Russia Builds Microwave Weapon To Take Down Enemy Drones (thestack.com) 155
An anonymous reader writes: The Russian government is backing a military research project to develop a powerful microwave-based weapon designed to take out unmanned enemy drones from up to half a mile away. The country's United Instrument Manufacturing Corporation (UIMC) created the microwave gun specifically to disrupt the electronics of enemy missiles. Using the ultra-high frequency waves the weapon can completely disable aircraft communications, resulting in loss of control. The destructive rays, which belong to a group of warfare technologies known as directed-energy weapons (DEW), will be emitted from surface-to-air Buk missile systems. Military analyst Alexander Perendzhiyev noted that the new weapon would be particularly effective against systems carrying microelectronic equipment. He also suggested that the impact of the radio-electronic waves could even be deadly to humans -- and referred to potential use against terrorists.
years behind (Score:5, Funny)
I own a "microwave weapon" too. Man, have you tried eating a burrito straight out of the microwave? That'll kill anything!
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It seems the article news is old as well. Russia had this weapon deployed during the annexation of Crimea.
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It seems the article news is old as well. Russia had this weapon deployed during the annexation of Crimea.
Yes. More specifically, they used a BUK system to shoot a passenger airliner, Malaysian MH17, out of the sky.
I have yet to see anyone charged with murder over this.
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Everyone who cared knew it was a Russian SAM that shot down the plane back when it happened. The Russians seemingly thought it was an An-124 Ruslan of the Ukrainian Airforce air resupplying a nearby military base they had surrounded with their little green men. The big question is why was a civilian airliner overflying a known conflict zone to begin with. It's not like that war started that day. It had been going on for a while. Shit happens.
Of course the Russians are going to deny anything involved with th
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The most plausible theory I've seen is that it was a Russian weapon, but not necessarily a Russian operator. Remember Russia wanted to keep plausible denyability, so they were limited in how many men they could send - smuggling a weapon across the border was enough of a risk, but a crew of trained radar and SAM missile operators would have been worse. So it's quite possible the air defence system was being operated by a rebel fighter who had been given some hasty, incomplete training, or by a Russian covert
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A bigger question is what kind of subhuman oaf shoots at something when they don't know what it is.
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hot pocket... frozen on the outside molten lava on the inside...
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Hopefully if it comes to war against Russia we'll have something better to fire at them than Hot Pockets, although based on the candidates for 2016 I'm not filled with confidence.
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A big war is most likely inevitable but with who knows and not for the reasons publicized in media... sure there will be some issues moral or otherwise, disagreements exaggerated and blown out of proportion and used as an excuse but in the end it will be entirely an economic motivation that really turns the screws.
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All wars are resource wars.
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Not all wars. Many are, yes. But there are also political wars, and ideological wars.
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Ah, but Politics and Ideology are frequently just frameworks regarding resource allocation.
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A big war is nigh on an impossibility. You know all those ass hats, those scum sucking psychopaths who skulk around in the background of every war, those that drive the war safely hidden in the background because yeah, they are gutless cowards. Well, it seems in the next big war, they wont be safe and they will die at random with the rest of us or spend the rest of the lives hiding in a hole in the ground dependent upon the mercy of others (that whole societal structure they have warped so that it will serv
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I see your microwaved burrito and raise you one mcdonald's hot apple pie....pure, face melting, lava.
Re: years behind (Score:2)
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El Stinko Grande, unsafe at any temperature!
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Have you not read the packaging? It says to let stand for a minute before eating.
Oh, right, this is Slashdot. If people cannot be bothered to read the articles then it should not be a surprise if they do not read the heating instructions on a burrito.
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Silly Wabbit.. docs and instructions are for those that don't already know it all!
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It says to let stand for a minute before eating.
If it says only 1 minute then the packaging is negligent.
