A Unique Operation in Gremikha, Pt II

More than a year ago, I made a snide remark about how Gremikha looked kind of like the Book of Eli meets S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. Apparently, they CAN carry out those types of "unique operations" there:











I'll never underestimate the technical ability of a country that looks like the set for a remake of "Planet of the Apes" again.

I have no love for the Russians, but...

...the morons who considered this need to be identified so they will never again allowed near the levers of power. What were these advocates of riding to Georgia's rescue thinking? That trading Tbilisi for Chicago or New York in a potential nuclear exchange would be a fair trade? That this was an "emotionally difficult" decision is absurd.

I want names!

President George W. Bush and his senior aides considered — and rejected — a military response to Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia, according to a new history of the conflict and interviews with former officials in the Bush administration.

“There were people on [Vice President Dick] Cheney’s staff and [National Security Adviser Stephen] Hadley’s staff who said, ‘We can’t let Georgia go down like this.'”

When Biggie Met Miley

Awesome:

When Yura Met Dmitry...

Happy Armistice Day!

Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks

What's that being loaded on Yura?

"Soviet Means Quality!"

Bulava fail. Again.

Из-за нештатного срабатывания первой ступени ракета самоликвидировалась", - говорится в сообщении управления пресс-службы и информации Минобороны РФ.

First stage.

Dima <3 Yuri

More pics of Yuri and Dima at U-96.

Admiral Tributs Goes Pirate Hunting

Udaloy class BPK 534 Admiral Tributs gets underway for the Gulf of Aden. Will pass the Udaloy class Admiral Pantaleyev on her way back to Vladivostok.

Kavkaz-2009

While in port Novorossiysk, moored next to the Vishnya class AGI SSV-201, the Large Landing Ship Tsezar Kunikov loads a company of the 7th Airborne Division with about a dozen armored vehicles for transport to the firing range. According to the 7th Division spokesman, transporting the Airborne company by sea is in accordance with the Minister of Defense's policy of ensuring that the 7th Airborne Division remains a premier rapid reaction force, able to act in a professional manner in any situation.

Yuri Dolgoruki Goes to Sea

The Saakashvili Tie Hanger

USS Klakring Arrives In Port Sevastopol, March 2009

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This is why the Internet exists

Los Colorados, hot and cold reprise Katy Perry
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Don't Call it a Comeback

Just a quick post, because I can't resist, via The Pilot's Blog, a good 11 minute video on the Gorshkov being refloated back in December. Note the detail of the guts of the arresting gear around minute five. And around minute ten, the head of Sevmash says that the experience with re-habbing the Gorshkov combined with the existing capability with regards to handling nuclear propulsion makes the yard the natural choice for building a future Russian nuclear carrier. I may have more on that in a later post. Some of you may also be interested in the footage from the carrier aviation base in Saki, Ukraine.

Conservation Status

Not mothballs, not stricken from the blogrolls, just a hiatus until I can figure out how I can blog AND collect a paycheck AND not burn myself out.

Meanwhile, I leave you with something that underscores the importance of Russia watching:

British scholar rails at police seizure of anti-Stalin archive

Eminent British historian Orlando Figes yesterday accused the Russian authorities of trying to 'rehabilitate the Stalinist regime' after armed police seized an entire archive last week detailing repression in the Soviet Union.

Figes, professor of history at Birkbeck, a London University college, condemned the raid on Memorial, a Russian human rights organisation. He said that the police had also taken material used in his latest book, The Whisperers, which details family life in Stalin's Russia.

On Thursday, armed and masked men from the investigative committee of the Russian general prosecutor's office burst into Memorial's St Petersburg office.

After a search of several hours, they confiscated its entire archive - memoirs, photographs, interviews, and other unique documents detailing the history of the gulag and the names of many of its victims.

