Korean Job Discussion Forums

[merlot]

For the first time since WWII a Russian warship is passing through the Panama Canal on Friday (12-5).

As I live only a couple of miles from the Panama Canal, I was doing research on when it was coming through so I could go and film it. I ran across this site in my search.

Scroll down and see what's happening at the Mira Flores locks in real time (the image will automatically refresh every few seconds):


http://www.seacruisechat.com/

[Rebound]

The Russian ships are weird. I got to go aboard a Russian frigate when I was in the US Navy (it was tied up nearby and they were doing a friendly exchange of crewmember visitors). They have weird geometry/angles... and are very clearly built cheaply. The cool thing about that ship was it had a full bar that stocked hundreds of bottle of vodka available for all hands...

[bassexpander]

Putin and friends have desperately tried staging PR events to make Russia seem more powerful than they are. They're starting to look like North Korea, only without much threat behind what they are doing.

A Russian naval ship could pretty much be taken out within a matter of minutes once the command was given. This isn't viewed as much of a threat, and a fight is hardly likely to happen.

Besides, Russia suddenly finds itself desperate in the face of cheap oil. They began several projects with the intention of funding them with oil money, only to find that they suddenly can't afford them.

[sharkey]

[OneWayTraffic]

[Bibbitybop]

[Rebound]

You could pretty much say that Russia has the second best military in the world, now. For example, thier best planes, the mig-29 and su-27 are just a slight cut above the F-16 and F-15. They dont have anything like the F-22. They were working on it, but its not in thier budget. I know from personal experience that Russian planes are capable of slipping through US Navy ships' defenses, because I was on board a US Navy ship when it was surprised by a pair of mig 31s flying low and over the speed of sound in the persian gulf. It gave the whole ship quite a scare, and led to the relief of command of several officers on that ship.

China, for example, still relies on Soviet technology to build its own figher jets. They still can't produce avionics and engines as good on thier own. And then, more than 1/2 of the Chinese airforce consists of Russian-built planes, anyway.

Navy-wise, the Russians at-sea mission prospects are different than those of the US. The US Navy mainly consists of sets of carrier task forces that operate around the world in areas of geo-strategic interest. The Russians have only a few carriers and thier mission posture is maintained mainly for defensive purposes. The Russian Navy is, generally, a defensive body, except for its ballistic submarine fleet. This is mainly due to the scarcity of Russian seaports from which to operate.

It's somewhat true that in an all-out war between to superpowers like Russia and the USA, the surface fleet (ships like destroyers and cruisers and frigates) would be the first to get wiped out in nuclear blasts. Surface combatants DO have a wide range of anti-anti-ship missles, anti-ship missle ECMs, anti-ship missle gatlin guns -- the phalanx (called "sea-whiz" by sailors), some newer technologies in the last few years, etc. Its not like they're completely defenseless. And in anything less than an all out war, they're not usually the primary targets, either. Thier purpose is usually either to provide missle defense against air targets that pose a threat to carriers, or to serve as platforms for missle attacks against land-based targets. For example, in the recent Iraqi conflicts, US guided missle cruisers and destroyers shot hundreds of guided cruise missles at military installations on land. Finally, surface combatants do other stuff like helping to detect enemy subs, working as long range radar hosts for friendly aircraft, etc etc.

The Russian surface Navy is pretty similar, except not as advanced, technologically, and made for a more defensive role (meaning they focus more on anti-ship weapons such as harpoons/torpedos, etc).

[sharkey]