Half a mile is nothing (Score:3)
Syrian drones (Score:1, Troll)
Thanks to the incompetence of the US not being able to figure out the right group to back in Syria, you have drones ending up w/ ISIS, and now the Russians have to figure out a way to get them downed.
A nuke here or there on Raqqa, Aleppo, Homs, Hama, would fix things for good
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A nuke here or there on Raqqa, Aleppo, Homs, Hama, would fix things for good
I'm not 100% convinced they are themselves responsible for their behavior and that US foreign and security politics and former British and French one haven't had its share in what have become of the area. But even if it was and even if it all was nuked what about western and northern Europe? Kick them out first or nuke us too?
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Those countries don't want to deal with the refugees either. For one, wrong sort of Muslim. For another, they share the same fears about terrorist infiltration and economic impact.
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But it's not racist when they do it.
Hang on. Isn't it not being racist when they do it racist?
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riiiight, or you know they could be getting their consumer drones (that's what they are using, not military) from the same source as their Toyota trucks. Ordered direct from the manufacturer or some middle man.
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>A nuke here or there
Your solution is to kill about 2 million civilians? What war are you fighting in your head, that such a price would even be worth considering, much less paying?
And that is before even thinking of the fallout- both figurative and literal- of such an attack?
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A civilian committing a crime, even a capital offense, is still a civilian. The issue you refer to is not really related to the one being discussed. It should obviously go without saying that mass murder is not the answer.
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When I read stuff like this, I get happy that this mentality was not present in WW2.
Just think - the Nazis occupy a city and stay there (maybe even strap a Jew to each tank - they are going to be exterminated either way, so might as well put them to good use). The Allies now cannot attack the city because civilians will get killed, they cannot even destroy the tanks because there are Jew children strapped to them. All the allies can do is to use sniper rifles to try to kill the soldiers or just politely ask
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> I get happy that this mentality was not present in WW2
Don't put words in my mouth. Fire bombings and atomic weaponry were deployed then for very different reasons than OP is talking about. Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined were like a quarter of a million deaths, not the two million he glibly wants to exterminate for existing in an occupied or contested city.
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The Nazis were an existential threat. Russia was (and many say still is) an existential threat, and so the US built a great many nukes as a deterrent.
The Middle East Mess is not an existential threat. People worry about civilian casualties because they can afford to worry. If IS actually had the ability to pose an existential threat, you can be confident that many countries would not hesitate more than a month before firebombing the whole region no matter how many civilians were killed. But even the Syrian
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Then what solutions do you offer that do not involve genocide?
I want to see what hits the fan when Google gets machine translation really perfected.
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Thanks to the incompetence of the US not being able to figure out the right group to back in Syria, you have drones ending up w/ ISIS, and now the Russians have to figure out a way to get them downed.
A nuke here or there on Raqqa, Aleppo, Homs, Hama, would fix things for good
What do you mean "not being able to figure out the right group to back in Syria"? We (I mean the US) back ISIS and their cannibal associates. Meanwhile, we tell the public we are fighting them. The public isn't sophisticated enough to understand complicated monetary relationships. They don't understand us being allied with the ones who supported the hijackers either. The public is so dumb.
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You are as dumb as trump. Next you'll be telling us to nuke NK. Here is a hint. China backs NK and would retaliate if anyone hit NK hard. Syria is backed by Russia in the same way. Clue, Russia has a base on the Med. Sea in you guessed it, Syria. Ever wonder why Russia really wanted Crimea? Can you say port on the black sea.
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Syria is backed by Russia in the same way.
Russia is backing the Syrian government. I am quite sure that they sould gladly allow the US to nuke, say, Raqqa or some other rebel held city, hell, the Russians would most likely help with their own nukes.
Though nukes are not the answer - contaminating the area for a long time is ineffective. Better use neutron bombs or poison gas, that way the still intact buildings can be left intact, while still solving the problem.
