said:

Could they discreetly buy Israeli designs?

Maybe? I don't know how they could do it discretely though, and there would be plenty of countries- Turkey, Qatar, Iran and Russia at minimum- with a stake in exposing its real origin.

I can't see Israel being willing to sell them to Saudi though, nor Saudi being willing to buy them due to the potential political blow back on either side.

[Agiel]

5 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

They'd want to rip off the Pantsir, it's more advanced and has a wider use scenario. Tunguska is still decent, but it's old.

Basically, Patriots just plain aren't designed to target drones and CMs. If you want a system to target ballistic missiles and aircraft the trade off for that is that they will be poor at shooting low altitude and smaller munitions. Which is also true for the Russian S400- technically, it does have a missile variant designed to shoot down CMs and drones but practically you want a specialist solution (eg Pantsir) to do it as has been used effectively to defend against regular drone swarm and bulk missile attacks on Hmeimem in Syria. If nothing else shooting down a $200 drone carrying a $100 payload with a $50000 missile is costly, so using a 30mm cannon or cheap missile is way more efficient, albeit the Yemeni/ Iranian drones used at Abqaiq would have been more expensive than a balsawood HTS special. This does also mean that Abqaiq being hit isn't a problem with Patriot, except perhaps its radar if they were relying on it, the systems which should have been defending it against such an attack were Shahine and Skyguard systems, French and Swiss shorter range point defence. But even then they can only defend effectively if they can see the incoming attack and the operators are competent and alert. With Saudi operators none of the those are likely, so at least US operators and radars should increase the Shahine and Skyguard's effectiveness.

In terms of size you can check out the Saudi demo event if you like. They're decent sized drones of around 2ish metre delta wing , and the Quds 1 is ~5m length and around 60cm width from memory

What exactly the US could deploy depends on how the drones and CMs operated. Definitely EW stuff if they're being actively guided, but if they were fire and forget then an EW solution is far more difficult and active measures against low flying and possibly decently stealthed munitions has problems too. The fundamental problem is that US point and missile defence, except naval, is mostly predicated on targeting ballistic missiles. That's understandable with air dominance as you can simply bomb launchers and if needed shoot down slow drones and CMs with planes or AAA as was done with V1s in WW2. The systems that Saudi could deploy quickly to fix the problem are probably Israeli (albeit untested against drone swarms and CMs) and Russian and they both have political problems associated with them.

Note that the performance of the SA-22 Greyhound in Syria has been considered less than good by the Russians, particularly against small UAVs that have repeatedly pestered Humaymim AB, and as stated before the use of a multi-million dollar flying telephone pole against such a target (which Patriot has demonstrated to have been able to shoot down) is bound to be a nightmare of an expenditure report to write. As one Russian military analyst writes (machine translated):

 

The Russian Triumph S-400 anti-aircraft missile system (SAM) itself, like the American MIM-104 Patriot, will be useless in the event of a massive attack, and any statements by Russian or American officials about the corresponding advantages of one system over another should be considered marketing ploy. To verify this, it is enough to pay attention to the reaction of Russian commentators regarding the low efficiency of the Pantsir-S1 anti-aircraft missile-cannon complex (ZRPK) in Syria, which could not protect the Russian military base from the attack of several small inexpensive drones. Even if the ZRPK receives a radar capable of detecting small targets moving at low speeds, one such complex will not immediately be able to destroy dozens of attacking UAVs and cruise missiles.

 

Perhaps its poor showing in that regard isn't wholly unsurprising, given that even in test conditions the autocannons were ineffective against a small UAV target drone, resorting to its missile to down it:

 

 

[Guard Dog]

Caught up on all the reading of the past two days festivities in Sodom-on-the-Potomac. As Gromnir said the bit about the whistle blower having only secondhand knowledge of the events in the complaint is a problem. If the people with first hand knowledge don't cooperate this would be a non-starter in any criminal proceeding. Don't know about impeachment though. It's not exactly a criminal trial so the standard may be different. Gromnir would likely know.  That does not mean every word isn't true. I read the transcript and is sounded like it could go either way to me. 

The thing is, it is extremely unlikely Trump will be removed. Even if the house impeaches him it will be up to the Senate to remove him. When this happened to Clinton it turned into a circus, he wasn't removed, and everyone came away hating everyone in the whole process. Congress CAN censure him. Hasn't been done in a while but it is their prerogative. It's not impeachment but it's also not nothing. It gives them a chance to spell out everything the Orange Menace did and why it's bad in clear and simple language without embarking on a difficult and ultimately futile impeachment that will end in a muddled failure.

Take the justice you can have IMO. In the case of a censure there is no defense case. No rebuttal. You did this and it was wrong. It puts all the facts before the voters and ultimately the voters are the best ones to remove Trump. 

Or don't. IDGAF anymore anyway. There are naught but villains here. 

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, Agiel said:

Note that the performance of the SA-22 Greyhound in Syria has been considered less than good by the Russians, particularly against small UAVs that have repeatedly pestered Humaymim AB, and as stated before the use of a multi-million dollar flying telephone pole against such a target (which Patriot has demonstrated to have been able to shoot down) is bound to be a nightmare of an expenditure report to write. As one Russian military analyst writes (machine translated):

Ultimately all the negative performance claims resolve to Marokovsky. And there's still question as to whether he or his (wholly anonymous) source was simply pushing the Tor as an alternative given his claims that that system was effective, so at best Saudi should buy Tors instead of Pantsirs. I'm also about 99% sure the version of the Pantsir deployed by the Russians at Hmeimem is S2 rather than S1- that is certainly what russian sources like RT/ Sputnik etc have consistently reported with the S1 versions being solely Syrian. They are clearly using EW preferentially given the number of drones they're simply remoting then landing themselves, but then you would use that so long as it works since it's 'free' while even 30mm cannon rounds have a cost. In contrast to Saudi Arabia there has also been only one successful attack, and that was likely to have been (and is certainly claimed to have been by the Russians) via an infiltration team with mortars rather than drone; despite being on the receiving end of in the order of 50 drones per month at the moment, plus rocket attacks albeit those are ballistic rather than CMs.

Putin suggesting the Saudis should buy S400 to defend against drones was certainly 100% pure trolling though. Would be a great idea for Russia, but utterly pointless for Saudi.

[Pidesco]

"To show you how dishonest the LameStream Media is, I used the word Liddle’, not Liddle, in discribing Corrupt Congressman Liddle’ Adam Schiff. Low ratings @CNN purposely took the hyphen out and said I spelled the word little wrong. A small but never ending situation with CNN! "

Maybe this should be in the funny things thread.

HAHA, OH WOW, etc, etc.

[Malcador]

https://theweek.com/speedreads/868093/rudy-giuliani-claims-hes-withholding-text-messages-that-protect-ukraine-scandal

Best we can hope for is Giuliani getting cashiered, I think.

[Raithe]

[HoonDing]

 

[Gfted1]

Hee Haw says the donkey.

15 hours ago, smjjames said:

There’s also the Iron Dome stuff, which was US built if I recall, or at least US funded. Though good point on being untested against drones and cruise missiles.

This is what I was thinking too would be a good idea for US use. It can shoot down mortars! Or Davids Sling which is purported to be able to handle drones and cruise missiles.

[Malcador]

Hans Gruber had one cool pistol

[Amentep]

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