Yesterday Figes claimed the raid 'was clearly intended to intimidate Memorial'. The confiscated archive included unique documents detailing the 'Soviet terror from 1917 to the 1960s,' he said, adding that the office was 'an important centre for historical research' and a 'voice for tens of thousands of victims of repression in Leningrad'. He said he believed the raid was 'a serious challenge to freedom of expression' in Russia: 'It is part of a campaign to rewrite Soviet history and rehabilitate the Stalinist regime.'

Vladimir Putin Rears His Head Over Alaska

If those Russian flyboys aren't careful, Caribou Barbie will make moose stew out of them, you betcha!

LTC Vladimir Drik told the press that two TU-95MS strategic bombers carried out a patrol in neutral waters around Alaska on Thursday. The LTC noted that, "The Long Range Aviation crews were escorted during their patrol for an hour by two F-15 interceptors above the Arctic Ocean of the Alaskan littoral".

The TU-95s flew out of Ukrainka Air Force base. Aerial refueling was conducted during the flight. As of now the crews have successfully landed at their permanent base. The TU-95MSs were in the air more than 15 hours.

This is kind of a poke in the eye by the Russians, who are fully aware that Thursday was one of the great American holidays. This says to me that the Russians are poking us to let us know that they are still there and are doing it in a way to irritate us.

Missile Testing Update

A claim of a successful Bulava test:

Gist: There was a test of the newest ballistic missile Bulava today. It was launched from the Dmitriy Donskoy from the White Sea and a notional target was destroyed at the Kura test range. The Bulava missile can carry up to 10 independently targeted re-entry vehicles. The range is not less than 8,000 km. It is planned to introduce this super-modern missile into service next year.

(RNB Comment: Unedifying commentary by Igor' Dygalo about how all the "combat components" successfully arrived at the range in Kura follow, plus yadda, yadda, yadda).

RNB Note: There have been initial claims of success followed by reports of failure before, so take it with a grain of salt. Also, if the Bulava is deployed next year as is so often claimed, that would make it a very undertested missile. Just as a reminder, according to this Soviet era documentary, the SS-N-23 were extensive, with nine sea-based tests, 16 firings from a land based test stand and multiple firings in different configurations from the lead boat of the Delta IV class. According to the testing timeline at Russian Strategic Forces, the Russians have pretty much foregone the land-based testing and seeing as that the Yuri Dolgoruki has just started to split atoms, there will probably be just one or two tests from the boat that the Bulava was intended for before the end of next year. Then, with fingers crossed, the Dolgoruki will conduct an under-ice transit to Vilyuchinsk and be anni-dominied as "combat certified".

We shall see.

Also, despite the fact that the news reports says that the Bulava could carry "up to ten" warheads, I believe that the Russians declared six re-entry vehicles per RSM-56 (the START name for Bulava) in the last Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty Memorandum of Understanding.

Speaking of START, in anticipation of the demise of START on 04 December, 2009, the Russians have conducted their latest test of the obviously treaty violating derivative of the SS-27 (and cousin of the Bulava), the RS-24 on the 26th:

Gist: An RS-24 intercontinental ballistic missile equipped with a multiple re-entry vehicle front section was test launched from a mobile launcher in Plesetsk. The Strategic Rocket Forces announced that the target at the Kura test range was destroyed. (RNB Comment: The rest of the piece is about a Soyuz-U launch from Baikonur).

How the development, testing and deployment (see next clip) of the RS-24 isn't a pretty blatent violation of START Article V, para 5 4 is a mystery to me. Article V, paragraph five four states that "[E]ach Party undertakes not to deploy on a mobile launcher of ICBMs an ICBM of a type that was not specified as a type of ICBM for mobile launchers of ICBMs in accordance with paragraph 2 of Section VII of the Protocol on Notifications Relating to this Treaty, hereinafter referred to as the Notification Protocol, unless it is an ICBM to which no more than one warhead is attributed and the Parties have agreed within the framework of the Joint Compliance and Inspection Commission to permit deployment of such ICBMs on mobile launchers of ICBMs".