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Thanks to the incompetence of the US not being able to figure out the right group to back in Syria
That reminds me of a very prophetic point made by some Middle East expert I saw on a news program during the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War:
"I don't know what they expect the outcome of this is going to be. There are no George Washingtons in Iraq."
Well, that certainly turned out to be the case.
The same undoubtedly applies to Syria. The set of "right groups to back in Syria" is empty.
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Excellent point!!! This is the very issue w/ the Bush Doctrine, which was derived from the Sharansky principle of 'Democracy being the antidote to wars and oppression'.
The theory w/ which the US intervened in Iraq was that once that country became democratic, it would become a pluralistic society tolerant of all minority groups. Until that was put into practice, and one saw Iraqi Shiite militas attacking Christian liquor shops, and persecuting Christians, forcing them to flee to Syria(!!! Of all places)
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While Christians were certainly persecuted in Iraq, most of the violence was muslim-on-muslim. The tension was always there, but the brutal government of Saddam was at least very good at keeping the peace. Take that away, dismantle most of the police force to rid it of those loyal to the old regime, and those simmering tensions quickly erupt into open violence.
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You want the United States to use nuclear weapons on a country fighting a civil war, which also happens to host Russia's only port in the Mediterranean, or even beyond the Bosporus for that matter. A base which Russia sees as essential, hosted in a country which is also a major arms customer. And you want us to nuke it. What's Russia going to do, sit there and spin?
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The right group to back in Syria? Are we talking about the same country with Alawites allied with Christians against Sunnis allied with Allah and backed by some spoiled twat from Turkey with Iran hovering behind the scenes willing to keep Syria to the last Arab and funding Hezbollah to spice up the mixture a bit? That Syria?
A nuke on Raqqa, Aleppo, Homs, Hama would fix nothing. The entire MidEast would erupt, it might even bring the Shi'ites and Sunnis to start male-on-male kissing each other in public. And
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Like I said above, I was talking about Russia. The story is about Russia building microwave weapons to down enemy drones. If they - the Russians - just nuked their enemies, they wouldn't have to go through this rigmarole of rigging microwave devices to down drones. And Russians are not bothered about civilian casualties - they never have.
A nuke on those places would enrage the co-sectists of the people bombed. If Raqqa, Aleppo, Homs were bombed, the Sunnis of various countries would erupt. But that's
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The right group to back is to stay the fuck out of someone else's mess. Let the Syrians sort it out amongst themselves.
Without US (i.e. corporate US interests) meddling in the middle east there wouldn't be Al Qaeda, ISIL and all these other nut jobs. It's all US funded crap to destabilise governments so that US corporate interests ca take over their banking and oil production.
If you haven't worked this out for yourself you've either had your head up your ass for the last decade or two or you're retarded.
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I was about to respond to GP, but you beat me to it! That's my point - taqfir wars, or 'mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the most Islamic of us all' contests in that region is none off our business (get lost, John Doone), and we have nothing to gain by getting involved.
If we were honest about Muslims and recognized them as the savages that they are, we'd have a State Department advisory to all Americans advising them not to travel to Muslim countries in the first place so that they don't get into troub
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It makes me sad to see messages like this written or modded up. You're implicitly assuming that Americans and Muslims are distinct groups. I'd seriously cry if I hadn't heard that so many times.
Also, you're failing in basic geography, by forgetting Lebanon and Israel are neighbors to Syria, and that Iran and Saudi Arabia are not.
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Do you have to work hard to maintain this level of cognitive dissonance or do you find that it comes easily?
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No, the Libertarian answer is 'It's none of our business, let's not go there'.
I'd have supported the Libertarians, just if those idiots hadn't supported open borders. They have no issues w/ unlimited number of Muslims coming into this country
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That's the thing. Like I pointed out above, Bush just bought into the Sharansky doctrine and toppled Saddam, replacing him w/ a 'democracy'. Since Shi'ites are 60% of Iraq, that meant handing over power to them. Correct move would have been to either replace Saddam w/ a al Sisi like strongman in Baghdad, or just leave and let Iraq plunge into a full blown civil war like is happening in Syria.
