The missiles can hit aircraft up to 12 kilometers away, and cruise missiles at a distance of five kilometers.

If course if the radar can't see the aircraft, it's not much good. It seem the one country such defenses are useless against is the U.S., but Russia is making lots of money selling the stuff. And that gives me an idea. . .

Here's a rumor I'm just making up as I go just to see how the Democrats do it. Bush made a deal with Putin to get a kickback from the sale of these weapon systems. Bush makes threats against countries like Iran and Venezuela that induces them to buy Russian made anti-aircraft missile systems at top dollar. Also Bush has agreed not to prove these weapon systems are useless until the market is saturated. Besides the kickbacks that Bush will use to wage war long after Congress cuts off funds, Bush gets the added satisfaction of draining the resources from such countries. Nothing gives Bush more satisfaction than to see these idiots starve their own people to buy off the shelf weapon systems thinking they are going to protect them against the U.S.

Dang, that was fun. Now I see what the lefties enjoy posting to Wizbang so much.

$100 mil a pop and they take one $1 million cluster bomb to destroy, good deal, Hugo! Thinking like a Marxist makes for bad business deals. Thinking like a terrorist causes the same problems. At least it ties up their money and keeps them from buying as much useful stuff to attack us with.

Why do you suppose this guy is buying that stuff? Is he expected an attack from the air? Interesting, but I haven't been following it closely...

Not as much a cluster bomb as a HARM-type missile, but still cheap. First-run air forces can neutralize such systems fairly easily.

More to the point, all the high-tech hardware in the world does one no good unless you have highly trained soldiers to man the radar scopes. I doubt that Chavez has those sort of soldiers available.

If Chavez was spending $300m on advanced MANPADS missiles, that'd be much more troubling since they're easier to smuggle, and more useful to terrorist forces.

Five Special forces soldiers, Five Navy Seals on a weekend training mission. No missilies for Hugo. Faulty Russian design is the story.

Just like Iran's nuc program. They will manage to blow up their own country. Maybe with a little underground or airborne Laser help. Faulty design is still the story.

Maybe Chavez plans to re-sell them to Iran at a markup?

Like Reagan & North did?

Hugo may aspire to be the next Adolf Hitler, but I'm starting to think that a better comparison would be Leonid Brezhnev.

Like Reagan & North did?

Which allowed Iran to shoot down Iraqi aircraft.

Sounds good to me.

I would argue that Chavez is already the wrong hands.

I was reading about Venezuela and Chavez recently and come to find that Venezuela has already been down a similar road before with another dictator, socialist, nationalizing industry - type.

If it were such a great approach to governance, why didn't it work the first time.

What a dumb ass. You have to wonder, though, about the citizenry of Venezuela who didn't get it the first go round.

These missiles are the FLying Telephone Poles variety. If soem terrorist oragnization gets there hands ont hem and sets them up somewhere as a terror op...somethign went really, really wrong somewhere else.

As to selling them to Iran, why? Iran already owns some, installed by our good friends the Russkies!

http://www.southeastasianews.net/story/218436

Let's force Chavez to use the stuff. Fire a cruise missile with a warhead that disperses aluminum chaff, which shows up on some radar screens like dozens of planes.

chsw

I fully support the militarization of venezuela. In fact, we should donate a buttload of obsolete tanks and APC-s. The more of a threat they are to their neighbors, the more likely someone will off that bastard.

As was pointed out above, the people manning a system like this need training. And depending on how good- and automated- it is, that takes a while.

So either castro's buttmonkey is planning on paying for training(or did Putin include that in the price?), or they're damn near useless. And relatively easy to knock out.

'Course, we ARE dealing with a standard-issue commie dictator here, who may consider paying that much for missile systems he can't really use well is worth it as a symbol of standing up to the Great Satan.

While the details of this sale aren't clear, it is typical that sales of such high-tech armaments include the training.

Since our air attacks are now carried out by higher-flying aircraft, the only attack plane in our military arsenal which would be threatened by these missiles is the A-10, but that is only brought in after "softening up" the target with high-altitude bombing. As to their effectiveness against cruise missiles, it seems likely technology will advance to either cloak the cruise missiles or replace them altogether.

Certainly Chavez has no need for such weapons. I can't see him needing them to buck up public support, since he just won a comfortable election victory and was granted blanket powers of decree by the legislature. It makes no sense.

It would be difficult to impossible to smuggle a battery into the US, but they would be very effective against air traffic in the region. With all the narco-terrorism in that part of the world, this is probably the greatest danger.

Hey Hugo...
How about spending the money on paying your civil servants who haven't gotten paid for the last month,
You paid 2 months Bonus just before the Elections how convienent,
Fix the roads,your hospitals do not have even simple medications like ASPIRIN'S and TEACH the people how to Drive they drive there like shit down there