US Air Force Launches First Operational Hypersonic Missile (space.com) 102
The United States Air Force (USAF) has successfully tested its first prototype hypersonic missile. Space.com reports: The service's new AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW ("Arrow") is expected to be the United States military's first hypersonic weapon to reach operational status. The exact speed of the AGM-183A isn't known, although the Lockheed Martin-designed weapon is said to be based on previous test vehicles built by DARPA that have an alleged maximum speed of Mach 20, or 15,000 mph (24,000 kph). The successful ARRW test was conducted on Friday (Dec. 9) in a training range off the coast of California, according to a USAF statement released Monday (Dec. 12). "This test was the first launch of a full prototype operational missile," officials wrote in the statement. "Following the ARRW's separation from the aircraft, it reached hypersonic speeds greater than five times the speed of sound, completed its flight path and detonated in the terminal area. Indications show that all objectives were met."
According to the U.S. Air Force, the missile is designed to "hold fixed, high-value, time-sensitive targets at risk in contested environments," meaning it will be used to target pre-determined assets on the ground such as fixed missile sites, radar stations, air defense installations, infrastructure facilities or even adversary headquarters buildings -- basically anything important in a battlefield environment that can't be moved and needs to be destroyed quickly. [...] Now that the ARRW has successfully flown, it's likely the service could reevaluate its plans to scrap planned purchases of the AGM-183A. The AGM-183A is what is known as a boost-glide vehicle, which refers to warheads or projectiles that glide toward their targets after being lofted by a rocket booster.
According to the U.S. Air Force, the missile is designed to "hold fixed, high-value, time-sensitive targets at risk in contested environments," meaning it will be used to target pre-determined assets on the ground such as fixed missile sites, radar stations, air defense installations, infrastructure facilities or even adversary headquarters buildings -- basically anything important in a battlefield environment that can't be moved and needs to be destroyed quickly. [...] Now that the ARRW has successfully flown, it's likely the service could reevaluate its plans to scrap planned purchases of the AGM-183A. The AGM-183A is what is known as a boost-glide vehicle, which refers to warheads or projectiles that glide toward their targets after being lofted by a rocket booster.
Static targets? (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA says it is for static targets like buildings. Isn't the point of a hypersonic missile, aside from being hard to shoot down, that it can hit mobile targets where their location days quickly becomes stale?
Say you spot a ship. By the time aircraft or conventional missiles arrive it could be long gone, but with a hypersonic missile with terminal guidance it can't get very far in the minutes it has to escape.
Similarly if you know a person is at a particular location you can blow them up before they have a chance to leave.
Re:Static targets? (Score:5, Interesting)
The ARRW is a conventional, boost-glide, hypersonic weapon consisting of a solid rocket motor booster, a glider protective shroud, and a glider vehicle containing a kinetic energy projectile warhead. A standoff air-to-ground missile launched from a B-52H aircraft, the ARRW is intended to attack high-value, time-sensitive, land-based targets.
Imagine a titanium javelin traveling at Mach 20 which is aimed directly toward the target. The small radar cross section would be like trying to see a crossbow bolt aimed at your head. Conventional missile defense systems wouldn't even get a lock on the projectile before it was at the target. And almost zero collateral damage due to the kinetic energy being released in a very confined area.
But because it's a kinetic weapon, it probably has very little last-minute maneuverability if the ship turns hard just before impact.
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As long as they don't decide to put a nuclear warhead in one. And remember they could put them in artillery shells. Then these would become the basis of a horrible escalation.
Re:Static targets? (Score:5, Informative)
ICBMs are already hypersonic, traveling at speeds of mach 20 or so. They have been for nearly 50 years.
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Can they hit a building?
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Yes, as long as the building isn't moving too quickly.
Re:Static targets? (Score:5, Informative)
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it is a cruise missile (the type that fly low to the ground and can turn and change course)
I expect a hypersonic glide vehicle has to operate at high altitude to minimize the speed loss due to drag. It's more likely the missile will stay at high altitude for as long as possible, then do a diving attack.
Conventional cruise missiles can fly at low altitude because they're powered by a jet engine.
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Static targets make sense because of the ionized air around a hypersonic missile - kind of hard for radio signals from a command center, or even GPS signals - to penetrate. So you want to depend on an inertial guidance system.
Which is why Russia's hypersonic missiles are a joke - they don't have the ability to build accurate enough inertial guidance systems any more. Their CEP [wikipedia.org] not that great - when they work. 1 out of the 4 they launched so far hit Russia.
