America’s military budget is roughly 7.2 times that of Russia ($610 billion compared to $84.5 billion),
but even Western news-accounts are saying that the weaponry produced in
Russia is superior overall to the weaponry produced in the United
States.
Compare the top-of-the-line fighter jets
of the two countries: that’s the F-35 fighter-jet produced by the U.S.
corporation Lockheed Martin, versus the Su-35 fighter jet produced by
the Russian government (its wholly owned Sukhoi Company). The F-35 costs
around $100 million per plane. The Su-35 costs around $65 million per plane.
The weaponry-expert David Majumdar headlined on 15 September 2015, “America’s F-35 Stealth Fighter vs. Russia’s Su-35: Who Wins?” He
concluded: “Basically, an F-35 pilot should avoid a close in fight at
all costs. It is highly unlikely that a U.S. Joint Force Air Component
Commander (JFACC) would assign an air superiority mission to an F-35
unit if alternatives were available. But given the tiny fleet of [F-22]
Raptors and dwindling F-15C fleet, it is possible that the JFACC could
be forced to use the F-35 as an air superiority asset.”
In other words: the U.S. had stopped
production of the better planes, the F-22 and the F-15C, which might
stand a chance against the Su-35. The U.S. stopped production of those
planes in order to replace them with the inferior and far costlier (and
more profitable) F-35.
Earlier, on 6 December 2014, Majumdar had bannered, “Killer in the Sky: Russia’s Deadly Su-35 Fighter.” He wrote:
One U.S. Navy Super Hornet pilot — a
graduate of that service’s elite TOPGUN school — offered a sobering
assessment. “When taken as a singular platform, I like the Su-35’s
chances against most of our platforms, with perhaps the exception of the
F-22 and F-15C,” the naval aviator said. “I suspect the F/A-18E/F can
hold it’s own and F-35 has presumed stealth and sensor management on its
side.”
But one Air Force official with
experience on the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter said that
the Su-35 could pose a serious challenge for the stealthy new American
jet. The F-35 was built primarily as a strike fighter and does not have
the sheer speed or altitude capability of the Su-35 or F-22. “The Su’s
ability to go high and fast is a big concern, including for F-35,” the
Air Force official said.
As an air-superiority fighter, its
major advantages are its combination of high altitude capability and
blistering speed — which allow the fighter to impart the maximum
possible amount of launch energy to its arsenal of long-range air-to-air
missiles. …
Another highly experienced veteran
fighter pilot added that much about the Su-35 and the capabilities of
the Russian military remain unknown.
Among these unknowns were the
effectiveness of the Russian plane’s “electronic attack” capabilities.
Here’s how that was described:
The addition of the electronic attack
(EA) capability complicates matters for Western fighters because the
Su-35’s advanced digital radio frequency memory jammers can seriously
degrade the performance of friendly radars. It also effectively blinds
the onboard radars found onboard American-made air-to-air missiles like
the AIM-120 AMRAAM. …
Said another senior Air Force official
with experience on the F-22 Raptor, “So, while we are stealthy, we will
have a hard time working our way through the EA to target the Su-35s
and our missiles will have a hard time killing them.”
The Su-35 also carries a potent
infrared search and track capability that could pose a problem for
Western fighters. “It also has non-EM [electro-magnetic] sensors to help it detect other aircraft, which could be useful in long-range detection,” the Super Hornet pilot said.
Another of the Su-35’s major
advantages is that it carries an enormous payload of air-to-air
missiles. “One thing I really like about the Su-35 is that it is a
high-end truck: It can carry a ton of air-to-air ordnance into a fight,”
the Navy pilot said.
On paper, that makes the Su-35 an
extremely capable platform, but as one highly experienced F-22 pilot
pointed out: “Whether they can translate that into valid tactics remain[s] to be seen.”
What, then, about that electronic-attack unknown?
On 13 September 2014, Voltairenet described on the basis of a 30 April Russian report,
an incident on 12 April, in which the USS Donald Cook Aegis Class
destroyer, loaded with missiles, entered the Black Sea, to threaten
Russia, and a Russian Su-24 flew overhead, carrying a device that can
turn off all electrical systems. Voltairnet said:
As the Russian jet approached the US
vessel, the electronic device disabled all radars, control circuits,
systems, information transmission, etc. on board the US destroyer. In
other words, the all-powerful Aegis system, now hooked up — or about to
be — with the defense systems installed on NATO’s most modern ships was
shut down, as turning off the TV set with the remote control.
