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The Military Space

Russia Claims New Missile is 27 Times Faster Than Sound (siliconvalley.com) 189

"A new intercontinental weapon that can fly 27 times the speed of sound became operational Friday, Russia's defense minister reported to President Vladimir Putin," according to the Associated Press: Putin has described the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle as a technological breakthrough comparable to the 1957 Soviet launch of the first satellite. The new Russian weapon and a similar system being developed by China have troubled the United States, which has pondered defense strategies. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed Putin that the first missile unit equipped with the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle entered combat duty... [Putin] noted that Avangard is designed using new composite materials to withstand temperatures of up to 2,000 Celsius (3,632 Fahrenheit) resulting from a flight through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds... It carries a nuclear weapon of up to 2 megatons.

Putin has said Russia had to develop the Avangard and other prospective weapons systems because of U.S. efforts to develop a missile defense system that he claimed could erode Russia's nuclear deterrent. Moscow has scoffed at U.S. claims that its missile shield isn't intended to counter Russia's massive missile arsenals... Earlier this week, Putin emphasized that Russia is the only country armed with hypersonic weapons. He noted that for the first time Russia is leading the world in developing an entire new class of weapons, unlike in the past when it was catching up with the U.S... The Defense Ministry said last month it demonstrated the Avangard to a team of U.S. inspectors as part of transparency measures under the New Start nuclear arms treaty with the U.S.

U.S. officials have talked about putting a layer of sensors in space to more quickly detect enemy missiles, particularly the hypersonic weapons. The administration also plans to study the idea of basing interceptors in space, so the U.S. can strike incoming enemy missiles during the first minutes of flight when the booster engines are still burning.

The Pentagon also has been working on the development of hypersonic weapons in recent years, and Defense Secretary Mark Esper said in August that he believes "it's probably a matter of a couple of years" before the U.S. has one.

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Russia Claims New Missile is 27 Times Faster Than Sound

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  • by mi ( 197448 ) <slashdot-2017q4@virtual-estates.net> on Sunday December 29, 2019 @04:48PM (#59568366) Homepage Journal

    Putin has described the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle

    It still travels to target inside a regular ICBM [wikipedia.org]. Only upon the missile's re-entry into the atmosphere does the "glide vehicle" detach to speed towards the target.

    That's theory. In practice, we only know about its speed and power from Putin, which means, it is more likely to be false than true...

    Russia calls it "invulnerable to interception", which may be true. But that's hardly news — if the enemy's ICBM is already in the atmosphere above your country, it is too late to "intercept" it anyway, regardless of how fast the warheads it dispenses are...

    • Nothing is "invulnerable to interception". If you can maneuver and fly a warhead, you can do the same with an interceptor.

      We had viable ways to intercept ICBM warheads in the mid-70's - not perfect, but plenty good enough to save tens to hundreds of millions of people from the threat. It was abandoned only because it was considered dangerously *destabilizing*, in that someone could launch a successful first-strike, and be at least reasonably immune to the counter-strike.

      • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

        If you can maneuver and fly a warhead, you can do the same with an interceptor.

        There are hard limits at those speeds which include the speed of light (for transmissions/detection) and the speed of computing, not to mention the limit to the degree of maneuverability you can actually perform without being torn apart by aerodynamic forces.

      • by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Sunday December 29, 2019 @05:26PM (#59568476)

        Since no one ever _intercepted_ an ICBM being actually fired to attack anything, it's not clear how well they _can_ be intercepted. One of the difficulties of the US "Star Wars" missile defense program was that there was no compelling evidence that any component of it actually worked, or could work even in theory with all the difficulties involved.

        The idea that the 1970's defenses were what prevented nuclear warfare rather than "Mutual Assured Destruction" or the difficulties of successfully completing a nuclear war do not seem to be well founded. Can you provide convincing that the missile defenses where what prevented nuclear armageddon? Or were they only good enough to preserve the likelihood of a retaliatory salvo?

