Efficiency of the US Navy in the Mediterranean is living its last days
The end of 2017 turned out to be very rich in major and to some extent crucial military-political and geostrategic events taking place in the Asia-Pacific region, Western Asia (including the Middle East) and Eastern Europe. In the Far East, Kim Jong-un and the KPA command several times conducted a bold “red line”, the transition of which does not promise the militaristic ambitions of Washington and its allies anything good except nuclear mushrooms over key naval bases in the western Pacific, where the main targets for The Andersen airbase and Apra Harbor naval base, which are the main reloading points of the US Navy / Air Force / ILC for rapid deployment of the necessary number of groups in Japan and the Republic of Korea, became intimidating. As for the Donbass theater of war, where the Lugansk People’s Republic finally got rid of the corrupt tyrant Plotnitsky, whose entourage was imbued with dozens of information leaks to the Ukrainian special services, everything is awaiting Trump’s final decision to provide an “independent” 47 million-dollar military aid package including more than a hundred FGM-148 "Javelin" anti-tank systems, portable electronic equipment for network-centric linking of units during combat operations, etc. If the signature of the head of the White House is still put under this document, then the escalation of the conflict will follow almost immediately, which is what the hawks in the US Congress are seeking.
At the same time, the most expressive line of the geostrategic rift runs today through the entire Persian region: from the Persian Gulf, where the United States and Israel face the most powerful regional "players" - Iran and the "Arabian Coalition" to the Middle East, where Ankara in the face of Erdogan mixed everything Western coalition plans to promote the interests of the Pentagon in the Syrian theater of operations. The participation of President Recep Erdogan and Chief of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces Hulusi Akar in the meeting of the Middle East Troika in Sochi became a real collapse of illusions for Washington regarding total control over the processes taking place in the Persian-Asian military-political arena. Not saved the situation and the fact that Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Alliance. Being in the area of a clearly defined geostrategic “focus” between South-Eastern Europe and Front and Central Asia, Ankara received unique opportunities to choose “new horizons” of military-technical cooperation, which are not in the west, but in the north-east. Skillfully manipulating NATO’s dependence on the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, the leadership of the most eastern member state of the alliance was able to easily make a demand to Washington, the failure of which does not bode well for the US, except to intensify the interaction of the Turkish army with Syrian government forces in countering Syrian Democratic Forces ".
The US awareness of the consequences of the possible failure to comply with Ankara’s demands even led to some results: in a recent telephone conversation with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the head of the White House D. Trump even promised to stop the supply of American weapons to the Kurdish PYD / YPG detachments, on which the Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey insisted a few days ago Binali Yıldırım in the course of the discussion at the International Institute for International Strategic Studies (IISS). Nevertheless, taking these promises seriously, we automatically subscribe to our own incompetence in military and political matters. It is worth remembering clearly that the Pentagon will never completely abandon the military support of the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF), as this will lead to the final defeat, first in Syria and then in Iraq. It is possible that the transfer of armaments will simply be partially “curtailed”, and concealment of the facts of the supply will be carried out through the introduction of containers with weapons to humanitarian aid delivered by military transport aviation.
The Syrian theater of war is not the only place of conflict of interests between Moscow and Washington in Western Asia. In the middle of the penultimate week of November, an online air traffic control service “Flightradar24” could be used to observe the night return of the IL-62M of the RF Ministry of Defense from Cairo through Turkish airspace. Apparently, the leadership of the state-guarantor of a stable maritime communication between the Mediterranean basin and the Indo-Asia-Pacific region received a high-ranking delegation of the Russian defense department. Obviously, the arrival could not have anything to do with the terrible terrorist attack in the Egyptian Al-Raud, since it occurred only on Friday 24 November. What really could be the reason for the arrival of the representatives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation aboard the IL-62M with the “No callsign” index, is the forthcoming agreement on the deployment of a large naval base in the Sudanese city of Port Sudan. Recall that during the meeting of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with the Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Sochi, the first was a request to protect the African state from American interference.
