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US Military Seeks Hypersonic Weaponry
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Feb 12, 2008 02:03 PM
from the what-was-that-noise dept.
from the what-was-that-noise dept.
Dr. Eggman writes "In an interview with the Star-Telegram, the Air Force's chief scientist, Mark Lewis, talks about the USAF's latest research direction. The service is working on hypersonic missile and bombers for the purposes of reconnaissance and attack. In response to Chinese and Russian anti-satellite developments, the Air Force plans to develop weapons capable of sustained travel at Mach 6 to allow them to deploy against and take out anti-satellite launch sites before the enemy can fire their missiles. Furthermore, should the US spy satellite network be brought down, the Mach 6 recon flight systems would be capable of filling in. Air Force officials hope to deploy a new interim bomber by 2018, followed by a more advanced, and possibly unmanned, bomber in 2035." We've discussed on a number of occasions the scramjet technology that would power such vehicles.
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Science: First Ever Scramjet Reaches Mach 10 235 comments
stjobe writes with the news that a group of US and Australian scientists successfully tested a supersonic scramjet engine in the Australian Outback on Friday. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that a rocket carrying the engine reached mach 10, and climbed to an altitude of 330 miles before the apparatus re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. "Australia's Defense Science and Technology Organization (DSTO) said it was believed to be the first time a scramjet had been ignited within the Earth's atmosphere ... Scramjets are supersonic combustion engines that use oxygen from the atmosphere for fuel, making them lighter and faster than fuel carrying rockets. Scientists hope that one day a scramjet aircraft fired into space could cut traveling time from Sydney to London to as little as two hours."
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How We Might Have Scramjets Sooner than Expected 674 comments
loralai writes "Recent breakthroughs in scramjet engines could mean two-hour flights from New York to Tokyo. This technology, decades in the making, could redefine our understanding of air travel and military encounters. 'To put things in context, the world's fastest jet, the Air Force's SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, set a speed record of Mach 3.3 in 1990 when it flew from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., in just over an hour. That's about the limit for jet engines; the fastest fighter planes barely crack Mach 1.6. Scramjets, on the other hand, can theoretically fly as fast as Mach 15--nearly 10,000 mph.'"
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Dead before you hear it coming (Score:2, Insightful)
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Crucifixion? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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Re:Dead before you hear it coming (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Dead before you hear it coming (Score:5, Informative)
Bullets, bombs, missiles, grenades, lasers, modern cannons, etc.: You will be dead before you know what's coming.
Arrows, poison gas, mortars, knives, crowbars, flames, etc.: You may have a split second or so to understand what is about to happen to you. Then you die.
No fair calling out radar or other sophisticated sensing systems, here. You could know that a V2 was coming through intel or visually or through crude radar even during WWII. You didn't have much time, no, but RF signals travel much faster than a V2. Even then: If you are the target coordinate of pretty much any modern weapon, you are on the fast track to fine-pink-mist-ification.
War is hell. Nothing can change that. Killing has become our most efficient national product. From the standpoint of a potential victim, I think I'd rather be instantly killed than mortally wounded so that I can spend a few days in agony before I die and my blood and organs are infected beyond use to anyone else.
Frankly, I don't want to see the V2 or missile or bomb coming for me. I want either an early warning system that would allow me enough time to have a chance of survival (like we have already, the phalanx or CIWS- it has saved my ass); or else I want to go from a state of stupefied boredom to dead in the time it takes a fast explosive shockwave to dissociate my neurons.
There, I said it. Call me a coward, but I've actually dealt with the whole idea of staring death in the eye, and it is over-rated.
-b
Parent
Re:Dead before you hear it coming (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a logical reason for this. If you instantly kill an enemy soldier, you've removed one soldier from the battlefield. If you wound an enemy soldier, you've removed the wounded soldier and the two who are carrying him to safety from the battlefield and also terrified anyone within earshot. You've also increased the number of vehicles needed to carry the wounded, the number of hospitals, doctors and nurses required, and the overall cost of the battle. It's cold, heartless logic, but logic none the less.
