Originally Posted by
Gaaz
That is BS. I do not know where you get your info from, but you should check your sources. A typical Type 45 destroyer has a height of about 50m. Therefore, to see it directly with a radar (i.e. direct beam-reflection) you only need to be at about 50m yourself to cover a 35 mile radius. Here we are talking less than 20 miles from a large number of launchers, that are stationed very high above sea level. You could actually see the radar dome of the HMS Defender if you were swimming in the ocean somewhere within 15 miles from it. P-800 would have immediate direct visibility to the target if launched from anywhere near the Sevastopol base, or any ship stationed around it. It would not even need to ascend to a march height. It could immediately go to a surface skimming attack approach, since they are designed to fly at about 7m above sea level.
NATO would do zilch militarily under any circumstance, even if the Defender would have been sunk and all crew lost. It was a provocation and they knew full well of the risks involved. You do not poke a nuclear armed country and then play a victim. A military action against Crimean targets, infrastructure or personnel would be considered an attack on Russian soil. And in case someone is not aware of this nuance, it was recently amended in the Russian military doctrine that an attack of a Russian territory gets retaliated using all means, including nuclear ones. I would like to see an idiot who would start the ball rolling, facing total annihilation for that idiot Boris Johnson who decided to play cowboy (pirate?) on the high seas. Maximum response from the west would be another wave of economic sanctions sometime later.
In any case, my point is primarily to show that if the HMS Defender had been regarded as a direct threat, it would have been sunk by any one of the 9 Russian ships armed with anti ship missiles that stationed in the area, or a couple of the land based launchers, with no risk of collateral damage and little to no chance of survival for the ship in question. Simply because shooting down anti ship missiles is a hell of a trick even under ideal scenario, when you know the exact attack vector. Israelis can confirm that, having lost a number of ships to them.