Libya in fact is a textbook example of what not to do when fighting Jihad. It's true that Col Gadaffi was a vil
Meanwhile in Poland (Score:4, Funny)
Meanwhile, in Poland, they are developing a charcoal powered weapon. It's not as effective as Russia's microwave weapon, but the drones taste better afterwards.
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The Poland of WWII doesn't exist, and they fought valiantly against a superior foe only to be fucked by the Russians.
Poland today is a top-notch NATO ally, one of the few who will accept American missiles because they know the Russians won't be truly happy until they get a crack at fucking up Eastern Europe for another 50 years.
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I use a parabolic curve and the power of the sun to do the work of destroying the drone in an environmentally responsible fashion...
I don't get it (Score:2)
"disable aircraft communications, resulting in loss of control"
Why would someone build a weapon that could so easily be countered? They wouldn't.
People do realize we build and send unmanned drones literally millions of miles away with pre-programmed instructions, right? How do the not expect that concept to extend to drones?
Programmed to fly to a specific coordinate, using GPS from take off and flight info to calculate current position if communications are disabled by reported weapon, drop payload, fly bac
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
GPS and Radar are both types of communications. If your drone relies on only GPS and/or Radar for navigation, then sending an EMP down your antenna will destroy your GPS radio, your Radar transceiver, and your drone won't be able to find the current position, let-alone navigate to takeoff location.
Also, microwave won't just take out radio receivers and transmitters..... it will also blow out at least any integrated circuits attached to electromagnetic sensors without extreme protections including completely separate circuits and optical isolation (So you blow up the opto-isolators instead), even if the electronics themselves are shielded.
Sensors such as distance/location measurement by definition cannot be shielded, since you need them unshielded to be able to reach the outside world and sense things.
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Umm, the DJI phantom is a modern consumer level drone and makes extensive use of machine vision to avoid obstacles and receive gesture commands from the "pilot". Some claim that Iran spoofed US drone GPS a few years ago. I imagine current military drones are making extensive use of on-board optical sensors for things like horizon detection and target acquisition. Hell, with an accurate on-board clock, the aircraft could determine good-enough position using celestial bodies!
This tech is dirt-cheap by milita
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That kinda what I thought, although mysidia has a valid point about sensors not being able to be shielded from some EMP type weapon. But I am far from an expert.
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GPS and Radar are both types of communications. If your drone relies on only GPS and/or Radar for navigation, then sending an EMP down your antenna will destroy your GPS radio, your Radar transceiver, and your drone won't be able to find the current position, let-alone navigate to takeoff location.
Also, microwave won't just take out radio receivers and transmitters..... it will also blow out at least any integrated circuits attached to electromagnetic sensors without extreme protections including completely separate circuits and optical isolation (So you blow up the opto-isolators instead), even if the electronics themselves are shielded.
Sensors such as distance/location measurement by definition cannot be shielded, since you need them unshielded to be able to reach the outside world and sense things.
Eventually wild weasle drones will be developed. It's a matter of time, and drones are cheaper than buks. How the hell will they distinguish them from real targets at that scale?
Also, drones can be suicidal... it just seems like a bad idea to combine SAM and energy weapons because they will be even more detectable.
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The US way of thinking is not to add too much crypto.
A flying super computer is bad for two simple reasons. If it fails and glides down into enemy hands, every enemy gets a look at US thinking on secure maths.
The power and support needed for a secure system can be put to better use as payload or optics or time to loiter over any nation with no defence systems.
The US drone system is a rushed to market prototype that c
Problems with directed microwave weapons (Score:2)
One problem I can think of off the top of my head is it should be easy to detect the source of the microwaves and take it out. Also I would think better shielding could protect against this.
This might work for non-military drones though.
in soviet Russia we microwave you! (Score:1)
in soviet Russia we microwave you!
