  We comment on some statements in a recent paper by Paolozzi and Ciufolini
concerning certain remarks raised by us on the realistic accuracy obtainable in
testing the general relativistic Lense-Thirring effect in the gravitational
field of the Earth with the newly launched LARES satellite together with the
LAGEOS and LAGEOS II spacecraft in orbit for a long time. The orbital
configuration of LARES is different from that of the originally proposed
LAGEOS-3. Indeed, while the latter one should have been launched to the same
altitude of LAGEOS (i.e. about $h_{\rm L}=5890$ km) in an orbital plane
displaced by $180$ deg with respect to that of LAGEOS ($I_{\rm L}=110$ deg,
$I_{\rm L3}=70$ deg), LARES currently moves at a much smaller altitude (about
$h_{\rm LR}=1440$ km) and at a slightly different inclination ($I_{\rm LR} =
69.5$ deg). As independently pointed out in the literature by different
authors, the overall accuracy of a LARES-LAGEOS-LAGEOS II Lense-Thirring test
may be unfavorably \textcolor{black}{impacted} by the lower altitude of LARES
with respect to the expected $\approx 1%$ level claimed by Ciufolini \textit{et
al.} because of an enhanced sensitivity to the low-degree even zonal
geopotential coefficients inducing orbital precessions competing with the
relativistic ones. Concerning the previous tests performed with the combined
nodes of only LAGEOS and LAGEOS II, an independent analysis recently appeared
in the literature indirectly confirms that the total uncertainty in them is
likely far from being as little as $10%$.
