Most are older stories but contain good info...
Russia’s Most Modern Warship And Its Escorts Have Entered The Caribbean Sea
(June 19th, 2019)
(OCT 4, 2021)
(JUN 16, 2021)
"A senior U.S. military officer has again sounded the alarm about the threat that advanced, very quiet, cruise-missile-armed Russian submarines, as well as Chinese ones, increasingly present to the United States. At a hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday, U.S. Air Force General Glen VanHerck, who is head of U.S. Northern Command and the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command, told lawmakers that Russia's growing fleet of nuclear-powered Yasen class guided-missile submarines, in particular, are nearly on par with U.S. Navy types in terms of quietness and will present a persistent threat to the American homeland unlike any before within five years. He added that, at its current pace of modernization, the Chinese Navy would not be behind for long in terms of similar capabilities.
(That was almost two years ago...)
"Russia just fielded their second Sev class [submarine], which is on par with ours," VanHerck said at one point, as part of a response to a question about threats that fall below the nuclear threshold that potential adversaries pose to the United States. "Within a five-year period, they'll have eight to nine of those submarines, which will be a persistent proximate threat off of our east and west coasts that we haven't had ever in the past."
"Our ships can no longer expect to operate in a safe haven on the East Coast or merely cross the Atlantic unhindered to operate in another location," he said at a gathering jointly hosted by the U.S. Naval Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in February 2020. "We have seen an ever-increasing number of Russian submarines deployed in the Atlantic, and these submarines are more capable than ever, deploying for longer periods of time, with more lethal weapons systems."
"The potential for Yasen and Yasen-M class boats, along with older Russian submarines, as well as various types of surface warships, to carry Zircon is part of separate and growing concerns about the threats that missiles able to reach hypersonic speeds present to American forces. “It’s important that we have that capability now because the hypersonic threat is there now," MDA head Vice Admiral Hill had said at a separate hearing before members of the Senate Armed Services Committee last week in a response to a question about the need for hypersonic defense systems, especially sea-based options to protect Navy aircraft carriers."
"At the hearing yesterday, Hill stressed that when he talked about hypersonic weapons, he was talking about a broad category that included missiles tipped with highly-maneuverable unpowered boost-glide vehicles, very-fast-flying air-breathing cruise missiles, and advanced ground-based and air-launched ballistic missiles, which reach extremely high velocities in their terminal phase of flight."
"What used to be a very predictable ballistic profile, that has now changed and it's a challenge to the sensor architecture," he continued. "It's very important that we continue to invest in the sensor capacity that we have against ballistic, hy
personic, and cruise [missiles], because they are converging and they're coming at us across that whole integrated air and missile defense domain."
"I remain concerned about my ability to defend the homeland as our competitors continue to develop capabilities to hold our homeland at risk, from all vectors, and in all domains," General VanHerck had said in his opening remarks at the hearing, where he also raised concerns about non-kinetic threats, such as cyber attacks."
"The potential difficulty in detecting Russian Yasen and Yasen-M class guided-missiles submarines, as well as other increasingly quiet designs that Russia and China are developing, combined with the ever-more-advanced weapons they can carry, look to only be further complicating this overall threat picture. As a result, the situation is increasingly prompting warnings from those with the best available information that America's advantage in key strategic areas is eroding."
"Aerospace Daily was first to report the existence of the RGPWS program in December 2019. This is separate from MDA's Hypersonic Defense Weapon System (HDWS) effort and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Glide Breaker project."
(The fact that there are three different programs has been written about as a problem unto itself. That it's to expensive to do it that way with overlapping components and should be combined into one project with different off shoots for different needs.)
"Publicly available details about the RGPWS interceptor's design remain limited. MDA has been clear that it is primarily intended to knock down unpowered hypersonic boost-glide vehicles, rather than air-breathing hypersonic missiles. A boost-glide vehicle uses a rocket booster to loft it to a suitable altitude and speed, after which it follows a relatively level trajectory to its target."
"The name of MDA's program had also already indicated that it would be a "regional" focused system aimed at defending against hypersonic boost-glide vehicle threats in different theaters around the world, such as Europe and Asia. Russia said that its Avangard boost-glide vehicle, which rides on top of a silo-launched rocket booster taken from an earlier intercontinental ballistic missile design, entered service in late December 2019. Nearly three months earlier, China had shown off mockups of its road-mobile DF-17, which also carries a hypersonic boost-glide vehicle, for the first time at a massive military parade in Beijing."
"It's worth noting that critics have questioned how capable any anti-hypersonic weapon interceptor might ever be due to the speed of the threats and the complexities involved in intercepting them. These are concerns that apply to ballistic missile defense broadly. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Army General Mark Milley raised his own questions about this at yet another hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Mar. 4.
"There is no defense against hypersonic ... you're not gonna defend against it," he told lawmakers "Those things are going so fast you're not gonna get it. You gotta shoot the archer. You gotta go deep, downtown and you gotta get it on the offense."
Strategic Implications
On November 16th, 2016 Russia fired Yakhont missiles from road-mobile launchers located within Syria as part of a coordinated strike against rebel groups. This was the first instance of the Bastion system being used in a surface-to-surface capacity. On the same day, November 16th, 2016, Russia reportedly deployed two Bastion launchers to Kaliningrad, an exclave of the Russian Federation. This is significant as the territory borders two NATO members, Poland and Lithuania. Russia’s placement of these Bastion systems threatens travel through the Baltic sea. The P-800 Oniks and Yakhont missiles are very versatile weapons that Russia has exported to other countries. Russia and India have also collaborated on the BrahMos missile, derived from the P-800.
"In 2009, Syria purchased 72 coastal defense missiles and 36 of the TEL ground-based launchers from Russia. According to reports, Russia’s P-800 has fallen into the hands of Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist group. In 2006, Hezbollah used two Chinese C-802 anti-ship missiles to strike Egyptian and Israeli vessels. The P-800 is a superior weapon to the C-802, and adding it to Hezbollah’s arsenal is a threat to stability in the region, especially on the seas."
(SEP 12, 2022)
(MAR 22, 2022)
"There are no indications one way or another about what might have happened to the truck that had been carrying this container or to its companion equipped with the EW system. The photograph of the container shows it lying on its side with tree branches on top, but it's unclear if that reflects a deliberate attempt to hide it or just where it came to rest after some kind of attack or accident. There are other fallen branches and debris around it, as well. There is damage to the command post module, notably along a part of the bottom edge of the frame, and the access doors on the side that is visible are missing. That being said, it seems to be in relatively good shape, at least externally.'
Almost sounds like they were giving it away...
(NOV 26, 2019)
Keepin' up yet?
Get a job :-).
I got one...two actually...
One of them alone is a handfull :-).
Let a lone this one.
:-).
I love you baby.
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