The Russian Su-24 then simulated a
missile attack against the USS Donald Cook, which was left literally
deaf and blind. As if carrying out a training exercise, the Russian
aircraft — unarmed — repeated the same maneuver 12 times before flying
away.
After that, the 4th generation destroyer [Donald Cook] immediately set sail towards a port in Romania.
Since that incident, which the
Atlanticist media have carefully covered up despite the widespread
reactions sparked among defense industry experts, no US ship has ever
approached Russian territorial waters again.
According to some specialized media, 27 sailors from the USS Donald Cook requested to be relieved from active service.
Later, on 31 March 2015, Ben Hodges, the Commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, issued, to Defense News, an incoherent statement against Russia, that:
the volume of artillery and rocket ammunition that has been expended [by Russia] is eye-watering. The quality of the electronic warfare [EW] capability
that Russians have employed in eastern Ukraine, this is not something
that you can create in the basement of your home. So when President
Putin says, well these are just coal miners and tractor drivers, it is
an obvious lie.
Despite Hodges’s attempt to bury in an
insult to Putin, reference to electronic warfare capabilities on
Russia’s part, that were “eye-watering” for Hodges, Defense News made clear what brought these tears to his eyes, when it reported on 4 August 2015:
Ukrainian forces have grappled with
formidable Russian electronic warfare capabilities that analysts say
would prove withering even to the US ground forces. The US Army has also
jammed insurgent communications from the air and ground on a limited
basis, and it is developing a powerful arsenal of jamming systems, but
these are not expected until 2023. …
Hodges acknowledged that US troops are
learning from Ukrainians about Russia’s jamming capability, its ranges,
types and the ways it has been employed. He has previously described
the quality and sophistication of Russian electronic warfare as “eye-watering.”
Russia maintains an ability to destroy
command-and-control networks by jamming radio communications, radars
and GPS signals, according to Laurie Buckhout, former chief of the US
Army’s electronic warfare division, now CEO of the Corvus Group. In
contrast with the US, Russia has large units dedicated to electronic
warfare, known as EW, which it dedicates to ground electronic attack,
jamming communications, radar and command-and-control nets.
Of course, Hodges hadn’t said that about
“Russian electronic warfare,” he had actually said it about “the volume
of artillery and rocket ammunition that has been expended.” But he never
publicly objected to the news-media’s tacit acceptance of what had really
brought tears to his eyes. Everyone knew it. And it wasn’t “the volume
of artillery and rocket ammunition that has been expended.” So, Hodges
had dealt with his tears by insulting Putin, instead of by thanking him for having given the U.S. this harmless warning shot across the bow. (Would Hodges have preferred that this capacity continue to be hidden by the Russian side?)
Everybody in the know knows that the U.S.
wastes on corruption most of the money it pays, for military, just as
it does for health care, and for education, and for other governmental
functions. The higher the governmental level is (such as in the White
House, and in the Pentagon), the bigger the percentage of waste is,
because the skimming is monumental at those higher levels. And
for recent U.S. Presidents, they and the foundations they set up suck in
billions of dollars, as delayed ‘compensation’ for the favors that the
former President had thrown to the ‘donating’ billionaire.
The BBC headlined on 25 January 2016, “Putin Is Corrupt, Says US Treasury,” and three days later, Reuters headlined, “White House Backs Treasury’s View that Putin Is Corrupt.” (Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Secretary himself is deeply corrupt, even if not as much as recent U.S. Presidents have been.)
The next day, January 29th, Britain’s Independent headlined, “Russia’s ‘Rustbucket’ Military Delivers a Hi-tech Shock to West and Israel,” and reported:
It is this military might that is
underpinning President Vladimir Putin’s strategic triumphs. His
intervention in Syria has been a game changer and what happens there now
lies, to a large extent, in his hands. The Ukraine conflict is
semi-frozen, on his terms. The Russians are allying with the Kurds,
unfazed by the Turkish anger this has provoked. And, crucially, they are
now returning to Egypt to an extent not seen for 44 years, since they
were kicked out by President Anwar Sadat.
One of the most senior analysts in
Israeli military intelligence told The Independent in Tel Aviv last
week: “Anyone who wants anything done in this region is beating a path
to Moscow.”