        • While it wasn't an ICBM "fired to attack" something, nevertheless there has been a successful interception of an ICBM [space.com].
          • As known communist and peacecnik President Eisenhower noted, the military and industry tend to work together to be able to keep working together. I am amazed that it took until 2019 to shoot down an ICBM when they knew the time, origin, and trajectory of the missile in question. I think they "hit a bullet with a bullet" a decade or two prior as well. I keep getting safer and safer!
          • I admit that I'm _surprised_ there has been any successful interception of such a missile. Given the history of anti-missile tests, and the declarations of successful "proof of concept" with Raytheon tests that failed in any meaningful milestone, I'd say it's quite startling. In fact, I'm staring at https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com] , which seems to be the same program. There is a "stop work" order from the DOD head of research and engineering.

            Was this a distinct defensive missile technology? I admit that s

            • Reviewing my message, I'm afraid i misspoke. I meant "Raython fail tests that failed to achieve any meaningful milestone".

              • Hi, me again, if you followed this subject over the last twenty years you would know that the U. S. Navy has successfully intercepted on several occasions. The U. S. Army, and Air Force, somewhat less so. But all have had some level of success. So much so that foreign countries buy these systems from us to protect their own airspace. Ref: https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com] Really, you should do some level of research before stating things as facts that are completely untrue.
        • Can you provide convincing evidence that mutually assured destruction saved us? Anything anyone says on the topic of why we didn't nuke each other is just conjecture. Maybe it's neither. Maybe there was never a cause worth the loss of countless millions on both sides? Why do you assume by default there was a guaranteed nuclear war going to ta-own except for some whatever policy?
          • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
            Some could argue that the lack of major world wars since the invention of nuclear weapons is evidence enough. We were averaging one per 20 years before that...
          • Given that the US and the Soviets had the ability to nuke each other and didn't, what's the counter-factual argument to MAD being the reason that we didn't nuke each other?

            The only things I can think of are:

            * The Soviets had very low confidence in their own ballistic missiles at intercontinental ranges. They didn't trust their guidance systems, engines, or the ability of the warheads to function. Therefore, they never seriously considered any kind of attack because the probability of effectiveness was ass

            • by hawk ( 1151 )

              > I might argue the US looked at it this way from the mid-80s on and that the defense system
              >investments in the 1980s on were about luring the Soviets into an arms race that would just accelerate
              >economic collapse.

              In fact, there *was* a faction in the Reagan administration using *exactly* that thinking. Jerry Pournelle was part of it. Some have discussed it since then,.

              Nixon also pointed out in one of his books that we weren't actually in an arms race, and that if we were, we would win hands down

              • I mean I guess the only other reason the US might not have gone to war is some eggheads at RAND suggesting by both speadsheets and history that such a war, even if it defeated the Soviet Union would wind up collapsing the US economically, leading to long-term decline.

                I have to believe at some point by the late 1950s that there were people realizing that the key to US hegemony had nothing to do with military power and everything to do with US economic power. And further, the advantages the US had were short

        • Actually, several ICBM's have been successfully intercepted on several different occasions. That statement you made about '... fired to attack...' is worthless because NO ONE has ever fired an ICBM to attack, BUT lots of people have fired an ICBM and shot it down. Star Wars? Why are you talking about that? We didn't build anything 39 years ago but we did do research, and that research has continued, quietly, for the last 39 years. So now we have a Railgun, and other technologies. Yes, 39 years ago they wer
        • by hawk ( 1151 )

          >Since no one ever _intercepted_ an ICBM being actually fired to attack anything,

          That would require someone to fire one in such a way, which is generally considered a Bad Thing (tm).

          However, what the defenses *do* do is add massive uncertainty as to the success of the attack. And for the particular breed of Russian aggression which is the US concern, uncertainty is a *heavy* deterrent . . .

          hawk

      • If you can maneuver and fly a warhead, you can do the same with an interceptor.

        Bullshit. This is a massive Dunning–Kruger effect statement. Give someone a marble and a flat surface, now you go setup a plastic cup some ten meters away. Tell the person to attempt to hit the plastic cup with the marble and your job is to hit the marble with another equally sized marble as it makes its way toward your cup. If the other guy's marble still at the very least, makes its way to your side of the surface, then yeah you successfully prevented anyone dying in the blast, but you still hav

        • If you can maneuver and fly a warhead, you can do the same with an interceptor.

