Russia condemns US missile-defence systems in Europe

[Scott]

Off-topic post removed.

[craigt3365]

Interesting news report:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/majid-rafizadeh/iran-breached-the-nuclear_b_9977768.html?

Iranian leaders have breached both the resolutions and the nuclear agreement for the third time since the nuclear deal went into effect in January 2016. Iran has repeatedly test-fired, long-range ballistic missiles and laser-guided surface-to-surface missiles.

In October and November, just after the nuclear deal was reached, Iran tested a new ballistic missile capable of carrying multiple warheads.

In March, Iran again test-fired two ballistic missiles.

Thus, the missile shield:

The range of existing Iranian ballistic missiles has grown from 500 miles to over 2,000 kilometers (roughly 1,250 miles), which can easily reach Eastern Europe as well as countries such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Yemen.

[Class C]

So are the missiles actually "defensive" anti-missile and/or anti-aircraft missiles, or are they "offensive nuclear deterrent" ICBM type ground strike missiles? In the latter case Putin is justified, in the former he is not. The latter seems unlikely. Perhaps Putin just wants a defenseless Poland (and Crimea and Ukraine) etc etc etc!!!!!

It's pretty obvious that the equipment can be easily modified to fit short and mid range nuclear missiles. So of course this is the crux of the whole issue.

You can go around and around in circles on this issue which is why you need to focus on the key points, one of which is that the system is a near exact duplicate of the ship based Aegis system which can fire nuclear missiles as shown in the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw-y7KQ08Ho

And here is Lockheed Martin with a video showing that the land based system uses the same components.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCt6fq7cvSY

Is it realistic to expect people to believe that the system won't be tweaked to accommodate other missiles ?

[Class C]

27th May

Just to follow up, here's Putin talking about those 'other missiles'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-4wPzuglN8