How does it work on passenger planes? (Score:1)
Russia sure likes shooting down planes.
BS fear mongering (Score:3)
Even older (Score:3)
the japanese worked on a microwave beam weapon in WW2, from gizmondo:
"According to documents confiscated by the U.S. military after the war, work on a Japanese death ray began as early as 1939 at laboratories in Noborito. To that end, the researchers developed a high-powered magnetron that could generate a beam of radiation. Physicist Sinitiro Tomonaga's team developed a magnetron measuring 8 inches (20 cm) in diameter with an output rated at 100kW. It's doubtful, however, that this technology could have wo
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A magnetron is a lousy way to project microwaves. You can't collimate the output for shit.
What you need is a big phased array [wikipedia.org]. The Navy guys I knew swore that the Aegis cruisers could cook a pilot in the cockpit of a passing jet if they ever painted it at full power. I've never believed that. (because of how jets are built, not because I had doubts about the raw output power those things were capable of) But I can easily see it making a very bad day for anything with a visible (in the emitter's view) an
Meanwhile in the U.S.A. (Score:3)
Code named: (Score:1)
I foresee a big market in ablative popcorn armor (Score:5, Funny)
I foresee a big market in ablative popcorn armor.
A tremendous target (Score:1)
I've been told (not an expert) that such weapons would be excellent targets on the battle field.
easily defeated. (Score:2)
If it really is strictly a "ultra-high frequency" jammer then it's range is between 300MHz and 3GHz. What this means is that a 5GHz cellular modem would still be able to operate under these conditions. However, if it's as powerful as they claim, you should add a little aluminum foil to the bottom of your drone. :)
Might come in handy... (Score:2)
...when the Terminators want to take over.
How did Russia suddenly become enemy #1? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Maybe it has to do with the propaganda spewed on RT or Russia's bombing civilian targets in Syria or its unprovoked invasion of the the Ukraine or its take-over of Crimea or its assassination of reporters and critics or...
So they say (Score:2)
They can say whatever they want, and all the idiot press will believe it. In fact, it's all a bunch of bullshit and countless competent intelligence agencies know that. Putin wants to push everyone around, but he's out of money. International businesses and world leaders don't care what color your judo belt is.
Show the money, bitch.
Max Range (Score:2)
‘With its effective range apparently not exceeding one kilometre, this weapon may be used against UAVs flying right above the battlefield,’ said Korotchenko.
That doesn't sound very far. By flying at 3500 feet, it can't hit a UAV even if it is directly overhead.
Keeping Up With The Jonses (Score:2)
Incidentally the United States is working on a missile-borne microwave weapon [wikipedia.org] which would be very useful for hitting Surface to Air missile sites like the ones Russia relies on for power projection, to augment their lower-tech air force (as they've done with the recent S-400 deployment in Syria.) This microwave weapon, mounted on the small tracked vehicles used by the Buk system would be a useful point-defense weapon against cruise missiles, if the power output was high enough, and the weapon was slow enoug
Re:thats cute (Score:5, Insightful)
Buddy, you okay?
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not since that anal probe in '96
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But it's Russia, and everyone knows a country with a GDP smaller than the United Kingdom is some sort of mighty power!!!
Russia is a has-been with a military and nuclear arsenal largely inherited from its older scarier days. For Russia these days, "force projection" literally does mean the Black Sea and Syria.
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For Russia these days, "force projection" literally does mean the Black Sea and Syria.
And in the west democracy mean to let the globalist elite decide your destiny. .. or did the Europeans and Swedes actually wanted it this way? Really? Have anyone asked?
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And in the west democracy mean to let the globalist elite decide your destiny. .. or did the Europeans and Swedes actually wanted it this way? Really? Have anyone asked?
Sweden's main concern is about getting naked in the sauna. If the globalist elite ever get in the way of getting naked in the sauna they will rise against them.
