Russian planes could not penetrate NATO airspace. If they were attacking, the NATO air force would destroy all that came. American strategic bombers however would get through Russian air space and release the bombs. The only other country with a radar that can detect stealth bombers (apart from the US) is Britain with the Rapier radar system.

The US has the biggest and msot technologically advanced air force in the world. Russia canot compete. Nor can anyone in fact.

__________________
I'll tell you this no eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn
Nothing to kill or die for and no religion too
You may bury my body, down by the highway side,
so my old evil spirit can get a Greyhound bus and ride.

...that "everyone buys good items while nobody wants to purchase crappy things". This is how Capitalism works Now look at the MAP :

S-300 VS MIM-104 Patriot

quotes :

On February 25, 1991, an Iraqi Scud hit the barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 28 soldiers from the US Army's 14th Quartermaster Detachment.

A government investigation revealed that the failed intercept at Dhahran had been caused by a software error in the system's clock. The Patriot missile battery at Dhahran had been in operation for 100 hours, by which time the system's internal clock had drifted by one third of a second. For a target moving as fast as an inbound TBM, this was equivalent to a position error of 600 meters.

The radar system had successfully detected the Scud and predicted where to look for it next, but because of the time error, looked in the wrong part of the sky and found no missile. With no missile, the initial detection was assumed to be a spurious track and the missile was removed from the system. No interception was attempted, and the missile impacted on a barracks killing 28 soldiers.

Further :

Patriot was involved in two friendly fire incidents in Iraq, one against a British RAF Tornado GR4A killing both crew, the other against an F/A-18 Hornet killing the pilot.

With such effective SAM missiles America really need not enemies!

Oh, yeah! Indeed, Russians are far behind Americans in shooting down civil airplanes by military SAMs!
Iran Air Flight 655

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...penetrate NATO airspace. You are afraid of us. That's why RAF fighters always escort TU-95 patrol bombers during their routine missions.

If we were attacking, all NATO airfields would be converted into mix of radioactive steam and dust in a few seconds by speedy Russian ICBMs. After that we would send our combat airplanes to exterminate possible survivors

American wobbly-goblins would be destroyed on US air bases too by massive strike of ballistic missiles. Don't worry!

*Sigh*..don't know on what faculty of college you're studying in GB...but definitely not on technical one. FYI, your Stealth can be detected and targeted even by relatively outdated radar, built in Belorussia.

In Clancy's books and Bond's movies, yes!

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On the S-300 I notice the wiki at least says they haven't been used at all in a combat situation.

How much have the things even been tested against relevant practice targets (shooting down an actual cruise missile). Have they ever been tested against an ICBM? Here in America I remember hearing about our missiles successfully intercepting an ICBM we had fired, so I presume you'd know if Russia had done the same.

We now know about the clock problem with the patriots. However if the Russians have a similar problem in your S-300 I don't think you'd know about it.

And it is not realistic for either side to go nuclear. One Launches their ICBMs and then the other launches hundreds of missiles from submarines and we all play in nuclear winter. At least I hope no one on either side is so foolish.

Where we could end up in conflict is a conventional weapons fight over some other nation.

So lets talk about the "backfire." It does have one thing going for it in that modern western fighters don't have a large focus on high speed interception. Meaning the backfire could outrun many fighters out there. I think only the F-15 and F-22 fighters in modern western forces could keep up, and since numbers aren't released we can't be sure about the F-22.

However after that it runs into problems. First of all part of the reason fighters have been getting slower is that missile systems have been getting better. Most western anti air missiles travel at mach 4-5, which is nearly twice as fast as the backfire, which I don't believe is stealthy at all. And since these missiles are known to be able to hit satellites the backfire isn't going to be able to win with altitude either. So a brazen high speed high altitude approach is out.

Instead the backfire would try to come in at low altitude. Unlike some American craft it is not supposed to be capable of what we consider Nap-of-the-earth flying so that leaves it more vulnerable to American AWACS and other high flying radar. Also it would lose much of its advantage of speed at the required low altitudes. Making it vulnerable to the full range of fighters out there. And again there does not seem to be a case for why a modern fighter with a modern missile, Russian, American, Indian, etc, couldn't lock on and destroy a Backfire it got in its sights.

Do you have data that refutes any of this Grond? Backfires doing Mach 2 at 400 feet off the ground? Secret stealth properties? Something else?

...designers of S-300 or S-400 if Russian missiles couldn't do the same. I bet you've read that S-300 was purchased by many countries. You know that buyers often (if not always) have military skills and knowledges so they wouldn't pay money for empty commercial slogans of S-300 creators. There are not much fools in the World who would pay megabucks to Russian armsellers for nothing or, say, for empty commercial slogans.

Quite possible.

Agreed.

Good points! Frankly, I don't think that Backfire has any parameters of American Stealth aircraft. You absolutely right concerning to high-speed SAM missiles. That's why I think that better to have a large amount of supersonic bombers than relatively small amount of wobbly-"F-117"-goblins. Backfire could be faster than fighter-interceptor but definitely slow in comparison to high-speed SAM. Stealth bomber is equally slow both for fighter-interceptors and modern SAMs.

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It is regarded as a solid system. And I'm given to understand it is designed to require little or no maintenence, which would also be very appealing to other countries.

However while it is supposed to be able to counter an ICBM I don't know that anybody has ever actually tried it. A quick search in the net also didn't reveal info on any live fire tests done with the system. Maybe you can find something.

I give you a world of credit for saying that. I half expected you to just reply with a bunch of fart emoticons.

Against many systems the F-117 and B-2 have proven effective at hitting their targets and getting back alive.

It might be possible to flood a target with Backfires. And that could be a valid method for a total war. However for a regional conflict having only half your bombers return is simply unacceptable.

In my opinion the concern of the backfire fleet is that it gives Russia the ability to perform a surprise assault against a not so well defended area very hard and very fast prior to a ground assault to take a neighbor or to assist an ally in gaining territory. Or something along those lines.

Again hopefully Russia will not try such a thing and the Backfire will just be a fun sabre to rattle around on the edges of NATO airspace.

Though backfires hitting a Russian neighbor might finally let us know how well the S-300s work.

...I'll try to dig something up
ROTFL!!! ...for regional wars and conflicts, yes!A very good observation, IMO!
Agree!
There are relatively light-weiht TU-95 to perform the mentioned task!

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Actually the other thing it seems to be designed for is as a stand off bomber especially against ships, but land targets too. It would try to quickly get into range, fire a long range missile, and then quickly try to get home. Due to the very long range of anti ship missiles vs anti aircraft missiles I don't see why it wouldn't still be effective at this so long as it doesn't have to try and make it past something that could attack it such as another ship or launched fighters (especially fighters that are faster than it is like F-22(probably) and F-15 but with their fast missiles any fighter it has to go by would get a shot at it.

So in this role they would essentially be a range extender for the missiles and that's a useful enough thing. Though the effectiveness of the whole deal will come down to the missile.

do you really believe they couldn't say that it's a civil or military plane? one can understand it by naked eye.

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Why does my heart cry? Feelings I can't fight...

..that they shot down a civil jet intentionally?

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