CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VII (1, 2) Contemporary-Eurasia-3new

ARTSRUN HOVHANNISYAN and “AGM-84E SLAM”, which are launched from ordinary ﬁ ghters ﬁ r- ing two or more missiles. American ﬁ ghter jets with similar missiles can have operational range of up to 1,000 miles. These missiles are launched without entering the Chinese ground air defense zone. Both sides do not count one-engined ﬁ ghters that are quantitatively signiﬁ cant, but have problems in operational radius and armament carrying capabilities; how- ever, in that regard “F-16” jet also signiﬁ cantly surpasses its Chinese competitors, while the new generation ﬁ ghters ‘F-35’ are on the whole beyond comparison. This single-engined ﬁ ghter can have a combat radius of 640-760 miles with combat payload. 23 American Army’s capabilities are as follows: it is planning within 30- 50 days to be able to launch up to 1,000 cruise missiles daily. 24 The Air Force and Navy together already possess: 1. About 2000 “AGM-158 JASSM” multifunctional cruise missiles of various types, 2. About 20 000 “AGM-154A JSOW” multifunctional cruise missiles 3. About 1000 “AGM-84E SLAM” missiles. The same program includes about 5,000 sea and air launching large cruise missiles (“BGM-109”, “AGM-86”) having a ﬂ ight range of 500- 2500 km. Now the Navy is already armed with 3000 long-range cruise missiles and by 2025 their number will be 6000. 25 According to other information, today the Navy has 4000 cruise missiles and in the future might have up to 7,000. These are mainly missiles launched from Amer- ican submarines and here Chinese ﬂ eet, on the whole, is unable to com- pete with them. Some experts fear that the American ﬂ eet can be moni- tored and subjected to attacks. Of course, similar possibilities cannot be excluded but still there are some buts here. Firstly, it is possible to detect surface ships but the world’s most powerful underwater ﬂ eet (combined number of which is about 50 and they carry over 1,000 long range cruise missiles) cannot be so easily detected. Even after having been detected it is not so easy to hit a big aircraft carrier as: ● This class of warships is armed with the world’s most reliable and powerful anti-missile system “Aegis” ● The American ﬂ eet is equipped with still the most powerful detec- tion systems: even in case of mutual pressure on each other, that 23 24 25 Gary North, “F-35: The future is now,” Lockhed Martin Corporation, April 2016, http://www. ﬁ sher.org.il/2016/Adir%20Powepoint/GaryNorth.pdf#page=7 (accessed November 7, 2018). S. Lavrenov, “Voyna XXI veka. Strategiya i vooryjenie SShA,” (in Russian), [S. Lavrenov, XXI Century War.US strategy and armament.] M. AST. Astrel, 2005, 80. A.V. Aleshin, A.N. Popov, V.V. Puchnin, “Voenno-morskaya mosh Rossii v sovremennix geopoiticheskix usloviyax,” (in Russian), [“Russian naval power in modern geopolitical cir- cumstances”], Voennaya Misl,[Military thought], (2016): 12-14. 11

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