If America elects yet another in the
now-long succession, since 1980, of corrupt Presidents, it will be
terrible not only for Russia, and for the countries such as Ukraine and
Syria and Iraq that the U.S. is destroying, but also for the American
people.
On 31 August 2015, The Daily Beast bannered, “Petraeus: Use Al Qaeda Fighters to Beat ISIS,” and reported:
Members of al Qaeda’s branch in Syria
have a surprising advocate in the corridors of American power: retired
Army general and former CIA Director David Petraeus.
The former commander of U.S. forces in
Iraq and Afghanistan has been quietly urging U.S. officials to consider
using so-called moderate members of al Qaeda’s Nusra Front to
fight ISIS in Syria, four sources familiar with the conversations,
including one person who spoke to Petraeus directly, told The Daily
Beast.
Petraeus had organized the death squads in El Salvador and in Iraq, so he’s a natural for the global aristocracy to rely upon about such things. He’s even a regular attendee at the secret annual Bilderberg meetings.
On 16 November 2015, F. William Engdahl headlined, “Do
We Really Want a New World War With Russia?” and he itemized the ways
in which Russia’s military performance, in both Ukraine and Syria, has
shocked the U.S. and its allies, especially. The main categories were:
“Sukhoi SU-34 ‘Fullback’ fighter-bomber,” “New EW technologies,” “Killer
Bumblebees,” and, “‘Status-6′,” which latter is “a new Russian nuclear
submarine weapons system designed to bypass NATO radars and any existing
missile defense systems, while causing heavy damage to ‘important
economic facilities’ along the enemy’s coastal regions.”
Any U.S. President who would continue the
effort started in 1990 by President George Herbert Walker Bush, to
conquer and grab control of the resources of post-communist Russia,
is insane, especially now, after the February 2014 U.S.-run coup in
Ukraine crossed the line that Russia had repeatedly warned must not be
crossed. If this effort ever stops, the ‘news’ media won’t report the
U.S. gang’s retreat from this by-now 25-year-long war against Russia,
which those same ‘news’ media have consistently refused to report. But
even if they were to report it, no obligation by the West is so
important as the obligation to stop it — the obligation to call off the West’s Saudi-Qatari-Turkish-UAE-Kuwaiti-financed Sunni terrorists, and the rest of the West’s (via NATO, the IMF, etc.) war against Russia and against Russia’s Shiite and BRICS allies.
On 28 May 2014, Barack Obama told future leaders of the U.S. military:
Russia’s aggression toward former
Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise
and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising
middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in
global forums. …
It will be your generation’s task to
respond to this new world. The question we face, the question each of
you will face, is not whether America will lead, but how we will lead —
not just to secure our peace and prosperity, but also extend peace and
prosperity around the globe.
If these sorts of lies are all that he
can give us, then the Nobel Peace Prize Committee must demand he return
his shameful 2009 Prize from them, right now. And why hasn’t the
Committee already demanded he return it?
American Presidents, and we, should leave
Russia and its allies (including the BRICS and the non-BRICS such as
Argentina) in peace, not pretend to support peace, when all that the
U.S. actually spreads is invasions and wars — never-ending wars, and
refugees from those wars, which are profitable only for the private
investors in those private war-corporations or “contractors.”
Without that corruption, there would be a vastly smaller U.S. ‘Defense’ budget. The Pentagon isn’t even auditable.
We have a good idea as to where lots of the real expenses are going.
And it’s the opposite of ‘humanitarian’ or ‘pro-democracy.’ It’s arms to
hire, or to invest in, by the world’s top kleptocrats — the people who
control the lobbyists in Washington, who basically write America’s laws,
and fund America’s politics.
Amongst all corrupt aristocracies (and that’s every aristocracy), America’s takes the cake.
But yet what has been a standard description which American leaders
apply to the governments (such as Saddam Hussein’s, and Muammar
Gaddafi’s, and Viktor Yanukovych’s) they’ve overthrown? It’s that
they’re “corrupt.”
The International Criminal Court will begin to have credibility if and when it starts to prosecute American leaders such as George W. Bush and Barack Obama, but not a minute before that time. Western gangsters lead the world right now, and Western political leaders are their agents — merely fixers, for those elite gangsters.
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
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