War Tech the US, Russia, China and India All Want: Hypersonic Weapons 290
An anonymous reader writes: They can hit any target in 30 minutes or less. They travel anywhere from Mach 5 to Mach 25. All the major powers want them, and many look at them as a military game changer — if only they can make them work. Are hypersonic weapons the future of military doctrine?
Hypersonic weapons — or ballistic weapons that can hit a target flying many times faster than the speed of sound — have been hyped since the 1970s. Currently almost all of the major powers are trying to build them. The U.S. and China seem to be the furthest along, and are working on various types of systems. China hopes such weapons could be a game changer and deter any U.S. actions in Asia. There is, however, one big problem (besides the insane amount of technology to make them work, considering their speed): a possible arms race that could lead to a nuclear war:
"According to some analysts, the development of hypersonic weapons creates the conditions for a new arms race, and could risk nuclear escalation. Given that the course of hypersonic research has acknowledged both of these concerns, why have several countries started testing the weapons?"
Hypersonic weapons — or ballistic weapons that can hit a target flying many times faster than the speed of sound — have been hyped since the 1970s. Currently almost all of the major powers are trying to build them. The U.S. and China seem to be the furthest along, and are working on various types of systems. China hopes such weapons could be a game changer and deter any U.S. actions in Asia. There is, however, one big problem (besides the insane amount of technology to make them work, considering their speed): a possible arms race that could lead to a nuclear war:
"According to some analysts, the development of hypersonic weapons creates the conditions for a new arms race, and could risk nuclear escalation. Given that the course of hypersonic research has acknowledged both of these concerns, why have several countries started testing the weapons?"
Maybe the world as we know it might change soon (Score:2)
The process of power shifting from a set of hands to another set of hands has happened before many times throughout the course of human history.
Maybe something similar is about to happen again.
http://moneymorning.com/ext/ar... [moneymorning.com]
If this is true, the mystery of why all these countries want these weapons, disappears.
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We've been very lucky over the last few hundred years as to who's been running the show.
The British Empire, while not perfect, was much better than the alternative. Compare modern ex-British colonies which built infrastructure to the ex-Spanish colonies which just took the natives gold, for example. She (eventually) outlawed and effectively prevented slavery due to the enormous navy. The empire was a massive help in defeating the Nazis ( and before them the dictator Napoleon ).
America, again not perfect, bu
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Power will shift eventually, it always does, but we can hope America is replaced by somebody equally or more benevolent.
The problem with that hope is that odds are, the USA is going to have to go even more sharply downhill (with terrible global consequences) before that can happen. I still don't think this nation is beyond redemption, if the people are catalyzed.
* This isn't to excuse the actions of either the British Empire, or anything the Americans have done, but they have certainly been a force for good in the grand scheme of things.
Those days are over, at least for the USA. We're definitely a net drain today.
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He also re legalized slavery, which most boney cheerleaders like to gloss over...
Not sure I get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see how this can work.
ICBMs are already hypersonic weapons. Problem is launching one gets everyone else twichy because they might have a bunch of nuclear warheads on the end.
Whereas hypersonic missiles don't. So won't make anyone twitchy. Until someone sticks a nuclear warhead on them which is about the first thing they'll do. Then they'll make everyone just as twitchy as before except that they flight path will be a bit different.
About 3 years after the first practical hypersonic air breathing missile comes online, they'll be in *exactly* the same place as ICBMs with similar flight times, hitting capabilities and unusuableness due to everyone else thinking you're staring WWIII.
On the other hand, hypersonic arbreathing engines are cool, so whatever.
Re:Not sure I get it. (Score:4, Interesting)
hypersonic *airbreathing* missiles are about as likely as me setting foot on Mars.
Even supersonic aircraft have problems, simply because you have to slow the air down before it enters the combustion chamber - otherwise it's travelling too fast to ignite the fuel. That's why you have baffles and diverters in supersonic intakes. They are LARGE. Check out Concorde's engines, those intakes were huge and the diverters completely obscured the view of the turbines, in fact the precombustion section was the single largest component of the entire engine and it was mostly empty space.