Parent
Black Helicopters (Score:3, Funny)
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Rendering the Orbitals Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're about to lose a war, you do what it takes to survive and ignore the long term consequences. Life without satellites is better than life without life.
Parent
Re:Black Helicopters (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Aurora? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's hysterical (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's hysterical (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
HVM (Score:3, Interesting)
This killing machine was much more obscure... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app4/slam.html [designation-systems.net]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto [wikipedia.org]
It's from the 1950/60s. What a naive and stupid era.
Parent
This is just corporate welfare (Score:3, Interesting)
Regan talked about welfare queens. These hypersonic engineers are the new welfare queens.
Re:This is just corporate welfare (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the chance of any of those happening is slight because of the technology required to create them. Nuclear and biological weapons, in particular, require a technological infrastructure which terrorists groups--especially the modern, non-state, distributed groups--don't have and, frankly, don't want. The insurgents in Iraq are doing fine with nothing more complicated than explosives, detonators, cel phones and RPGs. Even 9/11 was a decidedly low tech attack: hot building with big, flammable thing. Modern terrorism is about sascading system failures, and you don't need a nuke to do that. Look at the steadily declining amount of electricity available to the residents of Bagdhad to see how you can paralyze an entire city with nothing more than simple explosives and carefully chosen targets.
The real issue here is the Air Force's refusal to acknowledge that its force structure is out of step with the threats we're facing now. The Air Force wants more and more F-22s, even though the F-22 hasn't been near Iraq and Afghanistan and it won't go near them, as it's payload and loiter time are too small for close air support, which is all our pilots and aviators are doing over there. Air Force brass also continues to give short shrift to the A-10, even though it's uniquely suited to the present, and potential future, conflicts.
Take a look at the Air Force budget request for the next budget and you'll see it's stuffed full of shit we don't need. Meanwhile things we do need, like more airlift capacity, more tankers, etc., are being ignored because they don't go Mach 2. All of the services are having to adapt to the current realities. The Air Force is doing the worst job.
The other side of the issue is that the procurement system is completely broken, but that's a whole 'nother thread.
And he was telling a lie [washingtonmonthly.com] and continued to tell even when called on it. If you want to do some research you will find that, before Welfare "Reform", the average stay on welfare was 1.9 years. Only about 5% of welfare recipients were on welfare for more than 5 years. It was actually one of the most efficient and effective social programs this country has ever undertaken.
That said, I do agree with you that the broken procurement system has enabled corporate welfare of the worst kind.
Parent
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On the other hand, cutting edge military technology is what allowed us to roll over most of Iraq in a matter of weeks. Had we stopped research during the last major conflict, we'd be going in with 1970's era technology, and American fatalities would have been much higher than the 1000s.
What's more, modern research focuses on reducing civilian casualties. The weapons of yes
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Russia is heading further and further towards it's cold war state with it's assassination of Litvinenko on British soil, it's incursion into Japanese airspace, it's buzzing of US aircraft carrier in the pacific, silencing of opposition pa
2035 (Score:3)
For example, Ray Kurzweil bet $10,000 [longbets.org] that computers will have passed the turing test by 2029.
Even if you think Kurzweil is an optimistic hack, 27 years is 18 iterations of Moore's law. If that continues, we'll have computers with 200,000 cores and 32 petabyte hard drives by 2035.
I'm not saying that will happen, my point is just that it's probably not prudent to make such long-term plans wrt defense technology, because it's quite likely that technological advancements will make most of your plans obsolete by the time you get that far out.
Advanced Military Systems are Great (Score:5, Insightful)
But amidst news of new systems a lot of folks forget that the greater part of U.S. strength is so-called "soft power." Economic strength, alliances, energy security, cultural strength, and good-old fashioned good will are examples.
They are harder to develop but are also harder to fight and confer an immeasurable advantage. Building hypersonic weapons is a good thing, but it's a lot easier for your geopolitical competitors to steal the plans and copy it than it is for them to steal your alliances or international good will.
Sources of soft power aren't usually included in defense planning because areas like economic policy and cultural strength appertain variously to non-military departments or even the private sector. But they should be, because our competitors (like China) are.