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Re:Static targets? (Score:5, Interesting)
The point of a hypersonic missile is to be able to evade anti-missile defense.
Practically speaking, the Ukraine war has shown that potentially adversarial targets don't have an effective missile defense against slower cruise missiles, so there isn't any particular urgency for building these missiles.
For a ship, any missile can use radar for targeting (or infrared, but hypersonic missiles probably can't use infrared because they are too hot), and adjust its path accordingly.
Re:Static targets? (Score:5, Insightful)
Practically speaking, the Ukraine war has shown that potentially adversarial targets don't have an effective missile defense against slower cruise missiles, so there isn't any particular urgency for building these missiles.
Say what? The German Flugabwehrkanonenpanzer Gepards are doing a fantastic job of shooting down both cruise missiles and Iranian drones. The same with the German IRIS-T system which is being used for the first time in a real combat situation.
The U.S. has provided the Avenger, NASAMS, and Aspide systems, among others, which are fulfilling their roles. Other countries are doing their part to help Ukraine defend its skies.
Is any air defense perfect? No. But to say there is no effective defense against cruise missiles is patently false.
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the Ukraine war has shown that potentially adversarial targets don't have an effective missile defense against slower cruise missiles
to say there is no effective defense against cruise missiles is patently false.
Yes, but it's also not what GP said. You ignored key parts of that sentence.
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These are all great systems for air defense, but 10+% of Russian cruise missiles still made it through, killing almost the entire Ukrainian energy distribution system in the process. Even these pathetic Shahed mopeds still hit their targets in surprising numbers and frustrating regularity.
The real question should have been "is it cheaper to build and launch X regular cruise missiles, or one hypersonic cruise missile?". The answer to this question seems to have moved towards "one hypersonic cruise missile",
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The newest cruise missiles cost $2million a piece, [wikipedia.org] which means you can launch a lot of them for the price of one hypersonic missile.
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Depends on the target.
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The real question should have been "is it cheaper to build and launch X regular cruise missiles, or one hypersonic cruise missile?".
Not for a nation such as the USA. It is more about optics of the situation in the media.
Firing one missile that destroys one specific target (perhaps a particular laboratory building in Iran...) vs firing a barrage of missiles that may cause damage across a wide area (including schools and hospitals) -as Russia has done to Ukraine.
To be honest... the real reason for the US to build and test hypersonic missile capability is to show that we are keeping up with the Joneses (aka China). They definitely have t
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to say there is no effective defense against cruise missiles is patently false.
That's not what I said.
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Practically speaking, the Ukraine war has shown that potentially adversarial targets don't have an effective missile defense against slower cruise missiles, so there isn't any particular urgency for building these missiles.
Say what? The German Flugabwehrkanonenpanzer Gepards
Wait? The anti-missile gun is called a Flugabwehrkanonenpanzer [wikipedia.org]?
By the time you finish yelling "Fire the Flugabwehrkanonenpanzer!" the airstrike will be over!!
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The point of a (US) hypersonic missile is to close the mineshaft gap with claimed Russian hypersonic missiles. As long as Russia can be induced to spend its limited resources on those things, the US can churn out a fuckton of M795s and M982s and similar, which is what's really needed on the battlefield, not a few hypersonic whizbangs.
hypersonics can be used to take down missile defense and then conventional missiles take down the air defense and then planes take down the ground defense and then artillery takes down whats left and the Steph climbs on top of Dray an launches an unblockable shot at the the Kremlin.
Re:Static targets? (Score:4, Insightful)
Practically speaking, the Ukraine war has shown that potentially adversarial targets don't have an effective missile defense against slower cruise missiles, so there isn't any particular urgency for building these missiles.
As quonset replied, this is patently not true as air defense has proven highly effective in Ukraine. But I'd also add that there most definitely is a place for a weapon like this. For example, the Kerch Strait Bridge is defended by multiple Russian S-300 missiles systems. It is dubious traditional missiles would be able to hit it. But a hypersonic traveling at Mach 20? That could do some serious damage and it would be impossible to defend against.
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S-300 systems in Ukraine have proven vulnerable to anti-radar HARM missiles [wikipedia.org]. Russia has the S-500 system which is designed to destroy missiles, but they don't have many of those (and they haven't been tested much in real-world conditions, the way Israeli Iron Dome has).
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"Sir, we are monitoring the area and have been for weeks. It appears they are readying to launch an attack"
"Go forward with operation Mach 20 soldier"
"Yes sir"
"They are are no longer readying to launch an attack sir"
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No. Conventional missiles are much faster than ships. Aircraft are faster than ships. If you are targeting an individual you have a spotter verify their location until the strike.