Hypsonic baffles would be a: too bulky and b: too heavy to use in a missile where the whole idea for a military application is to make it as small a cross-section as possible - not so much for targetting (what's going to catch a missile doing 6,000mph?), but for detection. Even a 4 minute warning, which is what you're going to have, is better than nothing.
Re:Not sure I get it. (Score:4, Informative)
Your description is accurate for *some* airbreathing engines, but not others. In turbojet engines, such as those on the Concorde, the airflow is first slowed, then compressed by fans prior to ignition. In ramjet engines, you dispense with the compressor, relying on the engine geometry and the speed of the incoming airflow to compress it, but you still slow it to subsonic speeds before igniting it. In a scramjet [wikipedia.org], however, the airflow is compressed (by engine geometry, not a compressor), injected with fuel, and ignited, all without ever slowing below supersonic speeds.
This is difficult, for a number of reasons, but there has been substantial progress in the last decade or so. In particular, the X-51 [wikipedia.org], an uncrewed scramjet aircraft, went hypersonic for 3.5 minutes on a test flight in 2010. (I seem to remember it actually being reported on Slashdot.) So hypersonic, airbreathing flight is, at least, *possible*. It remains to be seen whether it can be made *practical* for routine application, but a few major militaries seem to think so.
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possible I grant you, but like I say, practical? Hardly. Unless they come up with new materials to use in constructing new super-miniaturised baffles and that can withstand the dynamic stresses &c...
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oh, bearing in mind that we're talking about cruise missiles here, not stratospheric flight. Cruise missiles fly below RADAR screens, which means that they're flying through the thickest soup of air and particulates it's possible to go without taking the tops off of trees - which given the flight profile, is also entirely possible.
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It's called carbon-carbon. It's a composite material where both the substrate and the binder are carbon. It gets used in jetliner wheel brakes too.
Re:Not sure I get it. (Score:4, Interesting)
jetliner wheel brakes don't have to last much beyond bringing an aircraft to a dead stop. Hypersonic airframes have to withstand constant high temperatures and aerodynamic stress. CC can't do the former without oxidising (threshold of oxidation on carbon composite is about 1650C while the skin temperature is tested at 2000+) so a coating is needed that only needs to withstand the high temperature without decomposing. Elemental metals are out, as are superalloys, silicon composite is definitely out since at these temperatures it does as designed on SSO heatshields: it evaporates giving the airframe a shield made of hot plasma (which will not only disrupt the airfoil but the oxide coating as well), something else has to be found. More info here: Hypersonic Technology for Military Application (National Academies, 1 Jan 1990) [google.co.uk]
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AFAIK the C-C jetliner brakes improve the economy of that; to specifically last much longer than a single use.
The X-43 flew for nearly ten minutes at hypersonic speed. The leading edges were treated with PVD, presumably to make them ablative as you say.
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PS-PVD could be part of the solution, if they could find some way of dissipating the heat through hte superstructure during flight (presumably without igniting the fuel tank)
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Actually, the UK already have a hypersonic air breathing engine that's not enormous and bulky: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
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Nuclear warfare isn't useful. The level of destruction is so high that most war objectives cannot be achieved. After Nuclear weapons were used at the end of WWII, warfare had changed to defend itself from it. No longer big armies against big armies, but towards tactical strikes against targets. The goal isn't how big of a boom (a big enough one will hit your target no matter how poor your aim) but how good of a shot you can be, if you can hit your target without killing as many civilians.
Right now Nucle
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To be fair "traditional anti-ballistic missile defense systems" are something of a joke anyway. And it's much easier to nail a carrier group with either supersonic maritime strike bombers carrying long range air to surface anti shipping missiles (Soviet/Russian approach) or submarine force (pretty much everyone else's approach).
These weapons are just another insurance against potential US carrier-based aggression campaign in their region. One should not consider it the main deterrent but just one on the lon
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The BrahMos is supersonic, not hypersonic. Ho hum. The Shaurya is hypersonic. Good thing India and the US are not antagonistic.
