[Lone Star]

I'm kinda shocked...

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RUSSIAN MISSILES FOR US NAVY COMING FROM BELARUS

http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2005/03/05PRAGUE337.html

I have a few comments about this:

1. It is from Wikileaks not a vetted source. Take anything you read from it with a grain of salt and call your doctor in the morning.

2. It is for 23 missiles of an outdated design that we could buy on the open market without going through a collection of oddball arms dealers.

3. The Navy, Air Force and Army (USMC is part of the Navy) all have a legitimate use for such arms for training, evaluation and testing so it is not at all shocking the US military might purchase such items.

 

[Lone Star]

The Kh-31 (Russian: Х-31; AS-17 'Krypton') is a Russian air-to-surface missile carried by aircraft such as the MiG-29 or Su-27. It is a sea skimming cruise missile with a range of 110 kilometres (60 nmi; 70 mi) or more and capable of Mach 3.5, the first supersonic anti-ship missile that could be launched by tactical aircraft.

There are several variants, it is best known as an anti-radiation missile (ARM) but there are also anti-shipping and target drone versions. There has been talk of adapting it to make an "AWACS killer", a long-range air-to-air missile.

Not bad if you wanted to sink an allied ship and blame it on someone with slavtech. I'm interested in why they wanted delivery to the states. We buy any Sukois or MiGs to use them on here?

The Navy might want a batch to improve our defenses agaist them through testing or they might want to train with them becuase they might see a potential realtim threat that is armed with these or a cloned variant of them.

While I can't rule out an operational "blame game" I would have to say the CIA would be doing this not the Navy. I imagine they are looking at these to determine reaction time so they can write ROE for potential threats coming soon to a mide east port near you.

 

[Lone Star]

What is the census of these wikilieaks on this board. I think its great we can hold Govt accountable personally but right now they ae trying to pass anti-wikileak legislation in Washington. What do you all feel about wikileaks?


Lieberman Introduces Anti-WikiLeaks Legislation

Bosco, the appropriate thing to do would to creat your own thread for this specific question that way BlackKitty's thread can continue on about the Russian missiles.

I'll be happy to participate in your thread (you probably will disagree with my answer.