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The peoples of Europe freely entered the Common Market, which evolved into the EU. In fact, when the Eastern Bloc collapsed, a number of former Soviet satellites lined up to enter the EU. We can debate whether or not the EU has lived it up to what it was supposed to be, but the fact of the matter is that no tanks rolled across the French fields, no bombs were dropped on German or Italian cities, there were no occupying governments in Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands, these nations, for the first time in
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Part of the reason they are a power despite having a GDP smaller thant the United Kingdom is also part of the reason their GDP is smaller than the United Kingdom in the first place:
They spend a disproportionate amount on military, $98 billion annually. (more than any other European nation)
This combined with the fact that a lot of their neighbours are military light-weights, they have more nuclear weapons than anyone else, and they have an aggressive dictator (posing as elected) who has already invaded two
Re:So it's like... (Score:4, Insightful)
does indeed make them a threat to world peace.
You make it sound like "World Peace" is something we've already achieved.
It's not.... if there is no war now, there will be one soon; ISIS and various players all over the world have aligned everything to make sure of that.
$98 billion annually is not very much to spend on military at all. Hell, the US spends more than $600 billion.
Also, if you don't have an advanced highly-thorough military force when war does break out, then being caught unprepared has a high
probability of meaning you become an occupied or subservient country.
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"who has already invaded two sovereign neighbours and annexed their territory does indeed make them a threat to world peace."
Are we perhaps forgetting what the US government has been up to the past decade or so (invading 2 countries, black bagging people from Europe, extrajudicial killing via drone, global spying, etc)? Also the US spends more on the military I believe than the next 10 nations on the entire planet combined. I'm all for calling out Russia on their failings, but that conversation is going t
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The US has been doing that, in one form or another since the before the Civil War. If you include campaigns like those against the Barbary Pirates, it has willingly adopted a fairly robust foreign policy since almost the beginning.
Let's not forget that much of what you call the Midwest was basically seized from the Indians, that much of the Southwest was actually northern Mexico until a shameless war of expansionism saw American forces marching into Mexico City in 1847. These sorts of actions are littered t
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The US has got involved in wars it shouldn't but has not recently annexed any territory. Russia has done so... twice with their current dictator.
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My numbers aren't wrong, although they are the highest of the 4 organisations that estimate that kind of crap. The lowest estimate is $68B per year. I'm sure you will note that that is also a huge percent of their budget.
Russia could be a very wealthy country; they're strategically located with lots of resources, a decent population size, but they're plagued with high levels of corruption and leaders who care more about the military than the populace.
Of course they don't spend as much as the US, nobody do
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Inherited or not, nukes are nukes. Does it matter where they got them? They also have a very capable intelligence service with many decades of experience, and a demonstrated willingness to use this not just for gathering information but for active espionage and assassination missions.
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However you choose to measure it, Russia's economy is a midget compared to the more populace Western states like the US, Germany, Britain and France.
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I'm not belittling Russia's talent. It has always been a nation that has had a genius for making a little go a long way. But the fact is that the era of Russia as a major global player, the big competitor to the US, ended with the collapse of the USSR, and really, over the last quarter century, the chief rival has become China. Russia can be a menace, but aside from its nuclear delivery capacity, which is still significant, it isn't nearly as strong as it tries to make out. And ultimately, its nuclear arsen
Re:So it's like... (Score:4, Interesting)
I dunno. The Russian have a different approach to these things than we do. If Russian engineering firms were baseball teams, they'd be small ball players and our guys would be sluggers. We tend to swing to swing for the fences and they concentrate on getting base hits.
If the Russians think they're on to something they tend to keep tinkering with it, making it incrementally better. The question isn't whether something is necessarily the most impressive thing in the world now, but whether it is practical and useful now.
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Russians sometimes use methods that look crude to us because those methods are likely to work without costing fabulous amounts of money. It's Americans who set out to do overkill right from the drawing board.