The US is the only serious nation that relies only on subsonic cruise missile crap, because the US is only in the habit of engaging hopelessly defenseless countries.
Re:Not sure I get it. (Score:5, Informative)
The US and Russia have had hypersonic weapons since the 60s. We just call them ICBMs. As far as I can tell the Shaurya is just a smaller version of one. It certainly is much slower than an ICBM (mach 7.5 vs probably well over mach 10 for an ICBM).
I don't see anything that suggests these weapons are particular effective against naval targets without nuclear weapons (blowing up task forces with nukes is 1950s technology). They seem to be designed to hit fixed targets.
This isn't a trivial problem - to hit a moving target you need a bunch of things:
1. The ability to do terminal maneuvers. When you weigh a metric ton and are travelling at mach 8 that isn't a trivial problem.
2. A sensor able to detect the target despite countermeasures. The further off you can detect the target the easier problem #1 becomes. If your sensor is active then that creates another whole mess of possible countermeasures including making the job of an interceptor easier (since it too has to solve all these problems to hit you and your active sensor makes the job of their passive sensor easier).
3. Sufficient intelligence to initially target the weapon close enough to the target for #2 and #1 to work. When your target is 500 miles away, knowing where it is within a mile or so is not easy. Keep in mind that in a real war situation where you're shooting at US carriers, you're not going to have any satellites in orbit for long.
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I don't know which missile you're talking about having 144 warheads, most MIRVs on ICBM launch vehicles have 3 tactical, or *maybe* 14 field warheads. The largest one I can think of is the W87 MX Peacekeeper which has 14 each of 12kT yield. Enough to kill a large city but leaving very little damage relative to a single 1MT warhead which would uberkill the entire area and spread fallout over hundreds of square miles.
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There is not a single "Peacekeeper" left.
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that's a shame, maybe they think the Minuteman III per warhead is a cheaper delivery option...
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Unlike in your fantasy, the US does not have a single MIRV ICBM remaining. Even when they did exist, they only had three warheads apiece, not some 144 warhead wet dream.
There are still MIRV SLBMs, and knowing Russia, they probably still have MIRV ICBMs to back up their paranoid delusions.
What does it change? (Score:5, Insightful)
The game changer for nuclear weapons is not a faster delivery system, it's an effective shield. That was why the Soviet Union was so worried about Star Wars. If it had worked, then it would have meant that the USA could have launched a first strike without worrying about the USSR's second strike capability. Hypersonics just make it harder to develop any kind of active shield (it's hard for an interceptor to hit something travelling at Mach 5-25).
Of course, the real game changer for nuclear weapons would be someone who doesn't care about second strike. The easy and cheap way of building something that has the same military impact as a fully functional shield is to simply not care about your civilian population. This is why everyone is nervous about North Korea: if they wanted to fire a nuke at South Korea or Japan, the threat of nuclear annihilation of their cities in response wouldn't be very likely to dissuade them.
Re:What does it change? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why everyone is nervous about North Korea: if they wanted to fire a nuke at South Korea or Japan, the threat of nuclear annihilation of their cities in response wouldn't be very likely to dissuade them.
I get this logic when it comes to religiously-inspired non-state actors -- the lack of a state apparatus and physical territory means they don't have a physical presence to defend, and the religious motivation implies outcomes that transcend the physical world.
But despite the cult of personality, North Korea isn't religiously motivated and is essentially defined by the state and its territory. Kim may have the best bunker in the world, but annihilation of his cities and standing army leaves him with what? His circle of backstabbers locked in concrete hole in the mountains? His state and leadership are over; he may have struck the enemy but he can't defeat the enemy and his state WILL be defeated, ending it permanently.
North Korea seems defined by the notions of a rational actor and bound by the notion of self-preservation, whereas Islamic groups seem to better fit the idea of a non-rational actor for whom self-preservation isn't a criteria.
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You haven't been listening to Nork propaganda, they treat Kimmy as a god-king. The indoctrination is indistinguishable from religious indoctrination.
