Good intentions are no reason to encourage defeatism
An expert analyst serving as a solution to utilitarian, strictly shop tasks cannot be based on the free interpretation of facts of great social and political importance.
One of the most frequently cited Russian military experts, Doctor of Military Sciences Konstantin Sivkov, published in the newspaper Military Industrial Courier (No. 11, 20-26.03. 2018 g. Https://vpk-news.ru/sites/default/files /pdf/VPK_11_724.pdf) article in which he expressed doubts about the feasibility and timeliness of the transfer of the Russian military industry to the production of conversion (civil) products due to the incompleteness of the rearmament process of the Russian armed forces. This speech, without any mention of the really ambiguous conversion problem, was instantly used by the media of a certain direction for propaganda “explaining” to the mass Russian reader the complete hopelessness of Russia's martial law in the face of the United States and NATO. As evidenced by the typical headlines of these specific publications. For example - “In Russia, they recognized the impotence of the United States” https://lenta.ru/news/2018/03/23/war/
Understanding perfectly the patriotic motivation of Konstantin Sivkov, who obviously seeks, without going into details, to strengthen his arguments in favor of continuing the expanded military production, which is hard to disagree with, I cannot help but pay attention to the following fact. This argument, simplified by the author, probably with a view to greater accessibility, turned out to be very useful for those publications that, to put it mildly, are not too interested in the calm and balanced presentation of this sensitive topic of the Russian audience. And judging by the headers openly beating on the brains, they are concerned, rather, about achieving the direct opposite effect. Namely - the demoralization and spread of defeatism in Russian society. That in conditions of tough confrontation with the same United States, on the verge of a direct military confrontation, can be interpreted as conducting military special propaganda in the interests of the enemy with the goal of moral corruption of the Russian population and undermining its trust in government bodies.
Given this, not entirely conscientious use of Mr. Sivkov’s remarks, I consider it appropriate to assess the degree of their actual and conceptual impeccability in order to understand whether the alarmist version of the clearly accented media about Russia's “military impotence” before the United States is true. So, the first group of arguments related to the naval fleet:
Absolute numbers in this case do not cause any special doubts. Nevertheless, the very legitimacy of such an arithmetic approach to comparing the US Navy and the Russian Navy seems completely unfounded. As the author of these lines noted in his previous article, Russia and the United States are two diametrically opposed geopolitical entities. America, separated from almost the rest of the world by two oceans, a pronounced maritime power. The very existence of which, above all, is economic, depends on uninterrupted connections with overseas territories. It is precisely because of its virtually insular geopolitical position that the United States has historically been forced to build powerful naval forces as the main means of ensuring the safety of its maritime communications and a tool for projecting its military power to practically the whole world.
Russia, by virtue of its geographical location in the space of two continents - Europe and Asia, is, above all, a land power. And its safety and economic well-being are much less dependent on maritime communications than those of the United States. That is why the navy in Russia, for all its undoubted importance, has always played a subordinate role in relation to the land army, designed to protect the vast territory and virtually endless borders.
Given this fundamental circumstance, an attempt to purely arithmetic comparison of the Russian Navy and the US Navy looks completely unreasonable and devoid of any practical content. And, even more so, such a comparison can in no way be considered correct in assessing the overall ratio of the military capabilities of Russia and the United States.
It is characteristic that in this comparison, derogatory for Russia, Mr. Sivkov for some reason completely omitted the data on the ratio of the landing forces of both fleets. Although it would only benefit his argument. After all, the American amphibious forces, with their numerous UDC and docking ships, are many times greater than the Russian ones. But the captain of the first rank in retirement, apparently, understood in time that this would be completely frivolous. After all, one doesn’t even have to be a military expert to understand the obvious - the objectively motivated interest of the land superpower of Russia in projecting naval power into remote overseas territories is several times less than that of the traditionally imperialist maritime power of the United States. Accordingly, it is ridiculous to even raise the question of the need for the Russian fleet amphibious forces, comparable in scale to the American ones.