          Bullshit. This is a massive Dunning–Kruger effect statement. Give someone a marble and a flat surface, now you go setup a plastic cup some ten meters away. Tell the person to attempt to hit the plastic cup with the marble and your job is to hit the marble with another equally sized marble as it makes its way toward your cup. If the other guy's marble still at the very least, makes its way to your side of the surface, then yeah you successfully prevented anyone dying in the blast, but you still have to deal with the fallout.

          Now with that in mind you tell me that other guys marble mission is equal in difficulty as your marble mission.

          Gosh, you even invoked Mt Stupid, and then you say all that.

          Did you know that interceptors use closed-loop control systems? There is no little person inside who has to steer.

        • actually the problem is more like this, I am on one side of a two story house with my bb gun, you are on the other side with yours, I shoot my bb gun and the bb is calculated to go up over the house, then come down in a ballistic arc (presuming no terminal guidance system, so roughly equivalent to 1950's missile tech) and you, you are waiting to see my bb, then you aim and shoot your bb to hit mine. But instead of humans, we have RADAR as the detection system, we also have satellites so we can see the act
      • by Shotgun ( 30919 )

        At these speeds, the only thing you'd have to do to "intercept" it is throw up some sand in its path. The energy from a grain of sand at Mach27 will go right through the missile.

        • by Megol ( 3135005 )

          At those speed with modern warheads capable of late course correction you'd have to fill the whole sky with sand.

      • by Xenna ( 37238 )

        "It was abandoned only because it was considered dangerously *destabilizing*, in that someone could launch a successful first-strike, and be at least reasonably immune to the counter-strike."

        So you're saying..

        Putin actually made the world a safer place with this missile?

    • by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Sunday December 29, 2019 @05:19PM (#59568452)

      In practice, we only know about its speed and power from Putin, which means, it is more likely to be false than true...

      Putin has also announced that the Next Generation Avangard missile will be made of neutrinos, and travel faster than light.

      The speed of this even newer missile has been independently verified by the Gran Sasso research laboratory in Italy.

      The US has confirmed that it is working on technology to catch these faster than light missiles, using quantum entanglement to peek through the event horizon.

      • I hear it is also powered by an e-cat LENR that Andrea Rossi invented... Free energy for all, especially for Russian ICBMs!

        This is, of course, why Jeffrey Epstein was killed, Seth Rich was murdered, and even Friday Epstein was killed, to keep the news of free energy powering Russian ICBMs from coming out.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • The missiles will be launched by a new proprietary system.

        Putin will take off his shirt, sit on a horse, and then throw the missiles. A 200 foot crater will open in the ground around him due to his manly power. There will be a 7 minute music video released to the planet of this.

      • This over-the-top claim by Russia sounds like came out of the Reagan playbook and Star Wars. "Yeah, we don't have it and we're not even close to it. But let's make them spend billions of dollars worrying about and planning for it. They'll eventually go bankrupt from something - let's add a little log to the fire."

    • Presumably, nuclear-tipped interceptors would work against this thing like any other ICBM. These : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      The key is they leave the silo accelerating at 100g. And detonate a nuclear warhead when they get close. Probably this will work even against hypersonic glide vehicles.

      • by Cyberax ( 705495 )
        The problem is that warheads are hardened against nuclear explosions and can survive a small nuclear blast just several hundred meters from them. And you only have about 20 seconds to launch your interceptor and get it close to the target - ICBM warheads are moving at around 8 kilometers per second at the terminal phase of its trajectory.

        It may be not impossible, but it is definitely extremely hard.
    • Interception can happen anywhere before it strikes it's target.

      It doesn't have to be an antimissile missile, even if those are the most prevalent systems in use currently.
      Even the ancient flak cannons from WW2 could be used if they could reach the target.
      Among the systems being developed now, and actually talked about by the military include laser weapons to shoot down missiles.
      There's been rumours of a railgun system for an even longer range interception with a flak type package being delivered.
      But rumors
      • "rumors' of a railgun system? Do you even read? The railgun has been around for over a decade, tested and working fine.
    • by careysub ( 976506 ) on Sunday December 29, 2019 @06:50PM (#59568674)

      Right. This is a maneuvering re-entry vehicle -- so a new and more advanced type of RV, but not some fundamentally new weapon. Describing it as a "hypersonic weapon" and as "a new intercontinental weapon that can fly 27 times the speed of sound" is very misleading unless you state it is "intercontinental" because it is an ICBM RV, and for nearly all of its transit to target it is not flying in any sense, but in a suborbital ballistic trajectory. It only flies as it performs gliding maneuvers during re-entry. Most of that re-entry speed (that "27 times the speed of sound" bit) will be rapidly lost on re-entry as this design is guaranteed to have higher drag than the existing narrow cone RVs.