That said, the highly well-adusted Norks might still do something incredibly stupid believing their own press releases. They could easily believe the U.S. and the Sorks won't do to them what they did to the U.S. and/or the Sorks. There's no fixing stupid.
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It's funny that comments from low user ID folks always seem more insightful and measured these days. And it's swb's low ID that makes me respond at all to the posting.
North Korea seems defined by the notions of a rational actor and bound by the notion of self-preservation, whereas Islamic groups seem to better fit the idea of a non-rational actor for whom self-preservation isn't a criteria.
Yes, but, there is certainly a large dose of not-quite-rationality that NK exhibits when dealing with international actors. They don't have the same rule book as everyone else seems to when it comes to how to treat your large, powerful neighbors. It reminds me of how people sometimes become when they spend too much time alone, separated fro
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Yes, but, there is certainly a large dose of not-quite-rationality that NK exhibits when dealing with international actors. They don't have the same rule book as everyone else seems to when it comes to how to treat your large, powerful neighbors.
I think there's more than a little deliberate erratic behavior; rather than the weird uncle, I would liken it to the prison inmate whose craziness may or may not be intentional, but it has the effect of keeping more dangerous inmates who otherwise are more powerful
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Why would they fire a nuke? Better to have plausible deniability: Stick it in a shiping container, address to your target city. Trigger on timer/GPS/cellphone. That way NK can blame the Taliban, the Taliban can blame IS, IS can blame Iran, Iran can blame NK and everyone can blame Russia - and the rest of the world has no idea who they are supposed to invade in response.
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The game changer for nuclear weapons is not a faster delivery system, it's an effective shield. That was why the Soviet Union was so worried about Star Wars. If it had worked, then it would have meant that the USA could have launched a first strike without worrying about the USSR's second strike capability. Hypersonics just make it harder to develop any kind of active shield (it's hard for an interceptor to hit something travelling at Mach 5-25).
I think the Soviet Union was afraid of more than Star Wars. I remember in the late 1980's there was an article (I think in _Foreign Affairs_) hypothesizing that a very small number of conventional cruise missiles, launched from submarines in the Barents, Baltic, and Black seas, could completely disable the command and control network for a nuclear launch as well as the early warning systems used to activate the ABMs around Moscow. All while causing very few casualties. The article was probably quite a wa
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Fear mongering (Score:2)
Yeah. For the clarity to other readers, this statement is not supported by any logic nor by any argument. It is just that "some analysts" (i.e. probably some dude the author met in a pub) say that something could lead to "nuclear escalation". It is there to attract eye balls and clicks. Now that we have agreed that the whole talk about "nuclear war" or "nuclear escalation", we can focus on discussing this pretty cool sounding hypersonic weaponry stuff.
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Effective except for any silos you miss through technical or intelligence failure. And any aircraft that are already up. And the submarines.
You'd still be getting a barrel of instant sunshine in return.
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For a reasonably advanced state with a good detection system, there will always be plenty of warning after a mass ICBM launching to allow retaliation by ICBMs and SLBMs before the attack impacts. For hypersonic cruise missiles, I'm not at all sure that's a given.
author rides fixie, has beard but no moustache (Score:3)
Is that supposed to mean
ballistic weapons that can hit a target which is flying many times faster than the speed of sound
or
ballistic weapons that are flying at many times faster than the speed of sound when they hit the target
Also, "many times faster than the speed of sound" sucks.
Simple: the consequences if they don't (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it can lead to an arms race. The problem is that if you hold off and your enemy doesn't, you're a sitting duck. Avoiding the arms race is only possible if everybody involved holds off, and you don't/can't trust any of them to hold off so you have to proceed as if you're already involved in an arms race whether you want to be or not. Because the only thing worse than being in a Mexican standoff is being the one guy in a Mexican standoff without any guns.
not really a big issue (Score:2)
Related Terminator Quote (Score:2)
Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Given that the course of hypersonic research has acknowledged both of these concerns, why have several countries started testing the weapons?"