Among other things, one should not lose sight of the fact that the correlation of forces at sea is in no way reduced only to the number of warships. It is curious that the same expert K. Sivkov in his other article in the same publication confirms this fact in the most convincing way:
Russian anti-ship missile X-32 under the wing of a long-range naval aviation bomber of the Russian Federation Tu-22М3
Thus, the naval part of the argumentation of this military expert in no way gives rise to defeatist media hysteria in the style "In Russia, they recognized impotence in the US."
Go ahead. Air Force:
Quantitative comparisons are the simplest, but the most insidious thing. Especially if you do not go into details. In which, as they say knowledgeable people, the devil himself hides. For a start, about the total number of military aircraft. Indeed, the United States has much more. But there is one "but." It is called the “technical readiness ratio” (KTG) of the aircraft fleet. So this coefficient in the US Air Force is steadily decreasing. As a result, the number of real combat-ready combat aircraft is significantly lower than the total figures that Mr. Sivkov orients, probably for greater impressiveness. For example, the number of B-1B combat-ready bombers is 52%. That is about half of the total number of these machines. Strategic bomber B-XNUMHA "Spirit" - the same picture! Only half of their fleet is ready to start. The CTG for the “worthy rival Su-2” of the F-57А fighter is already 22%. And, by the way, in the combat strength of their not 49, but only 200 pieces. Divide by two - we get somewhere 187 real aircraft of this type. Also, of course, a bit too much, but the difference is far from cosmic. Especially given the fact that the production of Su-93 in the Russian Federation is constantly increasing, and the release of the F-57A has long ceased.
And, perhaps, the most comical. KTG fleet of the newest American fighter F-35 is ... 54, 6%! That is, almost half of the new American "drifters" cannot participate in battle at all! So the numbers are really sly things.
Moreover, our esteemed expert, speaking of the fourfold superiority of the USA in bombers, clearly messed up something. Even from the above table it is clear that in total (taking into account the flightless half of the park!) Among the Americans in the 157 ranks are long-range bombers. Russia, in turn, has approximately 130 units (Tu-160 - 16, Tu-95 - 60, Tu-22М3-60). Even if this figure is given taking into account the aircraft of the "second stage". But after all, in the case of the United States, it is similarly formed! And where is the fourfold American superiority here? And this is not to mention the fact that all Russian heavy bombers are capable of striking long-range cruise missiles, which makes them a full-fledged strategic weapons.
Upgraded experienced strategic Tu-95MS bomber with an external suspension of eight new-type cruise missiles. Zhukovsky, 29.10.2015 (c) russianplanes.net
At the same time, almost half of American “strategists” can only make suicidal flights over the enemy’s well-defended air defense territory to drop free-falling bombs. In addition, the other half, still capable of carrying cruise missiles, are old B-52s, partly so decrepit that some of them have engines that fall off in flight.
Loading free-falling bombs on an American B-1 Lance bomberr
And this is not to mention the fact that the US Air Force, along with naval aviation, are scattered around the world in dozens of military bases, where their presence is strictly necessary to reinforce American domination over the countries there. And to pull them into one fist, for example - against the same Russia, the task is quite problematic, because for this you will have to expose the entire American global core network. And this is politically very undesirable for the United States.
Russia has practically no such foreign burdens. Not counting, perhaps, Syria, which plays a very useful role as a unique military training ground. Therefore, the Russian Aerospace Forces are much more free in their operational-strategic maneuver and can easily be concentrated on the directions of possible threats. At the same time, they can be much smaller and more compact than the excessively bloated US military aircraft, which, as we have just seen, looks impressive on paper, but are much less convincing in reality.
The expert K. Sivkov approaches the assessment of the correlation of forces between the Russian Federation and the United States using long-range cruise missiles, like the American Tomahawks:
Once again, Russia is being called on to keep up with the United States in a purely quantitative arms race. Meanwhile, even despite the lag of the Russian Federation in the timing and pace of arming the same "Caliber", associated with well-known historical reasons, there is no reason to overly dramatize this situation.
