The Argument For a Hypersonic Missile Testing Ban 322
Lasrick writes Mark Gubrud has a fascinating piece arguing for the U.S. to lead the way in calling for a ban on the testing of hypersonic missiles, a technology that the U.S. has been developing for decades. China has also started testing these weapons, which proponents optimistically claim would not be used to deliver nuclear weapons. Russia, India, and a few other countries are also joining in the fray, so a ban on testing would stop an arms race in its tracks. The article discusses the two types of hypersonic technology, and whether that technology has civilian applications.
Re:Ban when you are done testing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds fair...
Not so much.
Hypersonic missiles are the only weapons that could hit an american supercarrier and hence limit the US ability to project force around the world.
Want to ban hypersonic missiles ? Ok. In return let's ban supercarriers. Now this is fair for all parties involved.
Otherwise it's the standard way that the US maintains militray superiority over the rest of us.
Salient Argument provided (Score:5, Interesting)
The argument is at heart "Don't develop these weapons because they will be good at killing people and I personally am not smart enough to come up with a civilan use that doesn't kill people".
It is the kind of idiocy that makes the military industrial complex laugh and call you names.
I think the big issue with these weapons is that they *will* become nuclear payload delivery systems, and as first-strike weapons they would be very hard if not impossible to stop (not that good defense industry $$ won't be spent trying). First-strike weaponry generally enables the crazy/unstable countries and their leaders to exert their will over the rest of the world, while not exactly providing much in terms of benefits to larger, more well nuclear established countries.
Banning this kind of testing isn't new - we did have a nuclear test ban for several decades [1]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
Never make it too easy to break the rules (Score:4, Interesting)
One rule I try to remember is to never make a rule that can't be enforced. With nuclear bombs, there is seismic and radioactive evidence, so you can know if somebody is breaking the treaty. I doubt that such a thing exists for hypersonic missiles.
Re:They will just cheat anyway (Score:4, Interesting)
That was PRECISELY what happened when Eisenhower signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union.
Re:Ban when you are done testing? (Score:2, Interesting)
Sounds fair...
Even worse, all this would do is end Public testing and relegate it to secret testing. Something that's easy for first world countries to do, but would prevent countries like India and Pakistan from keeping their arsenal in any way equivalent to the rest of the worlds.
I actually do believe there wouldn't be use for nukes. Not for any moral reasons, but because I'm fairly certain the big players like the US already have warhead equipped platforms in space. They'd be easier, faster and cheaper than a hypersonic missile, it just makes sense.
Re:The ONLY effect of a ban- (Score:2, Interesting)
I can only really think of any reason why America would be concerned about this.
Hypersonic guided missiles are one of the few credible threats against the american carrier fleet that does not currently have a viable countermeasure. America's carrier fleet is its primary method of projecting its military power. There is no other reason to be against the development of such weapons really as there is no particular increased risk of civilian collateral damage or anything like the potential misery caused by chemical, biological, or nuclear development. You might argue the potential for sonic booms causing aural damage to civilians but when you already have jets that go hypersonic that concern kinda falls apart.
Re:Ban when you are done testing? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a real sense in which hypersonic missiles are an alternative to nukes: bunker busting. To bust a deep bunker (think 10+ meters of concrete, itself deep underground) is no easy task. A nuke works, but nuke ground bursts are particularly nasty (airbursts have limited and contained fallout, ground bursts toss fallout high up into the atmosphere to spread with the wind). Get a kinetic weapon up to Mach 10 and that works too.
There were plans at one point to drop heavy penetrators (old 5" gun barrels from decommissioned battleships IIRC, very hard steel) from orbit if needed, but that was barely doable and quite expensive. Still, it shows the magnitude of the problem.
All the big players have signed "no nukes in space" treaties, of course, but you may be right that they have them anyhow, much to your point about secret testing.
Re:Ban when you are done testing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Incorrect. There are plenty of ways to take out an aircraft carrier. The most obvious and least defensible way is to torpedo it from a submarine. Other ways clearly exist. You can overwhelm it with a mass attack using aircraft, conventional cruise missiles, torpedo boats, etc. Once a carrier and its very limited escort screen use up their antiaircraft and antimissile ammunition, it is a sitting duck. You can strew mines in front of it. You want to give it a severe nightmare? Just consider what you could do moored in its pathetically poorly defended home base or forward base.
Re:Ban when you are done testing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ban when you are done testing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ban when you are done testing? (Score:3, Interesting)
The Chinese can already knock out American carriers with impunity. Anyone can. That's the lesson of just about every wargame in the past fifteen years.
Except the ones that were rigged to to guarantee American victory I mean:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]
Aircraft carriers are obsolete. They're not about force projection, they're about marketing, because they look impressive on camera and they have a ready-built stage for "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banners.
Re:Ban when you are done testing? (Score:3, Interesting)
A better description of the Millennium Challenge comes from War Nerd's doppleganger War Tard:
http://wartard.blogspot.com.au... [blogspot.com.au]
You put a 5-billion-dollar aircraft carrier up against, say, five hundred incoming rockets, drones, torpedoes, remote-controlled boats, and tiny speedboats - only one of which has to be carrying explosives, the others can all be decoys there just to fuck with your radar operators - and what you have is a 5-billion-dollar submarine. Total cost of the attack, let's be extravagant and say one thousand dollars.