GarryB Fri Oct 07, 2022 6:56 am
I agree...
After a few years production of S-500 and S-550 will meet the needs of the Aerospace Defence Forces, and I guess the Army will also want the S-500 system and S-550 to deal with heavy ballistic missile attacks and also engage enemy satellites, and of course the Russian Navy will want the ABM S-500 for stopping anti ship ballistic missiles... they said the S-550 is more of an anti satellite weapon which the Navy probably would not need to take to sea... the S-500 would probably solve all their problems.
I suspect the S-500 and S-550 will be the anti manouvering hypersonic weapons too along with more and more powerful lasers on land and at sea... so the navy and air force and army will be using them to protect their ports airfields and bases respectively... once they have enough of those they could start building shelterised less mobile versions that could be placed at major airports and major air bases and ports and cities and even important production areas...
The ABM treaty is gone so limitations from that treaty are also gone so mini versions of the Moscow ABM system could be replicated around the country in major cities.
I think it is something the west has forgotten... in the ABM treaty gave you two options, you were allowed an ABM system either around your capital city or around an ICBM field.
The Soviets build the ABM system around Moscow, and maintained it to date, the Americans built an ABM system around their ICBM fields... I seem to recall they closed it the day they opened it.... but it is telling... they wanted to defend their ability to attack rather than protect their own people.
The Soviets wanted to protect the government long enough to ensure a nuclear response was ordered... the ABM system was expected to delay the destruction of Moscow... not outright protect it... at a time when each side had over 6,000 strategic nuclear weapons having 100 interceptors around Moscow simply wasn't enough to do anything but delay its destruction long enough to get orders out to launch a counter strike in the case of a surprise attack.