SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
BBC News reports:
Russian warplanes have made several close passes in recent days over a US destroyer sailing in the Black Sea, the Pentagon said. Russian state media reported that the USS Ross was acting "aggressively". The US Department of Defense, however, said the ship was "well within international waters at all times, performing routine operations". The US Navy released video on Monday of a Russian plane passing as close as 500 metres to the USS Ross.
A Pentagon spokesman went on to assert that the Russian Su-24 planes were not armed and that the USS Ross made no changes to it's course in response to the passes. Russian warplanes have been exercising pretty hard lately with airborne intercepts by NATO forces increasing dramatically over recent months. In a previous story, also from BBC News, defence correspondent Jonathan Beale stated that the Royal Air Force is intercepting Russian planes approaching UK airspace with their transponders disabled on a monthly basis. Although no rules have been broken regarding sovereignty of international airspace or territorial waters, tensions have obviously increased, as have submarine patrols and exercises by both Russia and NATO.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by n1 on Tuesday June 02 2015, @04:07PM
I think when digesting this story it is worth keeping in mind the geographic location of the Black Sea. I'm sure the Russians will be the first to claim these were 'routine operations' along their Russian (and now including Crimean) borders.
I wonder what would the reporting be like if a Russian military vessel was performing 'routine operations' in international waters around the Gulf of Mexico?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday June 02 2015, @04:18PM
I give odds that you wouldn't read about it. Scuttlebutt had it that there WERE Russian - rather Soviet - subs sunk off of Florida during the great space race. I never had it confirmed, maybe it was 100% bogus bullshit, but that was the scuttlebutt. I've done a few online searches over the year, attempting to verify the stories, or to vilify the people who told me the stories. I've not had any luck.
I can say for certain, that although Navy doctrine said that our own boomers were untrackable - we tracked them. With sonar alone, they would elude us, but when we dropped our passive fish in the water, and trolled it at the thermocline, we could track ANYTHING. There weren't any subs in the water that we couldn't track in the '80's.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2015, @04:30PM
I give odds that you wouldn't read about it. Scuttlebutt had it that there WERE Russian - rather Soviet - subs sunk off of Florida during the great space race. I never had it confirmed, maybe it was 100% bogus bullshit, but that was the scuttlebutt. I've done a few online searches over the year, attempting to verify the stories, or to vilify the people who told me the stories. I've not had any luck.
"It's not because I couldn't find anything that it didn't happen"
Just asking questions, ey...?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Tuesday June 02 2015, @06:41PM
How do you know?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2015, @09:02PM
I was under the impression from a sim game (Dangerous Waters) that diesels like the Kilo-class could be pretty damn stealthy, is that not the case?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 03 2015, @12:58AM
"Pretty damned stealthy" is a relative thing. If our sonar man can hear fish fucking fifty miles away, and you had beans for supper last night - guess what? There is no such thing as silence under the sea.
And, as for diesels, sorry, those are easier to find than the boomers ever were. Diesel boats never could dive as deep, they couldn't sit on the bottom nearly as long, and when they lit off those diesels, you could hear them from far, far away. Further, no diesel boat ever had the stealth technology that later nuclear boats had available. Boomers were the hardest thing to find, but we did find them. Maybe not all the time - in fact probably not all the time. How would I know if we passed over one and never heard it? But, we did find them. Given any indication that there was a boat in the area, a meticulous search would find it. On the other hand, the boomer crews were good at their own jobs. If we were enroute from point A to point B, and the boat heard us first, they could go full stealth, and we would probably pass right by them, never knowing that they were there.
I hope I made clear that a meticulous search involved putting that passive listening fish into the water first. Our onboard sonar alone was insufficient for tracking boomers, unless they screwed up badly.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Friday June 19 2015, @04:46PM
Late reply but “someone is wrong on the internet” etc. ;)
Maybe you've been blindsided by thinking about a very different context from what diesel-electric subs are used in?