I guess my answer would be "all of human history"?
Only the categorically naive wouldn't understand why someone wouldn't research a new, more efficacious weapon.
I guess it's a good sign of how utterly benign our world must be that people can exist with such sentiment.
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Another reason could be that developing such a weapon and thereby knowing what the weak points and technical requirements are is useful when you want to defend against them,
Hmmm (Score:3)
It's more like the US is furthest along... (Score:2)
Defense for hypersonic (Score:3)
Einstein said it best (Score:2)
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I'm stockpiling now, we can not allow a sticks and stones gap.
Wait what? (Score:3)
Instead of waiting 100 or more years for radiation to dissipate the area can be re-inhabited immediately.
Not "ballistic" weapons (Score:2)
Hypersonic weapons — or ballistic weapons that can hit a target flying many times faster than the speed of sound...
The summary is flat wrong in its terminology. A key point about hypersonic weapons, from a tactical and strategic standpoint, is that they aren't ballistic. They're potentially faster and sneakier.
Aside from acceleration during boost and (generally limited) manoeuvering during descent, ballistic weapons are - by definition - coasting unpowered for most of their flight time. Ballistic missiles put their warheads into an elliptical orbit that happens to intersect the surface of the earth (typically somewh
rail gun and lasers. (Score:2)
Also Boosts laser defense weapons (Score:2)
I would imagine that the development of Hypersonic weapons would also necessitate increased development and deployment of laser defense weapons since they might be the ONLY way you can target and destroy them before they reach their targets.
The Generals have always been dumb. (Score:5, Insightful)
Designer Barnes Wallis talked about how difficult it was for him to convince the General Staff to review, just review, his water skipping/skimming bomb [wikipedia.org] that could attack a dam jumping over the anti-torpedo nets. He could succeed only because was already a well known bomber designer (Wellington bomber, R100 blimps). The General Staff is very averse to really unconventional weapons, and are preoccupied by what they already know. But it was easy for some German gun maker to get funding for a humongous artillery weapon. [rarehistoricalphotos.com] It was so huge and the logistics to support it was so enormous, it was commanded by a full Colonel. Imagine a Colonel commanding one stupid gun. I think it was fired just once.
They could not believe aircraft could destroy ships before WW-II. French could not believe armour could penetrate Ardennes forest. They were using tactics developed during Napoleanic wars where the rate of fire of mustets was something like 1 or 2 shots per minute during 100-rounds-per-minute Civil war. Never learnt from that carnage. Happily throwing cannon fodder in trench warfare in WW-I in 500 rounds per minute machine guns.
Yes, the generals may be dreaming about hypersonic weapons, but their tails are going to be chewed by something they never imagined.
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Re: Hypersonic weapons lead to nuclear war ? (Score:2)
Re: Hypersonic weapons lead to nuclear war ? (Score:4, Informative)
Keep guessing then. ICBM's are by definition hypersonic weapons so nothing other than better targeting has changed since the 50s.
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Submarines solved that problem a long time ago.
Re:Hypersonic weapons lead to nuclear war ? (Score:5, Insightful)
The US doesn't have territorial ambitions on any other country. When was the last time you heard of them annexing anybody, since the Spanish American war?
China, OTOH, has ambitions of re-annexing Taiwan and making it a part of the PRC, as opposed to ROC. Besides that, they have territorial disputes with Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and India. If they got these, that would only encourage them to do what others have been fearing - overrun Taiwan, the disputed South China Sea Islands and Arunachal Pradesh. There's a good reason not to want China to have these.
The other 2? Russia, by its acts in the Donbass, has reverted to what it used to be under both the Tsars and the Soviet Commissars. India - while their adversaries - Pakistan, Bangladesh & China - are bad, India did use its military might in annexing Sikkim in the 70s. That said, it is better that India have them both to offset China, and to prevent a Jihadi takeover of India by Pakistan.
Bottom line: the US ain't the problem. China and Russia are.