Hypersonic missiles are valuable because they move too fast for anti-missile systems to shoot them down.
Motivation: Made in China (Score:4, Interesting)
Either they've had it for a while and are just now telling us, or they didn't have it and have been burning the midnight oil the past few months because IIRC it was announced that China had them not that long ago.
With military stuff, you never really know unless you know, then you can't say, unless you can.
Re:Motivation: Made in China (Score:5, Informative)
They've been working on it since at least 2017 [wikipedia.org].
Re:Motivation: Made in China (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, the whole hypersonic moniker is a mess anyway. Russia for example claims it's launched hypersonic missiles at Ukraine, this is technically true because some of it's Kinzhal missiles have breached Mach 5 before hitting Ukraine, but the missiles are just air launched versions of their previous land based 9K720 Iskander SRBMs. The fact they've strapped them to a plane to give them greater starting altitude to eventually achieve a higher speed due to greater descent time and fuel needed for acceleration not burnt ascending isn't exactly a meaningful technical advancement. By that same definition even existing common US missiles are hypersonic, the AGM-88 HARM has often broken Mach 5 as it descends towards a target after being lofted, but the US never called it a hypersonic missile like Russia does Kinzhal because Russia's doctrine is to feign technical superiority where it has none.
The reason China's missile test ruffled feathers was because it seemed to be a genuine technical advancement - it could maintain hypersonic speeds are more interesting trajectories than just falling out the sky + acceleration, and the hypersonic speeds it could reach more than just about scraped Mach 5 like Kinzhal etc. This is the same sort of thing the US is looking for, and that's really the difference. Russia hasn't got a true hypersonic missile in the sense of the type of programme we're talking about here, it just has things that can just about technically scrape the moniker if you tilt your head and squint at it at a little bit. China has a true hypersonic system, though it's worth nothing despite the technical advancement they demonstrated with it, it still missed it's target by 20 miles.
So the real challenge is who can produce a missile that is both capable of and can maintain mid to high hypersonic, that can manoeuvre whilst maintaining hypersonic speeds, and importantly, can still actually hit the fucking thing it's aimed at. Currently no one has that.
The Ukraine war has shown the significant gap in precision between Russian arms and Western arms fired by Ukraine, whilst Russian missiles are missile by miles at times, missiles like the HIMARS launched have been hitting targets like bridges with sufficient precision that they were able to put holes in a line down one side of the road on the bridge only. Given Chinese tech is largely just a follow on from Russian tech I suspect despite all the hype about Russian/Chinese hypersonic missiles it'll still be the US that delivers a true hypersonic missile that can actually hit it's target operationally first.
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This is why I always read below 1.
Great post, thanks.
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This is why I always read below 1.
Great post, thanks.
This is also why the NSA NLPbots always read all Internet traffic at -273. So anyone posting useful information "anonymously" can be indexed in case later risk-assessment becomes warranted. It's not about whether the information itself is publicly available or not, it's that someone who both possesses and clearly understands certain categories of information should be fingered at some non-zero level for various purposes.
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China has a true hypersonic system, though it's worth nothing despite the technical advancement they demonstrated with it, it still missed it's target by 20 miles.
Do you have a citation for that?
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Thanks
Re: Motivation: Made in China (Score:3)
At 175 million USD per rocket, they are a bargain! (Score:1)
There is always enough money to buy a whole stockpile of these babies!
The psychological thrill however is how to fire your hyper rocket after the enemy launched theirs.
By the time you hear the sonic boom, the rocket already punched a hole in your roof. =/
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The psychological thrill however is how to fire your hyper rocket after the enemy launched theirs.
It is called radar and these missiles don't travel at the speed of light.
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AT 175 million a pop, the Iranians can make 8750 of their $20k drones. Sure, maybe you can't shoot down the missile. But I'll bet the drones are more destructive.
Someone will figure out how to shoot them down (Score:1)
It's a technical hurdle that can be overcome. Throwing a cloud of BBs in front of it, at the speed it travels, could probably fuck it up if it hit one.
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Not really. It would be like a crossbow bolt going through cloud of salt.
For example: the energy of TNT is 4.6MJ/kg, and the energy of a kinetic kill vehicle with a closing speed of 10km/s (22,000mph) is 50MJ/kg. For comparison, 50MJ is equivalent to the kinetic energy of a school bus weighing 5 metric tons, traveling at 316 mph (509km/h; 141m/s). A cloud of BBs wouldn't even be noticed.