That said, the United States has a lot of work to do to restore the soft power that eight years of the Bush administration has squandered. Let's hope the next administration is more astute and capable.
Re:Advanced Military Systems are Great (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think you quite understand the meaning of "soft power."
From the Wikipedia article on Soft Power [wikipedia.org]:
and"Willingness to invade" is classic hard power. Please make sure you know what you are talking about before reflexively posting a defense of whatever policy you espouse.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Advice you might consider as well.
On the contrary. "Willingness to invade" is classic soft power - totally passive, inactive, and indirect. It's a cultural and ideological value. Of course, every so often you have to excercise hard power - and actual or positively threatened invasion to maintain the influence of the "will
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We HAD mach 3 birds and weapons (Score:4, Interesting)
"Kelly" Johnson, the father of the U-2/TR-1 and the Blackbirds, came up with a kinetic energy weapon that used no explosive in it. Dropped from 100,000 feet from a Blackbird bomber, the one ton device would have the kinetic energy of a large container freighter hitting at terminal velocity. No explosives whatsoever, just pure momentum. Couple that with a GPS guidance system and you'll have your own man-made meteorite that'll flatten whole city blocks from the impact alone, with pin-point accuracy.
We're back in 1960. (Score:3, Interesting)
Lasers? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wasting resources? (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, do you want me to imagine 5466, or -12?
Parent
Re:Wasting resources? (Score:5, Funny)
What kind of order of operations did the teach where you learned to do algebra?
Clearly he meant 43.
Which, incidentally, is one better than the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
Parent
Re:Wasting resources? (Score:5, Funny)
I tried to, but I couldn't figure out what part of the pentagon the 6th would hit.
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The 9-11 attacks were horrible for the people actually involved, but they're really, really small compared to a nuke going off in a city. Terrorism is bad, but it's not a threat to our nation's survival.
Re:Wasting resources? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Last time I checked Russia already had a nuclear capable missile with independent, multiple warheads.....twenty-five years ago.
And also last time I checked we only fuck with other countries when it is our business, Iraq our business (cleaning up the mess from GW 1), Iran yep still our business (damn revolutionaries kicked out our puppet gov
Re:Wasting resources? (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny how you think that you "know" that, given that we're essentially the only developed country that doesn't provide some form of national health care, we pay almost twice as much for healthcare as the next most expensive country, and even with all that money we're spending, we're nowhere near the top of the list of healthiest or longest living populations.
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Comparisons about what country is the "healthiest" is pointless - everyone else long ago figured out that if the government was going to pay they weren't going to get neonatal intensive care or transplants for 70-year-olds. Apparently it was decided that was an O
Re:Wasting resources? (Score:4, Interesting)
You are conflating demographic and environmental factors with healthcare outcomes.
If you, for example, remove non-medical causes of premature death (car accidents, homicide, etc) Americans outlive other industrialized countries. Healthcare is only a small factor in life expectancy, and average healthiness is almost completely unrelated to healthcare in the industrialized world. The environmental and demographic factors are atypically poor in the US relative to the industrialized world.
If you look at direct measures of healthcare outcomes, such as diagnostic accuracy and disease survival rates, the US leads the industrialized world by a large margin. The elephant in the room in the recent Lancet Oncology study, for example, was that cancer survival rates in the US are much higher than in any other industrialized country in the world -- about 20-40% on average depending on the country and the cancer. So in this sense, Americans are paying more but they are also receiving much more.
The real situation is that the US has terrible non-medical factors that drag down its statistics but compensates with the best average medical outcomes by a huge margin. In most of the rest of the industrialized world, you have middling to good non-medical factors and middling to poor medical outcomes. In other words, the aggregate statistics are not measuring the same thing. Since we pay the medical establishment to produce positive medical outcomes, it would seem prudent to evaluate their efficacy based on those results and not on the number of automobile accidents people are involved in.
At a minimum, it would be foolish to trash a medical system that produces results such as cancer survival rates that no other system is currently coming close to. The US system may be byzantine and inefficient, but it also outperforms the rest of the world in the key metric of medical results. Let's not throw out the baby with the bath water, at least not until a national healthcare system exists with equivalent medical outcomes.