Let's start with how everybody can tell if you've passed over a (diesel-electric) sub and not heard it: your carrier sinks despite being in the middle of full battle-group of protection :)
This has happened time and time again in NATO exercises, I'm not certain it has happened in every last one of them but it's a high percentage/very common. It's not unheard of that such a sub also manages to escape as the carrier “sinks”. My source is NATO (although that's not worth anything any longer so hey maybe you're right and I'm wrong) but I don't know if they put it on the net as well, I suppose not. Wouldn't touch their server with a ping.
It's a direct parallel to how proper ‘fireteam level’ anti-tank weaponry and tactics aimed for a ratio of three tanks killed for each man. That was and still is the only real option against an advance through Germany and central Europe (tactical nukes are almost always nothing but a variation of the scorched earth strategy: final desperation, nothing but a nasty way of saying you've lost. Although since they're tactical it's just the battle and not the war) and why the recent US Stryker nonsense went down like an insult (is the current US Army really so stupid they don't realize it? Makes Patton look like Einstein! It would be as if the Indian army did a tour of the Mexican-US border in Jeeps towing utility trailers filled with Mariachi bands playing as loud as they can, it would be like that but /only/ if Guatemala was a US state (*cough* Kaliningrad Oblast).
Anyway that is what diesel-electric and similar (air-electric) small subs are for and it sort of makes sense you wouldn't see it that way if you're focused on missile subs and attack subs and so on doing their hide and seek in the middle of nowhere.
The reign of diesel-electrics has been going on for decades (at least since the nineties), last example I heard was a French one (and that's somewhat novel afaik, they're usually Spanish, Dutch, German, Norwegian, or Danish) that slipped easily into the center of a battle-group and sunk the big easy juicy target. One is more than enough. Which is part of why the US Navy is now looking to get some for themselves and why the Pentagon has been breathing down the Swedes' neck on the issue as far as arms trade goes (the Swedish ones are also very good).
Both the North Sea (not the same as the Norwegian sea although this applies a little bit to parts of that too) and the Mediterranean are fairly shallow in general, and then there's the whole thing about the continental shelves being only 140 meters deep for the most part.
Freedivers have done twice that depth! Guess they better watch their head on the way down or they'll knock it! XD
Oh and by the way guess what they're not supplying to the Nazis in Nazikrainia? That's right: no man-portable anti-tank weaponry; the only thing that would work against the fictitious invasions (plural!). What an extraordinary group of clueless first-grade asshole clowns we've managed to collect… I know Americans have a good idiom¹ about monkeys but god damn there's so much local “talent” both there and here XD
¹ This from someone who hates idioms.
*rant rant rant rant* sorry about that, please have a good weekend :)
(Long live America and to hell with the US government :D )
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2015, @05:35PM
> I wonder what would the reporting be like if a Russian military vessel was performing 'routine operations' in international waters around the Gulf of Mexico?
I don't know about the gulf, but living in Hawaii in the 80s anytime there was a russian warship nearby it made the 5-oclock news.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by gman003 on Tuesday June 02 2015, @05:46PM
The reporting is "situation normal - kinda fucked up but not interesting enough to report on".
America and Russia are enemies right now - maybe not in any formal way, but they're opposed. So the militaries on both sides do their share of sabre-rattling slash patrolling. An American ship sails close to Russian waters. Russian jets fly close to American airspace. Both send birds out to let the other know they're being watched, and warn them not to cross over the line.
The difference is that Russia, being the underdog in the fight, is trying to push a story of American aggression, to justify their own aggression. America, being the dominant power, is trying to push a story of "sit back, everyone, we got this". So Russia publicizes stories of them "staving off American aggression", and America only occasionally publicizes stories of "yep, we intercepted another Tu-95 dashing towards Alaska". They don't have to hide anything, they just have to not actively spread the story because it's commonplace enough for the people involved to not feel it's newsworthy, and journalists are lazy and don't seek out the stories on their own anymore (if they ever did).