The Tomahawk CD, which has been in service with the United States for almost forty years, can hardly be considered the most modern and promising class of weapons, even from the point of view of the general philosophy of its use. Suffice it to recall that at one time this weapon of destruction was created as a tool for conducting, above all, a nuclear missile war between superpowers. And in the sense of it, of course, even in the case of a single application, has some military significance. However, in a non-nuclear military conflict, the shock power even of all Tomahawks combined is not impressive, to put it mildly. Do not forget that even 7 of thousands of such missiles, it is only seven thousand ordinary pretty low-powered aerial bombs. That is about the same as the American-British aircraft dropped in 1943 on the German city of Hamburg in just one day. And this did not affect the ability of the Third Reich to continue a world war.
The recent facts of the combat use of "Tomahawks" in Syria only confirm their highly controversial effectiveness. And really - to use almost 60 cruise missiles of this type to hit only one Syrian air base and to stop flights from it only for ... one day, this is almost a sentence for this weapon system!
Not to mention the fact that over the past forty years, anti-Tomahawk technologies have been brought to near perfection. The same Russia has developed a whole class of air defense systems, for example - “Pantsir”, specially designed for the destruction of low-flying KR. What makes it very problematic to hit them in the assigned target, protected by such advanced installations. And the highly developed Russian EW complexes capable of completely shutting down the American system of global GPS navigation in the territory of entire countries (as it is happening now in Syria) can completely disrupt the delivery of such a blow.
By the way, the lion’s share of this rather dubious weapon is on American surface ships, destroyer and cruiser classes, as well as multi-purpose nuclear submarines and is their main strike force. Considering the fact that the second specialty of the numerous American surface fleet is in missile defense, which is also questioned by the latest Russian missile defense systems, it is appropriate to talk about the increasing loss of their functional significance as an essential component of the modern US fleet (except SSBNs). military power.
It is also curious that neither the original analysis from the expert Sivkov, nor the propaganda “demotivator preparations” prepared on its basis contain exactly any data on the ratio of nuclear missile forces of the Russian Federation and the USA. Probably because this comparison cannot give anything particularly dramatic, due to the well-known fact of the existence of military-strategic parity between the two countries. There is no comparison on the military equipment of the ground forces, which in many key indicators (tanks, the latest air defense and electronic warfare systems, OTRK and others) is obviously not in favor of the United States and therefore, apparently, did not suit our expert.
But the fact of the matter is that, unlike unfair propaganda, professional military analysis cannot be built on the basis of this taste: it suits me - I take it into account, and this contradicts my calculations, so I don’t take it.
The ratio of the military capabilities of such states as Russia and the United States can only be correctly considered in its entirety. And only under this condition can we make sufficiently adequate general conclusions. Otherwise, it will be just another feed in favor of those spiteful critics who don’t feed them with bread, just give another reason to belittle Russia once again and scare the Russians with the supposed omnipotence of the United States.
One of the most frequently cited Russian military experts, Doctor of Military Sciences Konstantin Sivkov, published in the newspaper Military Industrial Courier (No. 11, 20-26.03. 2018 g. Https://vpk-news.ru/sites/default/files /pdf/VPK_11_724.pdf) article in which he expressed doubts about the feasibility and timeliness of the transfer of the Russian military industry to the production of conversion (civil) products due to the incompleteness of the rearmament process of the Russian armed forces. This speech, without any mention of the really ambiguous conversion problem, was instantly used by the media of a certain direction for propaganda “explaining” to the mass Russian reader the complete hopelessness of Russia's martial law in the face of the United States and NATO. As evidenced by the typical headlines of these specific publications. For example - “In Russia, they recognized the impotence of the United States” https://lenta.ru/news/2018/03/23/war/
Understanding perfectly the patriotic motivation of Konstantin Sivkov, who obviously seeks, without going into details, to strengthen his arguments in favor of continuing the expanded military production, which is hard to disagree with, I cannot help but pay attention to the following fact. This argument, simplified by the author, probably with a view to greater accessibility, turned out to be very useful for those publications that, to put it mildly, are not too interested in the calm and balanced presentation of this sensitive topic of the Russian audience. And judging by the headers openly beating on the brains, they are concerned, rather, about achieving the direct opposite effect. Namely - the demoralization and spread of defeatism in Russian society. That in conditions of tough confrontation with the same United States, on the verge of a direct military confrontation, can be interpreted as conducting military special propaganda in the interests of the enemy with the goal of moral corruption of the Russian population and undermining its trust in government bodies.