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If you eliminate accidents and homicide from the statistics, Americans live longer. Period. Do you realize how radically better US healthcare would have to be for your assertion to hold up in the statistics? Direct heal
Re:Wasting resources? (Score:4, Informative)
The fact that there may be public healthcare for the poor is irrelevant to most people, who aren't poor enough (or don't have the requisite children) to get in the plan, but don't have a pristine health history that allows them to buy individual insurance.
Face it, the thousands of privately managed risk pools, middlemen, ever-changing contracts, murky and confusing billing procedures, etc. make our healthcare system an insane, broken expensive nightmare unless you work at a large corporation. (Which is probably by design, as it creates a feudal-like system to keep corporate employees loyal at the risk of losing coverage for their families.)
Parent
The UK and Canada seem to do all right. (Score:4, Informative)
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hahaha (Score:3, Insightful)
"230+ years of watching government fuck up everything it touches." You're absurd. Government has fucked up the military? It's fucked up the road system? Boy, I sure hate driving on that Eisenhower Interstate system, don't you? Government fucks up the sewers and sanitation? Please pull your archlibertarian head out
The point flew over your head (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a difference between being the largest economy of the world, and the largest bully. Nothing in being the largest economy of the world force you to have a big army, and a big nuclear arsenal beyond what is necessary for retaliation, and certainly nothing force you to invade other country which never heard of you, and nothing force you to blackmail other country against producing cheaping anti aids drug (a pet peeve of me, international treaty allow it for emergency situation but the US blackmail a lot of country against doing this, or even retaliate). The fact is that the US seems to be quite trigger happy and forget what diplomacy is. If it was not the case, you would not have so-unhappy-ally and falling out with decades old ally. In case you don't remember you had a lot of support a few years ago before you decided to squander it into what i would call bullying Iraq. Nobody ask you to be isolationist. But sometimes, sometimes, it would be nice if you could leave people which are not disturbing you alone in their own FUCKING country. And I am not even speaking of Irak alone. Nicaragua. Chile. Panama. And so on. You are part of the world, but most of the time your extern politic amount to "do whatever we say or we crush you, crush you so bad you won't believe it".
Remember kids, respecting others [person,country] goes into a long way to get respect back. Bullying other make you a nice target. And spitting on your friend make you look like an idiot.
Parent
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Oh i dunno.. the ron paul platform?
- no tarrifs, especially retaliatory corporatist based ones
- stop secretly (or recently overtly) overthrowing other peoples governments (theres about 60 years for you to say sorry for currently)
- no sanctions against "misbehavior" (the very fact that americans are so arrogant to think they can tell people how to behave und
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I really don't care either way. As I said earlier, it's not my job to educate you.
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It's how military R&D works. We're using stuff now that was developed what...20 or so years ago, if not more in many cases? The life cycle of this stuff is a lonnnnnnnng time (a combination of your standard red tape and just the time it really does take to properly push out this kinda stuff).
'Course, this often causes R&D to be fighting the last war. They're developing advanced technology that would be nice now, but not always useful for the next brand of warfare.
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I would argue this. We're not necessarily using stuff developed 20 years ago - no more than we are using "computers that were developed in the 50s." Yeah, the extremely basic concept is pretty old (yeah, our planes still fly and we still call them planes, but they are a far cry from what the Wright brothers were thinking!).
Have you seen the F-22 Raptor? Is that really that old?
And yet, from the very article you referenced...
In 1981 the United States Air Force (USAF) developed a requirement for a new air superiority fighter, the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF), to replace the capability of the F-15 Eagle. ATF was a demonstration and validation program undertaken by the USAF to develop a next-generation air superiority fighter to counter emerging worldwide threats, including development and proliferation of Soviet-era Su-27 "Flanker"-class fighter aircraft. It was envisaged tha
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2) No fallout. Worst case you're looking at a small scale cleanup job that needs doing on a military base.
3) Just ask GWB how well preemptive attacks work out for the US's world image
4) Not really. The additional weight required to achieve th
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You must have missed Lord Dread initiating phase IV of project New Order.