    • by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

      Probably not accurate. It is likely that the booster is an existing rocket that is also used as an ICBM. ICBM now means any long-range rocket with a nuclear warhead. It is also possible to do a terminal intercept of a reentry vehicle. Just because it is in the atmosphere does not mean that it can not or should not be intercepted. It is possible to do so. You can destroy one without it having any nuclear yield or a very small yield. Depending on how high up you take it out it could be good enough. For insta

    • by Aighearach ( 97333 ) on Monday December 30, 2019 @01:38AM (#59569588)

      It still travels to target inside a regular ICBM [wikipedia.org]. Only upon the missile's re-entry into the atmosphere does the "glide vehicle" detach to speed towards the target.

      No, it is mostly the ICBM part that is actually new, and does the speeding.

      It is different in that it doesn't take a ballistic trajectory. As soon as the ICBM part leaves the atmosphere, it uses the new engine to flatten out the trajectory and increase speed. Then the glider detaches for reentry. Now it is an unpowered glider. As experts have pointed out, it will have to actually go slower during reentry than a normal ICBM, and will be slower from there to the target.

      • Now it is an unpowered glider. As experts have pointed out, it will have to actually go slower during reentry than a normal ICBM, and will be slower from there to the target.

        Note that Mach 27 is orbital speed. The ICBM doesn't reach that speed, so the weapon has to accelerate to reach that speed, NOT slow down.

        Either that, or the Russians are lying through their teeth...

        Hmm, which to believe....

      • None of which really matters because this is a weapon that can't be used.

        Because this uses an ICBM for boost it will be detected by all the ICBM watching systems. The target country will have to assume this weapon is a nuclear vehicle. They cannot wait until the glide vehicle detaches to make a decision, or trust Russian assurances. Retaliatory decisions must be made during ICBM boost to give response weapons time to launch. The result being if Russia ever uses one of these it's likely to start a full nucle

    • by hawk ( 1151 )

      Yet that still leaves it more than four orders of magnitude slower than light . . . and most of our current interception notions involve lasers . . . (and a couple more that involve Gauss guns, which are only mach 7, but are connected to land based power . . . a little "mist" of these would do "interesting" things to something moving at mach 25 . . .)

      hawk

  • by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Sunday December 29, 2019 @04:50PM (#59568372)

    While geosynchronous orbital speed is actually slower than low-eath-orbit speeds, it takes extra thrust to reach that orbit. Is the point that this missile can reach geo-stationary orbital targets? Or that it could, in theory, park there and descend at a later date? Because orbital weaponry capable of surviving re-entry to strike ground targets _is_ something to be very concerned about.

    • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

      As far as I know/have read these are suborbital weapons delivery platforms designed to fool anti-ballistic missiles.They launch from a silo on the ground [youtube.com] or an aircraft [youtube.com] and land very soon on your target. They may or may not contain a nuclear warhead. It's Russia's answer to the US "missile defense shield". The previous answer was having a lot of decoys to overwhelm the shield.

      Putting/parking nukes in orbit violates treaties which doesn't mean no one has does it, but no one will admit to doing it.

      • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        I doubt anyone would bother parking nukes in orbit. ICBMs are way cheaper and easier to maintain, and you don't have to worry about anyone stealing them.

        • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

          I doubt anyone would bother parking nukes in orbit.

          Which is exactly why we parked them there.... lol joking

    • No, it has nothing to do with geosynchronous targets. "Hypersonic" means nothing in space, it refers to atmospheric operations (since there is no "speed of sound" in space).

  • They also claim Putin rides a bear.
    https://www.google.com/imgres?... [google.com]
  • To be fair, even if these are as effective as claimed Russia and China still don't have decent defenses against our more traditional nukes. After that, who knows what type of stuff the Pentagon has tucked away that's classified.