Given this, not entirely conscientious use of Mr. Sivkov’s remarks, I consider it appropriate to assess the degree of their actual and conceptual impeccability in order to understand whether the alarmist version of the clearly accented media about Russia's “military impotence” before the United States is true. So, the first group of arguments related to the naval fleet:
"Thus, the American fleet surpasses the Russian fleet by 12 times by aircraft carriers (while the Kuznetsov corresponds to about half of the American fellow in terms of combat potential), by cruisers - by 6,5 times, by destroyers - by five times, by multipurpose nuclear submarines - by four times.
Absolute numbers in this case do not cause any special doubts. Nevertheless, the very legitimacy of such an arithmetic approach to comparing the US Navy and the Russian Navy seems completely unfounded. As the author of these lines noted in his previous article, Russia and the United States are two diametrically opposed geopolitical entities. America, separated from almost the rest of the world by two oceans, a pronounced maritime power. The very existence of which, above all, is economic, depends on uninterrupted connections with overseas territories. It is precisely because of its virtually insular geopolitical position that the United States has historically been forced to build powerful naval forces as the main means of ensuring the safety of its maritime communications and a tool for projecting its military power to practically the whole world.
Russia, by virtue of its geographical location in the space of two continents - Europe and Asia, is, above all, a land power. And its safety and economic well-being are much less dependent on maritime communications than those of the United States. That is why the navy in Russia, for all its undoubted importance, has always played a subordinate role in relation to the land army, designed to protect the vast territory and virtually endless borders.
Given this fundamental circumstance, an attempt to purely arithmetic comparison of the Russian Navy and the US Navy looks completely unreasonable and devoid of any practical content. And, even more so, such a comparison can in no way be considered correct in assessing the overall ratio of the military capabilities of Russia and the United States.
It is characteristic that in this comparison, derogatory for Russia, Mr. Sivkov for some reason completely omitted the data on the ratio of the landing forces of both fleets. Although it would only benefit his argument. After all, the American amphibious forces, with their numerous UDC and docking ships, are many times greater than the Russian ones. But the captain of the first rank in retirement, apparently, understood in time that this would be completely frivolous. After all, one doesn’t even have to be a military expert to understand the obvious - the objectively motivated interest of the land superpower of Russia in projecting naval power into remote overseas territories is several times less than that of the traditionally imperialist maritime power of the United States. Accordingly, it is ridiculous to even raise the question of the need for the Russian fleet amphibious forces, comparable in scale to the American ones.
Among other things, one should not lose sight of the fact that the correlation of forces at sea is in no way reduced only to the number of warships. It is curious that the same expert K. Sivkov in his other article in the same publication confirms this fact in the most convincing way:
“Meanwhile, back in 2016, news was unnoticed by the media about the adoption of the Kh-32 anti-ship missile system for the Tu-22M3 DA (ex-MRA) aircraft. Her appearance is in service with our distant aviation seriously changing the alignment of oceanic and marine theater of operations. A naval strike group of the U.S. Navy, consisting of two cruisers or destroyers of the URO, under the most favorable conditions, is unable to repulse the strike of even a pair of Tu-22M3 aircraft carrying two X-32 missiles. At least one ship will be out of order with a probability of 0,6–0,7. A strike of a link consisting of three aircraft with a consumption of six X-32 missiles is guaranteed to destroy both ships.
24 PKR X-32 AUG will be fatal. The probability of failure or sinking of an aircraft carrier will amount to 0,75 – 0,85 with the destruction of two to three escort ships. Our planes will be at the turn of the attack, not entering the zone of action of enemy fighters. That is, the strike of a group from 12 Tu-22М3 with two anti-ship missiles on each one will be enough to destroy AUG with a high probability ”(https://vpk-news.ru/articles/41779).
24 PKR X-32 AUG will be fatal. The probability of failure or sinking of an aircraft carrier will amount to 0,75 – 0,85 with the destruction of two to three escort ships. Our planes will be at the turn of the attack, not entering the zone of action of enemy fighters. That is, the strike of a group from 12 Tu-22М3 with two anti-ship missiles on each one will be enough to destroy AUG with a high probability ”(https://vpk-news.ru/articles/41779).