Re:Hypersonic weapons lead to nuclear war ? (Score:5, Informative)
I guess setting up puppet governments in places like Iran and Chile doesn't count, as far as you're concerned? Or failing to do so, such as in the Bay of Pigs fiasco?
I always have to chuckle when I see comments like yours, made by Americans who are so blindingly ignorant of their own history.
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Are you freshly arriving from the 1960s?
A bit of change has happened in any place where the asshole CIA spent their time toppling regimes in order to stand up a puppet state. They also don't really do that anymore, as it turns out to just piss people off and cause bigger issues down the road.
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Looks like Hawaii just squeaks in since it was annexed the same year as the war, even though unrelated to it.
And, yeah, these days the US prefers to work through proxy governments.
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Hmm, if that's a good justification, can we have the reset of the British Empire back please? Although I guess we'll have to give most of the UK back to Italy eventually, as it was part of the Roman Empire.
Wouldn't the Anglo-Saxon aspect of England make it separate from the Roman Empire? Or did that come later? As for the British empire, that would include beauties like the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. I'm guessing you wouldn't want India this time ;->
Also, if we go back to history, who claims good old Iran? Macedonia (Alexander)? Saudi Arabia/Iraq (Caliphs Umar/Ali)? Afghanistan (the Ghaznavids)? Turkmenistan (the Khwarezmids)? Iraq/Turkey (the Seljuks)? Mongolia (the Ilkhanate)? Taj
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Re:Hypersonic weapons lead to nuclear war ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Iraq is currently a client state of Iran, never mind the process by which its current regime got there. Had Iraq been pro-US, there would have been no persecution of Iraqi Christians. Nor would Iraq have cozied up to Iran, who the US has been trying to isolate: they'd have happily joined the US and tried to become the major power in the Arab empire. Afghanistan too - Hamid Karzai started mending relations w/ the Taliban even when the US still had a presence there. Some puppets - these 2!!!
Half the world? I imagine you're talking about the #countries, right? About 50 of them are members of the OIC, and therefore rather hostile to the US. East Asia - the only friends that the US has are Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia. Sub Saharan Africa - not a single country is pro-US. Latin America - Venezuela, Brazil, Nicaragua, Bolivia, all have leftist regimes - I think Colombia is the only pro-US country there, and maybe some central American countries, like Costa Rica.
Hardly half the world, as you put it. And if you were thinking in terms of populations, India and China are both allied to Russia, and have been supporting them both re: sanctions. That's half the world's population right there, b/w these 3 countries. And if you were thinking area wise, then too these 3 take the bulk of it, plus countries like Brazil and much of North Africa.
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War
Uh
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
(Say it again)
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Re:WAR! What in the hell is it good for? (Score:5, Informative)
You have to read the policy paper that came back a couple of years ago. The idea is to increase the power projection capabilities of the US Armed Forces so that in a case of substantial shutting down of US military bases around the world they can strike more or less anywhere they want in the world in a short amount of time. There were moves to use modified Minutemen missiles for this but the Russians were kind of skeptic about it since they claimed you couldn't tell the payload of the missile and they would consider it as if it was a nuclear launch. Even if they have short range missiles that are kind of iffy in themselves like Iskander.
The Russians have quite a few Mach 3.0 missiles of which they sold a couple to India and to a lesser degree China. As a mainly continental nation they always had this power projection problem to begin with. The article is mistaken as the idea of hypersonic weapons has been around since at least WWII. Read the Wikipedia pages for the Nazi Silbervogel and the US Aerospaceplane. The projects failed at the time as the technological problems were too large to tackle and the materials were not good enough. In fact they may still not be there yet.
If you want to read about Russian and Indian Mach 3.0 weapons go to the Wikipedia pages for the Moskit and the BrahMos. During the Soviet Union the Russians also had the Spiral spaceplane prototype which was akin to the US Dyna-Soar effort although it progressed a bit further than that one. The Chinese supposedly are drop testing a mini-shuttle similar to the X-37 which people have been calling the Shenlong.
