PoliticalCitizen

Well if you're right then apparently they WISHED not to tell the truth... in which case they're worse than state-controlled media...

Canada shouldn't have gotten in there in the first place... There's nothing to be found in Afganistan but pain, suffering and death... ask anyone who comes back alive from there... same goes for Iraq... Latest western invasion has transformed it from a Taliban-controlled pre-historic cave into the heroin capital of the world... Now they have more money to buy weapons and practice killing US and Canadian soldiers...

Argus, BBC's numbers are about as right as their reports on who attacked whom in the beginning of the conflict. A "sense of responsibility", hey? Well, that's exactly what prompted Russia to create a buffer zone and create additional peacekeeping checkpoints. "There's no free press in Russia"? I have personally witnessed how most major western news agencies: CNN, BBC, CBC, FOXnews etc. LIED about what happened and what is happening during almost a whole week from the beginning of the conflict. Who doesn't have "Free" press again?

For all the non-believers here - straight from CNN: "The U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, told the Russian business daily Kommersant it had urged Georgia not to launch an attack and that Russia responded in a "legitimate" way, though he went on to say Russia went too far in its military incursion. His comments represent a public acknowledgment from a senior U.S. official that Russia had some justification for its initial response to Georgia's attack on South Ossetia. CNN confirmed the ambassador's response with the U.S. Embassy in Russia."

Wow... no wander they keep coming and coming... Hey, if you guys are curious - check out some Tunguska's in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L3f_pEy81o

Eduard Shevardnadze is singing a pro-Western tune now, however...

I agree. Honestly though - if Japan would have attacked USSR at the East as it was supposed to instead of attacking US Soviet Union would probably be gone in that war... and that could have made a lot of western countries happy (let the Nazis kill the Commies, yeah!) Just kidding Unfortunately since WW2 because of Capitalism / Socialism and now because of US Fight for World Domination / Russia Fight for Region Domination US and Russia are in a standoff. What the 2 countries may not be realizing is that by trying to screw each other up (in a politically correct way, mostly) the only side that gains is the Islamic World, which is happy to see any of the non-islamic states weakened. - US armed Jihad warriors in Afganistan - USSR lost a bloody war and Afganistan from an almost Socialist state fell to pre-historic times; - US supported "Kosovar Albanians" to chop a big piece out of Serbia, while some of Al-Qaeda training camps exist (ed) in Albania; - US armed and sent special forces (allegedly), some of them via Georgia (allegedly) to support the Jihad warriors in Chechnya; - Russia helps Iran with nuclear reactors and Iran feels bolder in its hope to attack Israel; - Russia has good relations with Syria and may deploy rockets there; etc. Meanwhile both countries are on the Islamiosphere's black list. US is engaged in 2 Islamic countries and wants to take on a third. Russia finally "pacified" its in-house Jihadians. Somehow what's happening seems to be the perfect recipie for disaster... on world scale... Hey jbg - I brought the Islam back into discussion Just please don't compare it to Marxism... it's like comparing cavemen's chants to symphony... or a Russian military choir song, he-he...

Your arguments sound pretty convincing... I hope it doesn't get to NATO generals' heads... or else they may be actually crazy enough to attack Russia... How long is Bush still in the office?

B2 @ 1.2 Bill ? There's only 20 of them reported in service (one crashed)... Can you imagine how painful would it be to lose one of those?

http://www.electronicaviation.com/articles/Military/1230 "In the nineteenth century, Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell developed a series of mathematical formulas to predict how electromagnetic radiation would scatter when reflected from a specific geometric shape. His equations were later refined by the German scientist, Arnold Johannes Sommerfield. But for a long time, even after aircraft designers attempted to reduce radar signatures for aircraft like the U-2 and A-12 OXCART in the late 1950s, the biggest obstacle to success was the lack of theoretical models of how radar reflected off a surface. In the 1960s, Russian scientist Pyotr Ufimtsev began developing equations for predicting the reflection of electromagnetic waves from simple two-dimensional shapes. His work was regularly collected and translated into English and provided to U.S. scientists. By the early 1970s, a few U.S. scientists, mathematicians, and aircraft designers began to realize that it was possible to use these theories to design aircraft with substantially reduced radar signatures. Lockheed Aircraft, working under a contract to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, soon began development of the F-117 stealth fighter."

Good points. Here's what I got off of Wikipedia: Modern AWAC systems can detect aircraft from up to 400 km (250 miles) away, well out of range of most surface-to-air missiles except the Russian SA-5 and S-400. In air-to-air combat, AWAC systems can communicate with friendly aircraft, extend their sensor range and give them added stealth, since they no longer need their own active radar to detect threats. However, by the nature of radar, AWACS aircraft can be detected by opposing forces beyond its own detection range. This is because the outgoing pulse reduces in strength the further it travels. Therefore, a signal which is intended to go out and be reflected back must be strong enough to cover twice the distance between the sender and the target. My question to you military experts here (I have to admit I am not) is this: When a military technology is around for almost 30 years (Stealth), does a country (USSR, Russia) who this technology can be used against do nothing to counter it? If the Soviets and Russians did not develop stealth aircraft (too expensive) do you think they did not invest into methods of detecting aircraft using such technology? Now I don't claim I know what it would be - in addition to what I said before I could only add optical (which wouldn't work when there are clouds) and satellite.

