Just four days after announcing their planned delivery, Russian officials announced Friday that Russia has already started delivery of S-300 air defense systems to Syria, and that Syria is in possession of some such systems.
Exactly how many have been delivered so far is unclear. Russia has said that as many as eight systems could be delivered, with the goal of providing total coverage for all Syrian airspace from start to finish.
The S-300 is a substantial upgrade from Syria’s existing air defense system, the S-200. The new system has advanced radar covering broad swathes of territory, and missiles capable of intercepting even advanced aircraft.
Russia announced the delivery on Monday, after Israeli warplanes attacked the Syrian coast, an incident that led to the shoot-down of a Russian surveillance plane. Though Israeli officials insist the delivery won’t affect future attacks on Syria, it is clear that the S-300s allow Syria to limit Israeli access to their airspace.
Russian and American missile systems are fundamentally different. This leads to mistaken assumptions about the Russians.
The American Patriot is one missile and one radar. It gets bloc upgrades, but always as one missile and one radar.
The Russians have a “system” approach, with multiple missile models, and multiple radars, connected together to give a coverage based on their collective capabilities. This approach has advantages. One is that an existing system can be upgraded by adding a new radar or missile, and the existing radars and missiles are still used as part of it.
The Russians need not have brought in a whole new air defense system. All they had to do was add a few upgrades and re-name the whole as S-300 instead of S-200. That would not be false, they designed it for that to be a real upgrade. They too do bloc upgrades of existing missiles. This adds more complexity to what they could do, might have done, might yet do.
That’s because the American side doesn’t treat air defense seriously because they have an overwhelming number of fighters. They don’t NEED ground based air defense. Necessity is the mother of invention.
And because the American “defense” industry is all about making money. Why upgrade an existing system? It is much more profitable for the MIC (whose lackey our politicians are) to replace any system with a new one. The entire “defense” industry, together with the US government, is a Mafia organization for making money.
More on the MIC Mafia swamp
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/trigger-happy-defense-earmarking-leads-to-even-more-f-35s/
Russia layers its missile defense positions with multiple defense mechanisms. This allows it to be more effective but,hasn’t truly been tested by a multitude of multiple of attacks by incoming missiles. This will be the challenge Russia and the Syrians will face instead, of just one attack at a time Israel will be ready to attack installations where missiles will be launched from aswell. Russia should be careful when attacking Israeli assets knowing Israel would use a nuke if pushed to far.Isn’t that the case everyone on this site uses as the reason North Korea is building up nukes as a deterrent from America. Israel also has nukes and Russia is a bigger nation that may have to be reminded how fast things could turn nuclear if pushed to far.
Right, “things could turn nuclear” eh? That’s just silly talk.
Israel is about the size of New Jersey, a bit smaller in actuality. There would literally be nothing left of it.
Godspeed.
The Israelis also said a carpet cleaners was a secret nuclear stash. We’ll see how committed they are to their pet jihadists in the coming weeks; as they lose their air coverage, while at the same time logistics and communications become more difficult. I think it will end rather quickly once the terror brigades are on their own. No more JSOC and friends having your back…
That is good news, now if they can protect the children in Gaza it would be a great development.
Actually, this development is bad news for the Palestinian children. Because attacking the Syrians has now an added element of risk, the Israelis will shift their hatred of Arabs upon the defenseless Palestinians. Why risk a valuable jet plane and pilot when you can safely deploy dozens of snipers and get the same yield
Watch out!
Israel = rapacious!
About time!