Re:WAR! What in the hell is it good for? (Score:4, Funny)
The Chinese supposedly are drop testing a mini-shuttle similar to the X-37 which people have been calling the Shenlong.
...as opposed to the new Schlong program, which most foreign officials consider a real dick move by the Chinese.
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The Russians have quite a few Mach 3.0 missiles of which they sold a couple to India and to a lesser degree China
So does that mean they sold China one or zero? That doesn't make any sense. Now you're going to have to cite your sources or I call BS.
Re: WAR! What in the hell is it good for? (Score:5, Informative)
The basic concept of a rocket goes back to 400BC and Archytas, who built a wooden bird propelled along wires by steam.
The basic concept of the modern jet engine was patented as a stationary turbine in 1791 working versions were built in the 1800s. Turning it into an aircraft engine was just a matter of making it smaller and lighter.
Charles Babbage came up with the concept of the Analytical Engine in 1800s, even though he couldn't build it at the time.
The idea of sending messages through a network of wiring comes from the telegraph, which showed up in the 1750s.
GPS navigation is a combination of a lot of technologies; rocketry (already mentioned), radio (Marconi in the late 1800s), navigation by triangulation (celestial navigation, the whole of written history), atomic clocks (Lord Kelvin, 1800s) and so on.
Modern day technology didn't suddenly pop into being during WWI. but rather is an evolution of older, pre-1914 technology and most of those older technologies weren't actually developed as tools of war. The human race just happens to be very good at taking any technology available and using it to kill one another.
tl;dr - don't dis pre-1914 tech. Without it, we'd all be sitting in caves drawing crappy pictures on the walls for entertainment.
Re: WAR! What in the hell is it good for? (Score:4, Informative)
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The us hasn't lost any wars in decades.
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No, but they've lost plenty of peaces. How'd that Iraq thing turn out? And have they stamped out the Taliban yet?
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The skill was there before. Look at Germany.
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Not entirely correct.
You have two very successful cases for nation (re)building. Japan and Germany, post WWII.
But that involves:
- Time (on a scale that people aren't willing to think nowadays).
- Money (lots of it). To repair infra-structure, and lots and lots of education.
- Be willing to accept that you can't transplant one's political system to very different sociological and psychological conditions.
- Be willing to occupy and fully control the geography (which imply there will be casualties)
The rewards ar
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No, but they've lost plenty of peaces. How'd that Iraq thing turn out? And have they stamped out the Taliban yet?
Meh, I don't think the US lost in Iraq any more than France did. Sure, it cost a boatload of money, but not a crippling amount. Sure, the US didn't get anything out of it, but neither did anybody else. Maybe you could say that Iran won, but I'm not sure how well they get along with ISIS.
Maybe from a nationalism/pride standpoint you could say that the US lost. I just don't see how in the big picture anything changed one way or another. The Iraqi people were losers before and after.
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ISIS are sensible enough to stop their campaigns at the border of Iran, and Turkey. Taking over some half-collapsed government in Syria and the inept appointed authority of Iraq is hard enough - they aren't dumb enough to start a war they can't win.
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We dismantled iraq's existing government, helped iraq create a NEW govt, built a new army there and got out. Now the iraqis need help getting rid of a bunch of terrorists again (go figure).
The taliban are a bunch of hicks who have been on the run for years.
Re: There are many problems with this. (Score:2)
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Vietnam (remember Tet? Of course, you do. It's at the front of your memory along with the Fall of Saigon)
Korea (or: how the fuck do you think the Kims have been in charge for the past few decades?)
Panama (see Columbia)
Cuba (see Columbia, also see: communism, Bay of Pigs, Castro, the Missile Crisis, Gitmo)
Iraq (what's the death rate among civilians since Hussein was deposed? Up, you say? I wonder why that is?)
Afghanistan (you really believe the rhetoric that the Taliban are gone, beaten, extinct? Take a look
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Winning wars usually isn't predicated on murdering the entire opposing population.
You sick fuck.
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that was the entire point of Bush's "War on Terror". He wanted the Taliban "Dead". Not "beaten", "DEAD".
