no question that more than one system would be a good idea to bring down incoming sunburns.
it's the type of weapon that makes deployment of a surface fleet a risky propostition in the first place.
A surface fleet based around a Carrier is probably near invulnerable since anything within 500 miles and out survives only by the decision of fleet commander. There is no question that the American's have a missile range issue due to the fact that the Harpoon only has an effective range of 150 KM, as compared to Soviet Missiles which can have a range of up to 500 miles (AS-4). but the American's have a sensor range advantage so its assumed that they would be able to sense an enemy ship or plane and fire before the enemy is in position to fire
i've actually never heard of ship-based laser anti-missile systems, probably too many power-stability-size-expense-funny looking issues.
It was an offshoot of the StarWars defense system.
Missile Command
testing a torpedo system as unstable as that was is kind of a bad idea in the first place. as i recall the kursk was slated for the russian resurgence in the mediterranean, i think it was more of a signal to the west than anything.
The Kursk torpedo testing was pretty secretive, the deployment of the Kursk was not, it was an exercise meant to show NATO that the Russian Navy wasn't completely dead.
in general i'd agree that turkey and israel are (for their own reasons) quite selfish nations in terms of arms deals and treaties, but their 1995 co-defence pact illicited a major and immediate response from three nations - an agreement between greece, iran, and syria. there hasn't been much more than a couple sketchy naval exercises between even greece and syria, but the intentions are clear.
plus israel has stationed a few f-15s in turkey still, does it not? when that airliner went down from the ukrainian mistaken fire i wondered if sharon was nuts enough to revenge raid from turkey after the "oops, what're you gonna do?" half-hearted apology.
i believe there was also an agreement on some ex-russian attack helicopters for turkey, real effective from the sounds of it. also israel was to lend help with the PKK insurgence, which isn't as much of a problem since ocalan's capture. expertise at keeping a large hostile population from uniting against you.
i think the outgoing ecivit government in turkey may have been planning to go for it with greece. erdogan's regime is sure a lot calmer! something aboot the whole situation reminds me of world war I for some reason...
My gut feeling because of the religious mix in Turkey is that they might be unwilling to go to the defense of Israel if they were attacked. I could be wrong, but thats just a feeling
yeah the programs are all 'gone' but the idea remains - a single stage to orbit from the wing of a fighter. this isn't rocket science (oh wait it is!). something pretty low-tech in my opinion.
In the late 80's there was a gentlemans agreement in place between the Soviets and the American's not to go after each others satellites. the technology is not all of that sophisticated, just expensive.
one idea of russian combined arms that never got too far was the ekranoplane, the possibilities are staggering however. a naval invasion force with rides like that is a sick scary proposition indeed. if war is logistics than moving that many men at that much velocity breaks all the rules.
It was another case of a great idea meets the poor engineering standards of the Soviets at the time. These things could carry a couple of hundred troops and carried 3? cruise missile launchers. But there were problems with them.
1) They were difficult to control, and the transition from sea to land was near impossible.
2) It had antiship missiles but no real anti-air or anti-sea defense so they were ducks.
3) it had next to no manuverability and was a sitting duck
4) Because of its low flight pattern and bad sensors the pilots usually got disoriented which caused problems.
There is one left in service and its used as a fast search and rescue craft.
and the hind, i am in agreement there - afghanistan gave it the unenviable task of flying below incoming fire, even those old red-eyes could still track down through the upward-moving hot exhaust.
The Russians I'm sure were thrilled when they found out that the American's were arming the Afghans with Stinger missiles. That effectively ended the use of low level air support
but quite a machine. i love listening to half-informed american-military-aficiondos (whose numbers have recently gone to 10x) go on and on aboot the apache being superior here, superior there - compare the hind and the blackhawk, if anything!
The Apache is a great helicopter as a weapons platform, the hind combined heavy weapons with troop carrying and it could survive in a heavy fire environment due to its heavy armour and titanium rotor blades. They were near impossible to take down outside of a missile shot.
i am quite ill-informed aboot military combined-arms tactics, got a reading list? bigger the better!
[b]Couple of good ones to start with.
Nato and the defense of the west by Laurence Martin
This book covers the political structures of Nato and the Warsaw pack, weapons systems, tactics, scenarios, and nuclear options. Its a fairly scary book because it bases its facts on the facts that the Soviets were capable of a 5-1 tactical advantage in any theatre which they felt would neutralize any technology advantage that Nato would have. Its a little older, but if you can find it, its a great read.
The Third World War by Gen John Pinkett - a terrifying look at the third world war and how it could escalate.
Any of the Tom Clancy facts books (Submarine, Fighter Wing, Carrier, Special Forces) His research is impressive, however he is a bit of a cheerleader
I have about 150 books on modern war, weapons and tactics in my storage room. I still try to keep up to date with the Janes books, and try to avoid the cheesy large books in the books stores that are mainly coloring books. A lot of information that I have is based on briefing stuff that I had access to when I was in the military (nothing classified tho).
For fiction one of my favorites was Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy
i tend to think more of being behind the scenes, planning the takeover of earth after the canadian construction of the silk rope to space. if you can call construction unrolling a weighted thread from geosynchronous orbit!
I always wanted to take over the world by cutting everyones cable T.V. signal and promising them that there was cable in the mines, and factories.
oops, i've said too much...
