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Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

you seem to be conflating Russian military with Soviet military as if they enjoyed a significant divergence, but in reality one is just a progression of the other. the SU35 for example can still stalk down an SR71, just as its soviet SU25 could.

Dead Hand is not a former soviet technology, it is actively maintained, staffed, and funded. as the CCCP invented the ICBM, i have full confidence in Russias ability to deliver it.

Sarmat is the latest ICBM in development with planned service this year. much like their American counterparts (minuteman) missiles and technology are regularly advanced and upgraded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-28_Sarmat

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Man, you must have been living under a rock for past month. All these statements about Russian military were claimed for few decades on general level, and they seemed to match reality when small conflicts were happening.

Then Ukraine happened and basically none of the predicted capacities and skills 'actively maintained' of russian military were displayed when facing actual equipped and trained army.

You disregard completely utter corruption, thievery and incompetence on all levels including top of power pyramid. I have 0 doubts that Russians have working nukes of various loads and range. I am very positive that number of usable ones is somewhere in 1-5% range and its often not immediately clear which are which.

If there was any maintenance to be done, rest assured it was skimmed and funds stolen. If any replacement should have happened, it was stolen too. Few nukes got probably stolen themselves. That's how state works for a long time, that's how Volodya keeps all bloodthirsty underlings happy, and these are side effects.

> Then Ukraine happened and basically none of the predicted capacities and skills 'actively maintained' of russian military were displayed when facing actual equipped and trained army.

For instance, the thing with the tires: https://twitter.com/trenttelenko/status/1499164245250002944.

> Then Ukraine happened and basically none of the predicted capacities and skills 'actively maintained' of russian military were displayed when facing actual equipped and trained army.

What do you suppose should have happened? Especially in regards to strategic arms which are discussed in the thread?

> What do you suppose should have happened? Especially in regards to strategic arms which are discussed in the thread?

I think the implication is that some of the problems the Russian military has had in Ukraine could be indications of systemic issues (e.g. neglecting basic maintenance even before a planned war, like the tire thing I linked below). Maybe their nuclear forces don't have those issues, but maybe they do.

However, personally, I wouldn't bet on those issues continuing (even if they in fact do), because it's more risky to underestimate and become overconfident.

>I have 0 doubts that Russians have working nukes of various loads and range. I am very positive that number of usable ones is somewhere in 1-5% range and its often not immediately clear which are which.

I've been thinking about this possibility for a while:

* Putin fires tactical atomic weapon at some empty plot of Ukrainian land, and announces it as a "demonstration" of Russian might.

* The weapon is a dud.

I'm not sure whether this outcome might not be worse in the long run, in terms of geopolitical stability, than if the weapon performs as expected!

Isn't the SU-25 [1], a close air support plane roughly equivalent in role to the A-10 [2]?

The Su-37 had its first flight in early 2008 [3] about ten years after the SR-71 was retired [4]. If you mean the SU-27 that indeed flew in 1977 [5] but only has a service celling of 19km, much less than the SR-71's 26km.

Above top secret has an interesting thread on how you would actually go about such an interception [6]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-25

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunde...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-35

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-27

[6] https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread174271/pg1

> the SU35 for example can still stalk down an SR71, just as its soviet SU25 could.

At best, you are confusing Sukhoi with Mikoyan-Gurevich at least once here; the Su-25 definitely couldn't stalk a SR-71. (A MiG-35 or Su-35 doing so is a bit of stretch, too, but less implausible.)

> can still stalk down an SR71, just as its soviet SU25 could

Did an SU-25 write this?

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