Russian anti-ship missile X-32 under the wing of a long-range naval aviation bomber of the Russian Federation Tu-22М3
Thus, the naval part of the argumentation of this military expert in no way gives rise to defeatist media hysteria in the style "In Russia, they recognized impotence in the US."
Go ahead. Air Force:
“In the aerospace field, things are no better. On combat aircraft (fighters, bombers, attack aircraft), the US Air Force and Navy are almost four times as powerful as the Russian HQ and naval aircraft. At the same time, the latter is inferior to the American by about two orders of magnitude. Given the aircraft providing the overall quantitative superiority of US aircraft - almost eightfold. It is appropriate to recall our Su-57. First-class car, a worthy contender to the American F-22. But there are only four of them, and the F-22 is more than 200! In the support aircraft, DRLO airplanes are allocated, without which it is impossible to detect low-altitude targets like "Tomahawk" and "Caliber". Russia has about 16 of such machines, the USA has more than 60. Great is American superiority in the BTA aircraft, the importance of which was clearly shown by Syria. ”
Quantitative comparisons are the simplest, but the most insidious thing. Especially if you do not go into details. In which, as they say knowledgeable people, the devil himself hides. For a start, about the total number of military aircraft. Indeed, the United States has much more. But there is one "but." It is called the “technical readiness ratio” (KTG) of the aircraft fleet. So this coefficient in the US Air Force is steadily decreasing. As a result, the number of real combat-ready combat aircraft is significantly lower than the total figures that Mr. Sivkov orients, probably for greater impressiveness. For example, the number of B-1B combat-ready bombers is 52%. That is about half of the total number of these machines. Strategic bomber B-XNUMHA "Spirit" - the same picture! Only half of their fleet is ready to start. The CTG for the “worthy rival Su-2” of the F-57А fighter is already 22%. And, by the way, in the combat strength of their not 49, but only 200 pieces. Divide by two - we get somewhere 187 real aircraft of this type. Also, of course, a bit too much, but the difference is far from cosmic. Especially given the fact that the production of Su-93 in the Russian Federation is constantly increasing, and the release of the F-57A has long ceased.
And, perhaps, the most comical. KTG fleet of the newest American fighter F-35 is ... 54, 6%! That is, almost half of the new American "drifters" cannot participate in battle at all! So the numbers are really sly things.
Moreover, our esteemed expert, speaking of the fourfold superiority of the USA in bombers, clearly messed up something. Even from the above table it is clear that in total (taking into account the flightless half of the park!) Among the Americans in the 157 ranks are long-range bombers. Russia, in turn, has approximately 130 units (Tu-160 - 16, Tu-95 - 60, Tu-22М3-60). Even if this figure is given taking into account the aircraft of the "second stage". But after all, in the case of the United States, it is similarly formed! And where is the fourfold American superiority here? And this is not to mention the fact that all Russian heavy bombers are capable of striking long-range cruise missiles, which makes them a full-fledged strategic weapons.
Upgraded experienced strategic Tu-95MS bomber with an external suspension of eight new-type cruise missiles. Zhukovsky, 29.10.2015 (c) russianplanes.net
At the same time, almost half of American “strategists” can only make suicidal flights over the enemy’s well-defended air defense territory to drop free-falling bombs. In addition, the other half, still capable of carrying cruise missiles, are old B-52s, partly so decrepit that some of them have engines that fall off in flight.
Loading free-falling bombs on an American B-1 Lance bomberr
And this is not to mention the fact that the US Air Force, along with naval aviation, are scattered around the world in dozens of military bases, where their presence is strictly necessary to reinforce American domination over the countries there. And to pull them into one fist, for example - against the same Russia, the task is quite problematic, because for this you will have to expose the entire American global core network. And this is politically very undesirable for the United States.
Russia has practically no such foreign burdens. Not counting, perhaps, Syria, which plays a very useful role as a unique military training ground. Therefore, the Russian Aerospace Forces are much more free in their operational-strategic maneuver and can easily be concentrated on the directions of possible threats. At the same time, they can be much smaller and more compact than the excessively bloated US military aircraft, which, as we have just seen, looks impressive on paper, but are much less convincing in reality.
