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Venezuela and Russia
Last week, Paul Krugman dug up one of The Economist's old cartoons from 1987 to explain the current state of the Economy. It seems that he predicted both sides of the coin being the same today as they were then back during last week's panic, which is the least of the qualifications that let him nab this year's Nobel Prize in Economics.
Well, now that the markets have returned to their regularly scheduled schizophrenic mania, the news outlets will probably be looking for the next big panic. One of the opportunities, which I saw Fox News run a teaser for yesterday, is the imminent arrival of a squadron of Russian warships in the Caribbean to visit everyone's favorite South American strongman, Hugo Chavez. Possibly John McCain will be able to use this as part of his campaign, getting people to buy into his stronger anti-Russia Cold War stance. Well, in case you did want something else to worry about frantically at night, I'm here to spoil it for you, because I'm here to tell you not to worry about that either.
Basically, the Russians are holding a joint exercise with their Venezuelan allies in the Caribbean. This marks the first time that a major Russians battlegroup has entered western waters since, well, since really the beginning of the cold war. In fact, possibly forever. This has a lot of people alarmed. Unsurprisingly, almost none of them are professional navy watchers. After all, this is good. The more Russia starts to support various third-world countries, the less the US has to do to keep the world propped up. Russia, like Venezuela, is too dependent on western cash to be a true opposition.
The Russian task force is currently in Tripoli. How they got there between the Northern Fleet base at Severomorsk and Venezuela is slightly beyond me, but that's their own affair. It will stay there for a few days before departing for Venezuela where they will visit with, and run joint exercises with, the Venezuelan navy. Seeing as how the Venezuelan navy is based almost entirely on six twenty-year old frigates, the Russians are going to be the ones that everyone is watching.
The Russians are sending two big warships, the Udaloy II class destroyer Admiral Chabanenko, and the Kirov class battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy. This has caused some excitement in the type of people who know what this means, because the Kirov class is a strange aberration of naval shipbuilding, the last of the battlecruisers. Battlecruisers fell out of style after World War I, and the last of them really vanished as the ships of World War II were slowly phased out. Even the US was reduced to a single pair of battleships leftover from World War II. The decision of the Russians to build a set of large missile cruisers, so large that they would have to be considered battlecruisers, was considered astonishing. None of them have really done anything since the end of the Cold War, which means that this, their first outing, may be a telling sign of what Russia wants to do with its future.
But are people worried? Not really.
The standard way to judge a warship is by what I call its throw weight, the number of missiles it can throw into the air in a single salvo. Between the two big combat ships that they are sending, the Russians are deploying launchers for 28 anti-ship missiles, and 40 surface-to-air missiles - or 68 total missiles (by my count - I could very well be wrong.). This compares somewhat favorably to the entire Venezuelan navy (96 launchers or thereabouts).
The US default surface combatant is the Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyer. A single Arleigh Burke carries a launch system with 90 tubes that can fire either the anti-ship variant of the Tomahawk, or the SM-2 Surface-to-Air missile. That's ninety tubes, not even counting the stand-alone Harpoon SSM launchers on the earlier ships, or the ESSM four to a tube launch system of the later IIAs. That means that this Russian Navy task force, consisting of some of their strongest and most missile-heavy ships is outweighed by a single US destroyer. The Russians have most of their firepower in poor old Pyotr Velikiy, and they only have two of those, of which Pyotr is the only one to put to sea with any regularity. The US has 55 Arleigh Burkes, not to mention 22 Ticonderoga class cruisers, each of which can throw up to 130 missiles in a salvo. One US vessel outguns this entire Russian task force that some people at Fox News have let get their knickers in a bunch. One US vessel outguns the entire Venezuelan navy. Hell, a group of four of those ships has more firepower then possibly the entire Russian navy, excluding their nuclear capabilities.
Nobody's excited about this because nobody cares. Sure, the Russians may be back, but they're floating out a few obsolete, Cold War-era warships, against a Navy that's been on a spending spree since the 90s. The only thing to worry about is that one of those ships is going to flounder, and we're going to have to rescue it. So yes, there's nothing to panic about here.
