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Western militaries have never heavily invested in SAMs?! Have you heard of the stinger, that the Ukrainians are using to great effect? The US also has the patr

by SEJeff 5y ago

Western militaries have never heavily invested in SAMs?! Have you heard of the stinger, that the Ukrainians are using to great effect? The US also has the patriot and aegis systems which are really good air defense missiles. That’s not including THAAD, etc.

KptMarchewa 5y ago
THAAD is 21-century system, not a cold war era one.
- SEJeff 5y ago
  But the OPs comment was that the west ended invested in SAMs, a laughably incorrect statement if you study the order of battle of any western military, US or otherwise.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    It's kind of like saying that we ended investment in 8-bit hardware because we've replaced it with 64-bit hardware. It's not that we stopped, it's that the funding has been repurposed for newer/better things.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > But the OPs comment was that the west ended invested in SAMs That's not at all what I said. I suppose it would have been a little clearer if I had said "never invested as heavily" in SAMs compared to the Soviets, but I wasn't focusing on the West. I was making a point about Soviet-style forces fighting one another. Nothing about that implies the West never invested in SAMs or has stopped doing so. It just means they're not as central to its air defense strategy.
tablespoon 5y ago
> Western militaries have never heavily invested in SAMs?! > Have you heard of the stinger, that the Ukrainians are using to great effect? The US also has the patriot and aegis systems which are really good air defense missiles. That’s not including THAAD, etc. Not like the Soviet Union did. The article I'm trying to paraphrase said that SAMs were far more integral to Soviet air defense strategy than they were to Western air defense, which put more emphasis on using fighter aircraft for air defense than having the Army deploy different SAM systems for every need. Because the Soviets relied more on SAMs, then the West had to put more emphasis on counter-SAM weapons (which the Soviets has far less need to do). Also the article noted that the exception is Western navies, which the article said were in a more similar situation to the Soviet Army. That's why the more capable US SAM systems have naval lineage.

by SEJeff 5y ago

KptMarchewa 5y ago

THAAD is 21-century system, not a cold war era one.

SEJeff 5y ago
But the OPs comment was that the west ended invested in SAMs, a laughably incorrect statement if you study the order of battle of any western military, US or otherwise.
- dylan604 5y ago
  It's kind of like saying that we ended investment in 8-bit hardware because we've replaced it with 64-bit hardware. It's not that we stopped, it's that the funding has been repurposed for newer/better things.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > But the OPs comment was that the west ended invested in SAMs That's not at all what I said. I suppose it would have been a little clearer if I had said "never invested as heavily" in SAMs compared to the Soviets, but I wasn't focusing on the West. I was making a point about Soviet-style forces fighting one another. Nothing about that implies the West never invested in SAMs or has stopped doing so. It just means they're not as central to its air defense strategy.

tablespoon 5y ago

> Western militaries have never heavily invested in SAMs?! > Have you heard of the stinger, that the Ukrainians are using to great effect? The US also has the patriot and aegis systems which are really good air defense missiles. That’s not including THAAD, etc. Not like the Soviet Union did. The article I'm trying to paraphrase said that SAMs were far more integral to Soviet air defense strategy than they were to Western air defense, which put more emphasis on using fighter aircraft for air defense than having the Army deploy different SAM systems for every need. Because the Soviets relied more on SAMs, then the West had to put more emphasis on counter-SAM weapons (which the Soviets has far less need to do). Also the article noted that the exception is Western navies, which the article said were in a more similar situation to the Soviet Army. That's why the more capable US SAM systems have naval lineage.