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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?"
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War Tech the US, Russia, China and India All Want: Hypersonic Weapons

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  • 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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

        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.

      • What was wrong w/ Napoleon? He did everything that other European powers at the time wanted to do - dominate Europe. Yeah, Hitler, Stalin, Mao were pretty different from most of their contemporaries (other than each other), but Napoleon wasn't much different from anybody from the British Prime Minister to the Russian Tsar
        • Was he that different? How many people did he starve to death in order to feed his armies?
        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
          In some ways he was better. There was a lot more social mobility in Napoleon's empire than in much of the rest of Europe at the time. The main problem was that he was a great general but a terrible politician. He had no idea how to run a country without a war and he didn't have an economy that could sustain perpetual war. On the other hand, he did abolish the metric time system that the French Revolution introduced...
  • Not sure I get it. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2014 @05:29AM (#48703351) Journal

    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.

    • by ihtoit ( 3393327 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2014 @07:12AM (#48703699)

      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.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31, 2014 @07:39AM (#48703775)

        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.

        • by ihtoit ( 3393327 )

          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...

          • by ihtoit ( 3393327 )

            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.

          • 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.

            • by ihtoit ( 3393327 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2014 @08:41AM (#48704051)

              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]

              • 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.

                • by ihtoit ( 3393327 )

                  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)

      • Actually, the UK already have a hypersonic air breathing engine that's not enormous and bulky: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]

    • 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

  • by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2014 @05:30AM (#48703353) Journal

    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.

    • by swb ( 14022 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2014 @07:21AM (#48703727)

      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.

      • by gtall ( 79522 )

        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.

      • by pz ( 113803 )

        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

        • by swb ( 14022 )

          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

    • 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.

      • Nuclear weapons are not as anonymous as you might think. Isotope ratios in the fallout make it possible to identify the design of bomb and where the fissile materials came from. If a North Korean bomb went off, they'd better have told the allies of the target in advance that it had been stolen and cooperated with international efforts to recover it if they want to be able to deny responsibility.
    • 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

      • That's why Soviet and NATO nuclear submarine fleets had orders to launch if they didn't receive their regular don't-attack message. If the command and control infrastructure is damaged then the submarines would launch, so all this conventional attack would do is guarantee a nuclear response.
  • a possible arms race that could lead to a nuclear war

    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.

  • ballistic weapons that can hit a target flying many times faster than the speed of sound

    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.

  • by Todd Knarr ( 15451 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2014 @06:20AM (#48703505) Homepage

    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.

  • "It's in your nature to destroy yourselves."
  • Really? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2014 @06:54AM (#48703643) Journal

    "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.

    • by louic ( 1841824 )
      "Given that the course of hypersonic research has acknowledged both of these concerns, why have several countries started testing the weapons?"

      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,
  • by The Real Dr John ( 716876 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2014 @07:16AM (#48703709) Homepage
    No mention of Peace on Earth POE, OPE...
  • ...and China continues to excel at stealing all the IP they can get their hands on. I guess in the long run it ends up being the same thing.
  • by kqc7011 ( 525426 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2014 @08:23AM (#48703953)
    The development of non-ballistic hypersonic weapons is one of the reasons that the U.S. is heavy into making the laser weapons functional, affordable and usable. Something like the one on the USS Ponce, maybe not that one but the next generation of the weapon. Now, defense against something like Pournelle and Nivien's project Thor is another story.
  • "I do not know what weapons we will fight World War Three with, but World War Four will be fought with sticks and stones."
  • by g0bshiTe ( 596213 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2014 @09:50AM (#48704493)
    If the delivery system is now hypersonic why attach a nuclear warhead to it? Why not use kinetic energy to destroy the target? Mach 5 - 25 an object hitting a target has to have immense force.

    Instead of waiting 100 or more years for radiation to dissipate the area can be re-inhabited immediately.
  • 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

  • Our development of these are for stopping just this situation.
  • 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.

  • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2014 @10:19AM (#48704691) Journal
    You know what every general in 1900s was dreaming about? Mechanical horses, powered by steam. Exactly the same regular horses, with a soldier with a gun on top, but powered by steam. Not for a thousand years they imagined a self propelled tracked armoured vehicle capable of going off road and span trenches.

    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.

It is contrary to reasoning to say that there is a vacuum or space in which there is absolutely nothing. -- Descartes

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