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You seem to be saying that a 100g ball bearing would transfer 5MJ of energy to the hypersonic missile if it crashed into it.
I think more likely the ball bearing would be thrown out of the way by the shockwave as the module forces air out of its way. And probably melt too.
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You seem to be saying you don't understand a thing that I said. The speed and kinetic energy of the kinetic payload would pass through a cloud of BBs like they weren't even there. I used the analogy of firing a crossbow bolt through a cloud of salt particles to illustrate the relative kinetic energy of the hypersonic payload to the effect of the BBs.
Your summation of the effect is exactly the same as what I said. The BBs would have no effect on the missile.
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I don't think that's how physics works...
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Not really. It would be like a crossbow bolt going through cloud of salt.
For example: the energy of TNT is 4.6MJ/kg, and the energy of a kinetic kill vehicle with a closing speed of 10km/s (22,000mph) is 50MJ/kg. For comparison, 50MJ is equivalent to the kinetic energy of a school bus weighing 5 metric tons, traveling at 316 mph (509km/h; 141m/s). A cloud of BBs wouldn't even be noticed.
In that case, defensive measures are even more trivial. Just hire Sandra Bullock to drive a school bus at >50mph up a highway ramp and across a gap that brackets your country's valuable military targets. That way the ballistic penalties offset and both countries have to go back and repeat the 1st down.
Slashdot has really gone downhill: I swear sometimes it's like you guys have never performed rocket sportsball surgery before.
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It's a technical hurdle that can be overcome.
Maybe. Either way the cost of developing your supposed countermeasure is a burden the enemy must bear. That's why being prosperous is important.
Re: Fellatio 666:1-2 (Score:2)
Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain.
Sleep under the stars outside the city gates? PRICELESS!
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Good thing the Rothschilds already have one - MTG told me all about it.
Re:Going To Need A Space Laser (Score:4, Funny)
That's a Jewish Space Laser by the way. I think we should be specific when talking about such things.
https://jweekly.com/2022/05/26... [jweekly.com]
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That's a Jewish Space Laser by the way. I think we should be specific when talking about such things.
https://jweekly.com/2022/05/26... [jweekly.com]
<snark>
Of course it is - the idea first appeared in the original Robocop movie, as a "new break" where a space-based laser defense system started fires in California that killed 13,000 people, including 2 retired presidents.
And everyone "knows" that hollywood is controlled by the jews.
</snark>
It's pretty bad when conspiracy theorists get their ideas from a 35-year-old movie. Someone should tell them Robocop is fiction, not a documentary.
Calm down, child. (Score:2)
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How do you know how it would play out? I've seen military studies showing how high the water level would be in the streets from just below the dam all the way to the sea. Obviously someone is thinking about it.
Re: Calm down, child. (Score:3)
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You think the dam which produces a huge chunk of power for the country and is keeping tens of millions alive isn't a strategic target?
As far as attacking civilians is concerned, the following modern wars want to have a chat with you: WWI,WWII, Korea, Vietnamese, Iraq, Afghanistan and several smaller conflicts. And those are just the wars Americans were heavily in. We weren't in every war.
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Real military (excluding megalomaniacs like Putin), do not attack civilian targets. It is a waste of resources better spent on real military targets - it is also against the Geneva conventions.
This is idealistic nonsense. So the RAF and the US Army weren't "real" military forces? Because Arthur "Bomber" Harris and Curtis LeMay basically burned millions of men, women, and children to death in their beds in Germany and Japan as part of their "area bombing" strategy to break the enemies will, after "humane" daylight precision bombing against military-only targets was shown to be ineffective. Hap Arnold relieved Haywood Hansel (the chief godfather of USAAF precision bombing doctrine) of command in th
Re: Calm down, child. (Score:2)
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"That's why they've never attempted it, and why they're not going to."
Technically they attempted on and off until the late 70s, but they couldn't even take Kinmen [wikipedia.org].
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Because the goal of a response to an attack on Taiwan would be to destroy the attack, not "express our feelings" with random irrational violence. The Taiwan Strait is highly defensible, as is the island itself, and a Chinese invasion fleet would be totally exposed through the entire course of the conflict. That's why they've never attempted it, and why they're not going to.
I admire your positivity with regard to political decisions at the national level. But I do not share it.