For example, the Second Civil War in Sudan, as well as the Darfur conflict itself, gave the States a lot of reasons for the Pentagon to intervene in the internal conflicts of the Sunni state. Together with Israel, extended military support was provided to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army and the Eastern Front, which led to even more violent and bloody clashes with the Sudanese armed forces and the Janjaweed (pro-government Sudanese militia). Omar al-Bashir also accused Washington of trying to break up Sudan into 5 separate sectors under its control and “devastate the Arab world." Huge influence on the decision of Khartoum to deploy on the territory of the state a Russian naval base and other military facilities concealed by an echeloned missile defense system was also exerted by attack operations conducted by tactical aviation of the Israeli Air Force.
We are talking about a pinpoint strike by a flight of tactical fighters F-15I "Raʻam" on the Sudanese production complex "Yarmuk", which, according to the British newspaper "Sunday Times" with reference to Israeli sources, allegedly underwent technological adaptation for the serial production of operational-tactical ballistic missiles of the "Shahab-1/2" type with a range of 300 to 500 km with the help of Iranian specialists. Israeli resources claim that this opinion is based on a copy of the Iranian-Sudanese agreement, allegedly seized by the Mossad officers from the liquidated Palestinian leader and Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhuh in a Dubai hotel. But judging by the way the Israeli media like to promote their own special services, this story could be another argument sucked from the finger to test the shock capabilities of its own “strategic asset” - the long-range multi-purpose fighter F-15I.
It is known that in the morning air raid Implemented 24 October 2012 years, participated 2 link "Raam", presented by the shock link, where all 4 tactical fighter aircraft were equipped with 8 2000-pound bombs, as well as the link cover / escorting represented 4 machines with missiles AIM-120C-5 / 7 AMRAAM for a possible confrontation with Sudanese MiG-29CE who took off for interception. Remarkably, the distance that the Israeli “tactics” (3900 km) had to overcome precisely corresponds to the range required for attacking the military-industrial and nuclear centers of the Islamic Republic of Iran, taking into account the need to bend around the complex terrain of the Zagros mountain ranges. As a result, the vehicles had to perform refueling in the air from the tanker KC-707 “Saknay” over the Red Sea. Hel Haavir also used DRX / DER G550 CAEW (Conformal Airborne Early Warning) aircraft, capable of conducting radio-electronic reconnaissance in a passive mode, for direction finding and directional radio-electronic suppression of Sudanese ground-based radar long-range radar detection. The two-sided AFAR-radar of the EL / W-2085 L / S bands from the Elta division is responsible for everything.
During the operation, the mixed air squadron Hel Haavir emerged to the battlefield (the air border of Sudan over the Red Sea coast) along the trajectory as far as possible from Egyptian means of early warning and air defense. Moreover, at that time, the Egyptian Armed Forces did not receive the Antey-300 C-2500BM long-range anti-aircraft missile systems, and therefore the pilots Hel Haavir felt completely safe, delivering a pinpoint attack on an industrial object of the Arab state. From the moment the Russian naval base (through 7 - 10 months) is erected in Port Sudan, the air force and the fleets of the “pro-American axis” can no longer oppose Khartoum. Cairo, still being the most important strategic partner of the Russian Federation in the Middle East, was notified in advance.
Immediately after the appearance of information about the possible deployment of the Russian naval facility on the Red Sea coast, in the military analytical circles of Runet, a huge amount of disputes arose regarding the expediency of the appearance of a new base. In particular, a user of the blog platform “LiveJournal” with the name “vamoisej” published an analytical article “Russia does not need a military base in Sudan”. The submission claims that internal instability in Sudan associated with the Darfur conflict, as well as Islamist groups (Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami, etc.), penetrating the territory of Egypt, creates an extremely unfavorable background for the presence of the Russian military contingent . Also as unacceptable for the existence of the base are taken into account such facts as:
- a possible military confrontation for the water resources of the Nile River between Egypt and Ethiopia (the latter is planning to build a hydroelectric power station, which will block part of the Nile flow for Egypt, and Sudan fully supports this construction, which may involve Khartoum itself);
- extremely low operational and strategic sustainability of the future Port-Sudan naval base due to the possibility of quickly blocking the Suez Canal and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait with the aircraft-carrier strike forces of the NATO naval forces and the US Navy, as well as the Egyptian Armed Forces in the Sinai Peninsula region; the possibility of blocking the sea approaches to Port Sudan by the forces of the Shiite-Zeidites from the Ansar Allah movement, military groups from Somalia, as well as shipboard attack groups and coastal anti-ship complexes of the Chinese Navy based on the Chinese naval base Djibouti;
- the impossibility of the operational transfer of naval infantry units of the Russian Navy to the Arabian Peninsula due to the alleged lack of amphibious means to deliver personnel and weapons to a distance of 300 km (from Port Sudan to Jeddah).