Who's the "sick fuck"?
Re:Those backwards Ruskies (Score:5, Informative)
Russians already solved this problem long ago with maritime high speed supersonic bombers specifically designed to rush in and kill carrier groups covered from air threats by equally fast and nearly as long range Su-27 derivatives. They're the only ones in the world with a massive fleet of supersonic (we're talking near and beyond mach 2 here - F-35C for example is much slower) bombers specifically designed for ship killing job that are armed with cruise missiles that match the launch platform.
Here's one example of such an aircraft:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The only task those aircraft are designed for is to get in launch range and fire off their Kh-15 missiles that themselves have ~300km range.
It's pretty well known that if a real war was ever to break out, there would be two kinds of aircraft carrier ships. Those in ports and those beneath the sea. The real purpose of modern aircraft carrier is long range power projection over small weak states with no MAD deterrent or significant air/submarine force. That is why as long as Soviet threat persisted, the main air defense aircraft on aircraft carriers was extremely expensive long range F-14. It was the only aircraft US had that had the radar range and missile range to have even a remote hope of success in counter strike against such bombers going in for the kill before its mothership is killed.
The only significant strategic advantage that supersonic weapons offer is better first strike capability. Everything else is just tactical, like having better air defense penetration, and is generally not cost effective as you could likely make a much larger swarm of modern ~mach 3-5 rockets that have only marginally lesser kill ratio to compensate for this advantage for the same cost.
Re:Those backwards Ruskies (Score:4, Interesting)
So in other words the carriers had a more than adequate defense in the F-14 and the Phoenix missile. Those Tu-22s would have fallen like leaves.
Anyway, everybody knows the real carrier killer is the submarine, and there is not the slightest semblance of a credible defense against it.
Re:Those backwards Ruskies (Score:5, Interesting)
Even the Navy commanders themselves openly admitted that F-14 and AIM-54 was an product borne out of desperation and didn't have much of a chance against threat scenarios presented before it. AIM-54 was a vastly flawed attempt to make a long range air to air missile which was largely a failure - hence its retirement after the only platform ever made capable of launching and guiding it was retired. Suggesting that a bomber with significant jamming and chaff dispensing capability would "fall like a leaf" from such a missile is like suggesting that "Mike Tyson at his best would have been knocked out by the impact of that little girl's slap".
As in it is in the realm of possibility, just not a very realistic scenario. But if was a scenario where there was at least an ability to detected and fire something at the bomber that would have a chance of connecting with it. Which is a whole lot more than current situation with F/A-18Es and the upcoming F-35Cs, which will never be able to even engage the bomber.
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Which is why you have a screening force of expendable ships and the carrier sits dark.
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Those are CIWS weapons. CIWS weapons are last line of defense. To an ordinary person, that is the "kitchen sink" in "throw everything at it" scenario. Even if they are working, they are simply going to get saturated with targets as Russian doctrine is to launch multiple missiles from multiple directions at once. And Kh-15s have terminal velocity of about mach 5. That means your laser, even if it actually gets to work (right now, it doesn't for a number of reasons and no ship currently in service can actuall
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cruise missiles aren't hypersonic, either. The Brahmos is the fastest at the moment and that barely does Mach 2.8 in perfect conditions - just 30 feet above terrain. There are a couple others that do better than M1.75. Harpoon (submarine launched) and Tomahawk (MK. I land-based) are both subsonic, there are others that are barely supersonic. Most of these are launched using solid rockets and switch to airbreathing jets for the cruise phase (there are some that are entirely jet powered).
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That arms race has a downside of enabling remote killing of people with no significant recourse of defense. Reference: current situation in Pakistan and Yemen.
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If they are really that important: there ought to be an interlock that means that they will only fly if there is a 5 star general strapped on board.
Or Slim Pickens [wikimedia.org].
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The answer lies in the short game. Quickest move to checkmate to get to GAME OVER.
The answer lies in the human need to kill other humans. It's our genetic heritage, and as primal as sex and food.
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>> Because we're all bastards.
Fixed that for you.