I guess this means that START I as we know it, from the Russian perspective at least, is dead. Now the parties have already held their treaty-mandated meeting to discuss the future of START. It will be interesting to see how Obama will handle the START situation. Obama has demonstrated a keen interest in arms control, even going as far as being the "new Nunn" in the Nunn-Lugar series of agreements known as the Cooperative Threat Reduction initiative. I hope he would consider extending the treaty as is, if only so that inspectors can get a good first hand look at the Bulava and the RS-24. After all, satellites can't see under ascent shrouds, while inspectors conducting a paragraph six inspection can.

But I'm just a cranky, old retired Petty Officer and not a lawyer or a diplomat or lawyer-diplomat or a policy wonk and shit, so what do I know?

Finally, fresh on the heels of the successful RS-24 launch, the Commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces announces that the Teykovo division will be re-armed with new mobile missiles. Although it is unclear from the text in this announcement if the new battalion will be armed with the road mobile SS-27 (a firing unit is depicted in the video) or the new treaty-mocking RS-24, the timing of the announcement certainly arouses suspicion as to the identity of the new missile:

Gist: The commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces has announced that new ICBMs will be commissioned in the Russian Army next year. The first battalion will be stood up at the Teykovo missile unit in Ivanovskaya Oblast'. According to one colonel, the combat potential of the SRF strike force is increased many-fold with the introduction of this missile. A complete replacement of systems is planned in 2015. Its development should be complete soon. The first tests will be next year.

The text of this news report is a little muddled since the first tests of the RS-24 happened last year and wont happen next year.

Again, we'll see.

Peter the Great Update: It's About Time!

Gist: The deployed Northern Fleet battle group has met Venezuelan Armed Forces. Having just barely entered territorial waters, they picked up an honor guard of Venezuelan Su-30s, the very kind that Russia has sold to Latin America. The Peter the Great and other ships will rest at anchor at the port of La Guaira, 35km from Caracas, while ashore they prepare to welcome Russian sailors, who in turn will return the favor.

Venezuela welcomes us! The task force enters territorial waters in the Caribbean Sea. This very morning two Su-30s are in the sky, made in Russia, sold to Venezuela. They circle the task group one after the other. Our sailors render honors to a friendly country and this frigate will escort us to the port of La Guaira. The exercises between the countries will last until the first of December. These will be the first exercises in history involving the submarines, frigates, cruisers and helicopters of Russia and Venezuela.

Comrade officers, I will now brief you on the exercises between Russia and Venezuela, ((missed))-2008.

They discuss the plans that lay ahead in the Navigator's shack - joint patrolling, search for and destruction of submarines and ships belonging to the potential enemy, reconnaissance and anti-air warfare. The militaries of the two countries have been preparing for these large scale exercises for a couple of months. The official language of the exercises wont be English, Spanish or Russian but the language of symbols and signs.

We have created a table of conditional signals which have been translated into both languages and both countries have approved this table of signals. These signals will be used during the exercise....

There is activity above decks as well. Two presidents will visit Peter the Great: Hugo Chavez and Dmitriy Medvedev.

This is the first time Peter the Great has visited South America. The cruiser was built for northern waters and not for the Caribbean. The air temperature is 34 degrees and the water temperature is 30.

Captain, Peter the Great, Feliks Min'kov: The ship has been at sea in the open ocean. Whether we want it or not, we have to battle against the effects of salt water, or just plain water. So we have to clean up everywhere.

The flag of Venezuela already flies on the mast. It is naval tradition to fly the flag of the countries in whose port you are conducting a friendly visit. Today the sailors checked out the missile tubes. The Peter the Great's armament will be shown to the presidents of both countries.

What is there to show? The Peter the Great is the largest non-aircraft carrier warship in the world. Two hundred and fifty meters of steel with dozens of missile tubes. And beneath each of these three ton hatches lays the main battery - the Granit nuclear anti-ship cruise missile (RNB comment - Huh! Well how about that!). As opposed to American cruise missiles, the Granit flies to its target at supersonic speed like a fighter jet. There is no ship as powerful as the Peter the Great in the world.