So that leaves you nothing to worry about except for the usual manic schizophrenia of the markets and the complete disaster that is our financial system. Which, if you ask me, is still plenty enough.
Well, now that the markets have returned to their regularly scheduled schizophrenic mania, the news outlets will probably be looking for the next big panic. One of the opportunities, which I saw Fox News run a teaser for yesterday, is the imminent arrival of a squadron of Russian warships in the Caribbean to visit everyone's favorite South American strongman, Hugo Chavez. Possibly John McCain will be able to use this as part of his campaign, getting people to buy into his stronger anti-Russia Cold War stance. Well, in case you did want something else to worry about frantically at night, I'm here to spoil it for you, because I'm here to tell you not to worry about that either.
Basically, the Russians are holding a joint exercise with their Venezuelan allies in the Caribbean. This marks the first time that a major Russians battlegroup has entered western waters since, well, since really the beginning of the cold war. In fact, possibly forever. This has a lot of people alarmed. Unsurprisingly, almost none of them are professional navy watchers. After all, this is good. The more Russia starts to support various third-world countries, the less the US has to do to keep the world propped up. Russia, like Venezuela, is too dependent on western cash to be a true opposition.
The Russian task force is currently in Tripoli. How they got there between the Northern Fleet base at Severomorsk and Venezuela is slightly beyond me, but that's their own affair. It will stay there for a few days before departing for Venezuela where they will visit with, and run joint exercises with, the Venezuelan navy. Seeing as how the Venezuelan navy is based almost entirely on six twenty-year old frigates, the Russians are going to be the ones that everyone is watching.
The Russians are sending two big warships, the Udaloy II class destroyer Admiral Chabanenko, and the Kirov class battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy. This has caused some excitement in the type of people who know what this means, because the Kirov class is a strange aberration of naval shipbuilding, the last of the battlecruisers. Battlecruisers fell out of style after World War I, and the last of them really vanished as the ships of World War II were slowly phased out. Even the US was reduced to a single pair of battleships leftover from World War II. The decision of the Russians to build a set of large missile cruisers, so large that they would have to be considered battlecruisers, was considered astonishing. None of them have really done anything since the end of the Cold War, which means that this, their first outing, may be a telling sign of what Russia wants to do with its future.
But are people worried? Not really.
The standard way to judge a warship is by what I call its throw weight, the number of missiles it can throw into the air in a single salvo. Between the two big combat ships that they are sending, the Russians are deploying launchers for 28 anti-ship missiles, and 40 surface-to-air missiles - or 68 total missiles (by my count - I could very well be wrong.). This compares somewhat favorably to the entire Venezuelan navy (96 launchers or thereabouts).
The US default surface combatant is the Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyer. A single Arleigh Burke carries a launch system with 90 tubes that can fire either the anti-ship variant of the Tomahawk, or the SM-2 Surface-to-Air missile. That's ninety tubes, not even counting the stand-alone Harpoon SSM launchers on the earlier ships, or the ESSM four to a tube launch system of the later IIAs. That means that this Russian Navy task force, consisting of some of their strongest and most missile-heavy ships is outweighed by a single US destroyer. The Russians have most of their firepower in poor old Pyotr Velikiy, and they only have two of those, of which Pyotr is the only one to put to sea with any regularity. The US has 55 Arleigh Burkes, not to mention 22 Ticonderoga class cruisers, each of which can throw up to 130 missiles in a salvo. One US vessel outguns this entire Russian task force that some people at Fox News have let get their knickers in a bunch. One US vessel outguns the entire Venezuelan navy. Hell, a group of four of those ships has more firepower then possibly the entire Russian navy, excluding their nuclear capabilities.
Nobody's excited about this because nobody cares. Sure, the Russians may be back, but they're floating out a few obsolete, Cold War-era warships, against a Navy that's been on a spending spree since the 90s. The only thing to worry about is that one of those ships is going to flounder, and we're going to have to rescue it. So yes, there's nothing to panic about here.
So that leaves you nothing to worry about except for the usual manic schizophrenia of the markets and the complete disaster that is our financial system. Which, if you ask me, is still plenty enough.