"Random irrational violence" and "random irrational regulations" have typified US national responses from 9/11/2001 to Covid 19. And thanks to the Tiger-Repelling-Stick effect and the rapid amplifier/echo chamber of Internet-dopamine addiction, we have confirmed our belief that our various random irrational responses were actually the effective solution.
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You're comparing apples and orangutans. The Taiwan scenario would have everything the Middle East conflicts largely didn't: A clear, uniformed enemy, without exception; an overt act of war both justifying and necessitating intervention; a zone of engagement far from any civilian population (open water); an overwhelming tactical advantage in that zone; and zero advantage on either side to sprawl the combat. Control of the Strait would be the one and only deciding factor, and disabling a dam on the mainland does nothing for that.
I'm not comparing the situations at all. I'm not saying the situations are the same.
I'm observing that the same human beings, or other human beings with the same human foibles, responding to the same (actually, to dramatically more intense and chaotic) media/image/electoral pressures, are running the responses to all these situations.
Your knowledge and reasoning sound clear and convincing to me. I have no argument with what you are saying about the situation.
But everything you say about the situation are th
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Seriously? You've been reading too much Pentagram propaganda. China likes Taiwan just the way it is. It's a massive money sink for US military spending, keeps the US from any serious chip development of its own, and is a rich trading partner. 28% of Taiwan's exports go to China, more than twice what they send to the US, and even then most of their exports to the mainland are components while exports to the US are assembled systems.
https://www.worldstopexports.c... [worldstopexports.com]
Taiwan is also one of China's best sourc
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The chances of the US getting in a true hot war with China over Taiwan are practically nil.
South Korea? yes. Japan? yes. Taiwan? not so much.
Our treaty obligations with Taiwan right now are for military assistance, which I would assume to be something like what we are doing with Ukraine. But they are definitely not some sort of full bore rescue/guarantee of the island. That treaty expired many years ago. You'd be injecting yourself into what is essentially a civil war. Please, no comments about how T
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The chances of China attacking Taiwan in the first place are a lot smaller than of our defending them in that scenario. If it happened, it would mean that Beijing had become so irrational, unstable, and unreliable that Washington wouldn't have a choice but stepping in.
And you're embarrassing yourself calling that scenario a "civil war." They're not just different countries, they're part of different civiliza
OWCA (Score:5, Funny)
The service's new AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW ("Arrow")
The Organization Without a Cool Acronym (OWCA) was unavailable for comment.
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Ok, now that's just funny!!
Hope you don't mind..I'm gonna steal this one from ya to use myself.
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Make sure to inform the AAAAA*.
*American Association Against Acronym Abuse
Operational? Prototype? Which is it? (Score:2)
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If this is the first successful test of the prototype they're at least a decade away from having a functional weapon, which allows time for a **LOT** of mission creep. I fully expect this to turn into the next F-35, something claimed to be all things to all people but which is really incapable of doing even its most basic job.
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Put a turret on the top, and also ports so the guys can shoot out of it.
Re: Operational? Prototype? Which is it? (Score:2)
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Operational? Prototype? Which is it? Can't be both.
You've never built a prototype and put it into operation? That's what you usually do with a prototype, or proof of concept, as opposed to a static display model.
If you don't put it into operation, how do you know if it works?
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Operational? Prototype? Which is it? Can't be both.
It certainly can, though not for long, since it's a missile.
1975 (Score:2)
Yes I know this operates much differently, but the footage of the old sprint missile launches give an idea how incredibly fast this thing must is.
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the footage of the old sprint missile launches give an idea how incredibly fast this thing must is.
Why not linking to an actual video of the footage then ?
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There you go.
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Thanks. I love the narrator voice. Sounds so 70s :)
Slow (Score:2)
So (Score:1)
That's a faster missile that can destroy buildings into finer rubble than before? Yay. Now, how are those sharks with lazer beams on their heads coming along?
Honestly I'm not sure what's the point. There will be no war with countries that can develop comparable weaponry, like Russia or China. Or, if there is one, it will be a nuclear one where we all die. The wars that do take place, against minor nations very soon become not about fancy gadgets but about boots on the ground, ugly low-tech asymmetric warfar
Re: So (Score:3)
Ballistic missiles been hypersonic for decades (Score:2)
Ballistic missiles have been hypersonic for decades.
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I offer this quote from SMAC's Shen-Ji Yang: "Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a Dataprobe. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, and all of the steps must be taken."
My understanding, a little bit more concrete:
- Futuristically precise (n
Unlike the... (Score:2)
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This is great news (Score:1)
This is great news, what the world really needs is more advanced weaponry.
At that speed... (Score:1)