  • Need proofs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Artem S. Tashkinov ( 764309 ) on Sunday December 29, 2019 @06:38PM (#59568630) Homepage

    So, the only proof this missile is real is this short clip which doesn't really prove any of the claimed uber technical-tactical characteristics? https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    Has any country on Earth detected this missile? It could have been detected by hundreds of satellites.

    Russia has made too many outlandish claims recently in regard to its military prowess. The jury is still out on whether they are all real and actually exist.

    • Could this announcement be for internal Russian propaganda? That is, if the claim is that the Western missile shield required the development of this new weapon, then shouldn't the successful launch of this new weapon validate the Western need for a missile shield? So, this announcement should be a minus for Russian international PR, but it should be a plus for internal Russian pride.

    • by athmanb ( 100367 )

      The Sprint missile ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ) went Mach 10 and launching it looks like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] . The above video looks positively sluggish compared to that.

      Sprint also reached a surface temperature over the melting temperature of tungsten after only a few seconds, requiring ablative cooling to stay in one piece for the 10 seconds of lifetime of that missile. And now the russians want to go 2.7 times as fast (7 times as much air resistance) but stay below 2000 degre

    • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
      The US military doesn't exactly provide proof that its new weapons work as advertised either. That's what spies are for. Both sides trying to figure out how much of it is actually real. Usually thought the actual truth comes out on the battlefield. When Yugoslavians shoot down F-117's and when Iraquis follow them home, for example...
  • Waiting for it would really suck. :|
  • I think I got the math right ..... the speed of sound is approx 1,235 km/h [wikipedia.org]. Times 27 equals 33,345km/h. The distance between any 2 points on earth can be as much as 20,000km [google.com]. Ignoring initial boost phase, that means the thing can get to any point on earth in less than 36 minutes.
    • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
      The speed of sound varies with altitude though... so is it 27 times the speed of sound at sea level or 27 times the speed of sound at 100k feet?
  • Am I missing something here? How the heck do you sustain a glide at even supersonic speeds, to say nothing of hypersonic, for any length of time? Without any thrust to keep the vehicle accelerating past the limits of air resistance, shouldn't it get jolted back to subsonic speeds extremely quickly (and probably catastrophically, from the perspective of the vehicle and anything in it)?

    Or is this good old Soviet (neo-Soviet?) engineering/ingenuity being put to work again?

    • by kcelery ( 410487 )

      Take a look at the space shuttle re-entry speed, that's about M25. Since the missile is not built to survive, so it could be sped up a little. Early satellite return to earth with a base of wood to burn off, the shuttle had foam tiles to protect. The Russian might have something better shield with modern materials.

      • by hawk ( 1151 )

        The shuttle also used the atmosphere to rapidly decelerate to a couple of hundred miles an hour . . .

        It certainly didn't have the heat shielding to *maintain* that speed all of the way down

  • U.S. officials have talked about putting a layer of sensors in space to more quickly detect enemy missiles, particularly the hypersonic weapons. The administration also plans to study the idea of basing interceptors in space, so the U.S. can strike incoming enemy missiles during the first minutes of flight when the booster engines are still burning.

    Not that easy, you'll need permission of a lot of other countries for that, and most countries don't want US satellites hanging over their territory.. The US seems to think they own space..

    • Re:hmmm.. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Areyoukiddingme ( 1289470 ) on Monday December 30, 2019 @03:25PM (#59571562)

      Not that easy, you'll need permission of a lot of other countries for that, and most countries don't want US satellites hanging over their territory.. The US seems to think they own space..

      US satellites cross over every country on Earth every couple of weeks, in the form of Iridium satellites and GPS satellites. Once Starlink is operational for North America later this year, its satellites will likely cross every country on Earth every couple of days. When it's complete, it will have continuous coverage of every country on Earth, period. There will never be a country that doesn't have a US satellite over it. Nobody owns space, especially not random countries on Earth with no space capabilities. Anything over 100 km up is fair game for anyone. Some random hole-in-the-wall country does not own a country-shaped slice of the Universe.

  • Putin has said Russia had to develop the Avangard and other prospective weapons systems because of U.S. efforts to develop a missile defense system that he claimed could erode Russia's nuclear deterrent

    We were forced to build swords because our enemies continue to build shields!

    The wisdom behind M.A.D. is genius.

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