The expert K. Sivkov approaches the assessment of the correlation of forces between the Russian Federation and the United States using long-range cruise missiles, like the American Tomahawks:
“The Russian army is experiencing a serious shortage of ammunition for the WTO. According to open data, the number of "Tomahawks" in US aircraft is 4500 – 7500 units. And about 500 of such missiles are purchased annually. That is, over the course of 9 – 12 years, a complete replacement of arsenals has occurred. "Calibers" began to en masse to the troops from about the year 2013. There is no open data on production and availability. Estimated on the basis of information on the procurement of military equipment for the state defense order, the annual deliveries of “Calibrov” are from 30 – 40 to 50 – 60 units per year. This is quite consistent with the intensity of their use in Syria. The total stockpiles of such weapons in our aircraft can be estimated from 150 – 200 to 300 – 400 units. ”
Once again, Russia is being called on to keep up with the United States in a purely quantitative arms race. Meanwhile, even despite the lag of the Russian Federation in the timing and pace of arming the same "Caliber", associated with well-known historical reasons, there is no reason to overly dramatize this situation.
The Tomahawk CD, which has been in service with the United States for almost forty years, can hardly be considered the most modern and promising class of weapons, even from the point of view of the general philosophy of its use. Suffice it to recall that at one time this weapon of destruction was created as a tool for conducting, above all, a nuclear missile war between superpowers. And in the sense of it, of course, even in the case of a single application, has some military significance. However, in a non-nuclear military conflict, the shock power even of all Tomahawks combined is not impressive, to put it mildly. Do not forget that even 7 of thousands of such missiles, it is only seven thousand ordinary pretty low-powered aerial bombs. That is about the same as the American-British aircraft dropped in 1943 on the German city of Hamburg in just one day. And this did not affect the ability of the Third Reich to continue a world war.
The recent facts of the combat use of "Tomahawks" in Syria only confirm their highly controversial effectiveness. And really - to use almost 60 cruise missiles of this type to hit only one Syrian air base and to stop flights from it only for ... one day, this is almost a sentence for this weapon system!
Not to mention the fact that over the past forty years, anti-Tomahawk technologies have been brought to near perfection. The same Russia has developed a whole class of air defense systems, for example - “Pantsir”, specially designed for the destruction of low-flying KR. What makes it very problematic to hit them in the assigned target, protected by such advanced installations. And the highly developed Russian EW complexes capable of completely shutting down the American system of global GPS navigation in the territory of entire countries (as it is happening now in Syria) can completely disrupt the delivery of such a blow.
By the way, the lion’s share of this rather dubious weapon is on American surface ships, destroyer and cruiser classes, as well as multi-purpose nuclear submarines and is their main strike force. Considering the fact that the second specialty of the numerous American surface fleet is in missile defense, which is also questioned by the latest Russian missile defense systems, it is appropriate to talk about the increasing loss of their functional significance as an essential component of the modern US fleet (except SSBNs). military power.
It is also curious that neither the original analysis from the expert Sivkov, nor the propaganda “demotivator preparations” prepared on its basis contain exactly any data on the ratio of nuclear missile forces of the Russian Federation and the USA. Probably because this comparison cannot give anything particularly dramatic, due to the well-known fact of the existence of military-strategic parity between the two countries. There is no comparison on the military equipment of the ground forces, which in many key indicators (tanks, the latest air defense and electronic warfare systems, OTRK and others) is obviously not in favor of the United States and therefore, apparently, did not suit our expert.
But the fact of the matter is that, unlike unfair propaganda, professional military analysis cannot be built on the basis of this taste: it suits me - I take it into account, and this contradicts my calculations, so I don’t take it.
The ratio of the military capabilities of such states as Russia and the United States can only be correctly considered in its entirety. And only under this condition can we make sufficiently adequate general conclusions. Otherwise, it will be just another feed in favor of those spiteful critics who don’t feed them with bread, just give another reason to belittle Russia once again and scare the Russians with the supposed omnipotence of the United States.
Information