Meanwhile, infusing similar analytical material in the ears of uninformed Internet observers, teeming with a mass of tactical, strategic and technical mistakes, the author signs under incompetence on the real situation both in the Middle East and in the Near East region as a whole. Many of the points described above are simply absurd. For example, in the case of a major regional conflict, it is so easy to take and block the same Suez Canal with the help of Aegis-destroyers / cruisers of the Arley Burk / Ticonderoga URO, super low-noise MAPL Virginia and P-8A long-range anti-submarine aircraft P-300A “Poseidon” it will not be easy for the States. The author of the above article forgets about the presence of the Hmeimim airbase, perfectly protected by C-4B400 and C-34, with which several Su-72 squadrons equipped with 144, 31 and more supersonic X-30AD anti-ship missiles will operate. Cover them with steam and more Su-35CM / XNUMXС squadrons operating from the air bases of the Southern Military District.
Egyptian S-18VM Antey-300 can also close the airspace for flying US multi-role fighter aircraft F / A-2500E / F in the Suez Canal area. Despite the joint assembly with the States of the licensed assembly of the main combat tanks M1A1 "Abrams", the key suppliers of defensive / offensive weapons for Cairo (including the S-300VM air defense system and the MiG-29M2 tactical fighter line) continue to remain on the territory of Russia, which means that our country, from the time of the USSR, remains the key for Egypt a partner for military-technical cooperation and strategic partnership, especially in the circumstances prevailing in the Middle East. After all, it is not in vain that before the release of information about the emerging deployment of a naval base in Sudan, our military aircraft with the “signature” “No callsign” were sent to Cairo - this says a lot. More interestingly, NATO warships and US nuclear-powered multipurpose missile cruisers can be "hotly" greeted several hundred kilometers before the Suez Canal, somewhere around the island of Crete. For this, the Black Sea Fleet can immediately allocate 7, and if necessary even more ultra-quiet diesel-electric submarines of projects 877 “Halibut” and 636.3 “Varshavyanka”.
Having successfully settled down in the central part of the Mediterranean, and maneuvering at speeds in the 3 - 4 node, it will be almost impossible to swap them even in the first far zone of acoustic illumination using the AN / SQQ-89 (V) 14 / 15 HAC and the same "Poseidon ". NATO will be simply torpedoed. “Star” anti-ship strike “Drying”, together with “Varshavyanki” and Tu-22М3 (do not forget about the new hypersonic X-32 rocket), can be organized on more distant approaches (after all, it’s not for nothing that we are holding the Syrian bridgehead). As for the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the Chinese naval base being built here in Djibouti, contrary to the opinion of the author of the article “Russia does not need a military base in Sudan”, will only play into the hands of the strategic sustainability of our base in Port Sudan. The Chinese low-noise submarines, 093 Shan, and the anaerobic diesel-sterling-electric 041 Yuan, will take control of the Gulf of Aden and most of the Arabian Sea, where Iranian Paltusa can come to the rescue. It’s unlikely that the American giants of the US naval connections will dictate their terms for a very long time.
Information sources:
https://marafonec.livejournal.com/9067554.html
https://russian.rt.com/world/article/408742-chyornaya-zhemchuzhina-zachem-knr-voennaya-baza-v
http://militaryrussia.ru/blog/topic-722.html
Information