And to prove my point:
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/pentagon-russian-spy-ship-tug-operating-near-u-s/ [freebeacon.com]
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/11/13/russian-defense-ministry-says-bomber-patrols-will-reach-gulf-mexico/ [foxnews.com]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2188791/Russian-attack-submarine-slipped-past-US-Navy-patrolled-Gulf-Mexico-weeks-undetected.html [dailymail.co.uk]
None of those are reliable sources, I know, but my point is that the reporting exists, not the specifics of the events.
(Score: 2) by n1 on Tuesday June 02 2015, @06:30PM
Appreciate your informative response, and that was basically the point I was making, it is indeed situation normal as it has ever been for at least my lifetime.
This is sabre-rattling by both sides, and we should remember that the sabre-rattling also occurs in our name, and not just by our apparent foes. The USS Ross just being in the Black Sea is no doubt seen as provocative sabre-rattling by Russia just as any Russian military operations training, routine or otherwise are viewed as aggressive by NATO.
As an example, Russia has no cards to play in the Ukraine situation where it comes out looking good, unless it wants to forgo it's national security and economic obligations to maintain strong diplomatic and economic relations with Ukraine. It would also have to create a 'no mans land' within its own borders as a show of good faith that it wont interfere or project any influence into the region until the situation 'stabilizes'.
The difference usually seems to be, it's defensive when 'we' do it, it's aggressive when 'they' do it, it's a responsible action to ensure stability when 'we' do it, irresponsibily destabilizing when 'they' do it.
From 10th November 2014 [independent.co.uk]:
I take no sides in this debate, I am not for any military aggression, provocation, or indeed proactive 'defensive' operations by any nation or institution, I just find it hard to ignore hypocrisy when I see it.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Friday June 19 2015, @05:29PM
[…] unless it wants to forgo it's national security and economic obligations to maintain strong diplomatic and economic relations with Ukraine.
Oh that's long gone lol. There's a reason Ukraine has been in free-fall for over a year (and worst economy in the world according to those “the Economist” twats? Seem to remember something like that). Their main trading partner (Russia) is gone and it doesn't matter because they're not producing anything commercially any more anyways. Not even the things they need which they could since they have/had the resources. Hard to mine coal when the miners leave or strike in opposition etc. They're much worse off than Greece has ever been but not yet where the US will be when/if the US Treasury bubble pops (I'm cheering on the good news out of Texas! The Free States are getting more awesome!).
Remember that the whole thing allegedly got started when Russia calmly pointed out that Ukraine couldn't be member of both the EU and the EEU (or whatever it was) at the same time because that would remove all trade restrictions between the two free trade zones for all the members in each.
Which the EU ignored but later of course is forced to admit, and which the US of “Fuck the EU” A couldn't give a shit about anyway as long as they can create enough distraction.
That's way past a year ago.
There is nothing but Russian gas and some coal (because somehow the Poles don't want to sell to the Ukrainians, something about not getting any pay…) being “sold” still way under market price to Ukraine (mostly out of sympathy and solidarity to actual Ukrainians it seems, after all it's not like they actually elected their “leaders” when any vocal opposition parties became banned: only criminals left) and shitloads of Ukrainian debt owed to Russia.
Russians have done just fine without EU produce as well (the counter-sanctions).
For that matter most Ukrainians from the western parts who could have left for Russia, and in the eastern parts they're fighting for independence against the Kiev Nazis.
What I haven't heard anything about recently is how badly the pre- Nazification of Ukraine Chinese agricultural investment in Ukraine must be going (contractual breach I suppose so no money for the Nazis there either, the Chinese don't want lead in their beet-roots) but I have noticed the Chinese have now rented a “tiny” (huuuge) spot for farming in eastern Russia so that's probably their exit strategy. Makes much more sense, the Ukrainian deal was probably mostly about trying to help pre-Nazi Ukraine in the first place and not much else.
Pay attention people: this is how “well” national socialism actually works, forget about the mythical trains (who for the most part went to extermination camps). The Third Reich, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Imperial Japan, same shit each time and feel free to throw in all the communist attempts as well, as I already said: same shit. Maybe throw in 35 billions in US losses too, and that's just commercial companies and probably just the start.
I do take sides in this debate. mostly my side :)
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))