Comments on: The Russians and Chinese can’t be all that happy about the performance of their defense systems in Venezuela

By: RigelDog

RigelDog — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:19:26 +0000

I subscribe to Rod Dreyer’s substack and he pulled some long quotes from a recent publication that posits that the total failure of the vaunted Russian and Chinese defense systems to stop the US raid in Venezuela signals a sea change in geopolitics. We are now back to the age where nuclear deterrence is the only true power.

By: om

om — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 22:30:35 +0000

It is a mistake to rely on AI for original thinking. :0

“Anything” and “even in part” used to mean something in journalism.

By: Brian E

Brian E — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 21:18:48 +0000

It is a mistake to think anything om writes adds value to the comments here.

By: om

om — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 21:09:52 +0000

It is a mistake to sit in eastern Washington and think training of the Maduro minions or the equipment they were using had no effect on the outcome.

By: Brian E

Brian E — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 17:51:42 +0000

It’s a mistake to think our success was due, even in part to the lack of training or ability of the Russian/Chinese military hardware. This is just how good our military is. Israel demonstrated it in the 12-day Iran war.

By: om

om — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 16:49:54 +0000

The lesson? Don’t sell your junk to untrained, unprofessional gangs?

But if you are going to use your systems in another country (Donbas, Ukraine) have your military (undercover) operate it (to shoot down a civilian airliner).

By: JohnTyler

JohnTyler — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 16:24:50 +0000

Does anyone think that perhaps the Venezuelan military is simply poorly trained and/or incompetent thus allowing the US to render their defense system ineffective??

You can bet your house that China and Russia will learn from this experience and attempt to develop better defense systems.

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 10:49:25 +0000

Two items for consideration:
What does this say to CCP planners wrt Taiwan?
Use Google Earth to look at The Three Gorges Dam; history’s largest glass jaw.

By: AesopFan

AesopFan — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 07:21:44 +0000

@ Sennacherib > “Remember if you don’t defeat them, you are just training them.”

Yes, the downside is that now China and Russia have some clues on how to improve their hardware and performance.

It remains to be seen if they CAN.

@ bill (poor communication between systems) & Don (dealing with US arms & Trump’s objectives): Agreed, on all counts.

By: Dave L.

Dave L. — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 07:20:23 +0000

For those radars to see US aircraft, stealth or otherwise, they have to be active. And active radars can be located from much further away than they can detect anything.
And what US forces can locate, they can usually kill, one way or another.
To hearken back to tactics used in a previous war: in the Persian Gulf War, the initial hole in the Iraqi air defense network was blasted by Army AH-64 attack helicopters. Air defense radars optimized to look for fast moving stealth jets don’t do too well at seeing helicopters coming in a few feet above the trees.