Grozny population was warned multiple times to evacuate before the city was bombed. This came after months of street-fighting as well, as far as I can remember...

Yeltsin... lol... the guy was never sober... he probalbly doesn't even remember the election... (Huh?) Putin was elected as a president and then elected as a PM. "Democratic", isn't it? About courage - Putin has demonstrated that he can face US, NATO, EU, UN and any other political entity without fear, subservience and ass-kissing that both Saakashvili and Yuschenko excel at. It was a terrible error for Georgia to attack South Ossetia. Not only have they lost their land, but they have commited genocide and these things are NEVER forgot or forgiven. If you just stop and think for a moment - US didn't have even one thousandth of the pretext that Russia has to go into Georgia when they invaded Iraq. Less than 100 Georgian civilians dead - tens of thousands Iraqi civilians dead. Russia is withdrawing tomorrow - US was in Iraq for 8 years and they're not withdrawing soon... Who should the international pressure be on? Oh, about the coup... The only coup that would make sense at the moment would be Georgian people removing the blood-crazed lunatic that US has sponsored and supported... BTW, both Putin's and Medvedev's popularity grew with the war. They both have more than 80% of popular support in Russia. Stock market hit the bottom, however...

I agree, and it was pretty much as you describe... The general population was not even aware of the existence of a "Russian CPU" - it was as secret as any nuclear missle related military hardware... And of course, the Communist Party did not think that regular people can benefit from owning a cheaper version of it... same as tons of other cool stuff that was invented for the military... that's why I brought it up as an example.

I understand your skepticism but it doesn't appear to be a lie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbrus_(computer)

The Serbs were able to track and shoot down an F117 using a regular radar and just increasing the wavelenght. The passive sensor is another way of detecting "Stealth". A third way I heard is to use a radar with multiple recievers, as most of the signal gets deflected another receiver may pick it up. LOL I'm amazed Iraqis learned to use the AK47's... They sure didn't know how to operate the old Soviet tanks properly...

To all of the above - let's wait and see... follow the news. Facts should speak for themselves...

So is Bush. But between them they have to respect a set of rules not to step on each other's toes, or if you do step (and it's hard not to, as US "National Interests" appear to be everywhere at the same time) how to talk and not to get into a fight. Adhering to whatever laws there are is Putin's only chance of winning the support of some major EU and NATO members such as France, Germany and Italy.

Have you heard of multiple passive sensor "anti-stealth" systems (also referred to as radars) Tamara and Colchuga?

From cnews.ru: 30.06.2008, 11:06:43 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 100% Russian computer revives 100 new Russian Elbrus-3M computers based on the same-name processors will be delivered to its customers later in the year. Elbrus computers will be used in anti-missile and air defense, as well as in cryptographic calculations for secret services. This year will see the batch production of the “Russian supercomputer” based on the Elbrus-3M servers, Director General of the MCST company which has been developing the Elbrus line, Alexander Kim told CNews. 100 such computers will be delivered to customers by late 2008. Elbrus-3M is managed by Linux MCBC (mobile system for armed forces). It is made of two Elbrus superscalar processors capable of processing more than one instruction at a time. The server’s peak performance is 9,6Gigaflops (9,6x109 floating-point operations per second). Alexander Kim said computer systems with the productivity of 0,6Tflops will be created based on such servers. They might be considered as entry-level supercomputers. The history of the Russian Elbrus line computers started back in 1970s at the Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering when the Elbrus-1 ensemble machine with the productivity of 15m operations per second was created.

Thank you for these kind words The economic failure was more of a result of the Socialism than the cold war... So was the shelving and stiffling of numerous inventions by Soviet scientists that would have been immediately exploited in the West... Oh well... Thankfully, that's not the case anymore... but the accent may still be on military hardware. Have you heard of "Elbrus" processor? It was developed in USSR to control ballistic missle flight. In one of its generations it was said it could outperform Intel's Itanium...

I am not aware of any production aircraft that would surpass F22. There are several Russian prototypes that are designed to compete with it. As to "wipe the floor" - I believe US learned in Vietnam that superior hardware doesn't always win the war... It does give an advantage, however. Besides - these beasts cost a TON of money to produce and maintain, and I don't think Russia is quite at the level that would allow it to afford a top-notch fleet...

The newer air superiority / interceptor aircraft in use by Russian Airforce are SU-35 (very few) and MiG-31(lots of these). The strategic bombers Tu-95 were in service since the 1960's and expected to be for another couple of decades. "Stealth" doesn't mean too much with today's radar technology. It does make a plane more expensive, though..

Medvedev said most of the Russian forces will be withdrawn by 22 Aug 2008. Russian generals admit there will be a "buffer zone" of Georgian territory around South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Back to the topic: In response to Poland signing the agreement of placing the missle-defence system on its territory, Belarus and Syria offered Russia to place Russian Iskander missle systems and / or strategic bombers on their territory. Also Russian Tu-95 "Bear's" are flying along the northern borders of US, Canada and Norway...