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X-33 Venture Star Reborn as Space Bomber
Julius Su writes: "The LA Times reports that the Pentagon is interested in developing a "space bomber" that could be used to drop bombs on any Earthly target within 90 minutes of takeoff -- from an altitude of 300,000 feet. At this height, bombs don't need explosives to function. Critics worry about the start of a new arms race in space. Not to worry, Pentagon officials say -- the plane would fly in a suborbital path and would only attack Earth targets. The plane itself would be adapted from the X-33 Venture Star, originally developed at the Skunk Works as a vertical-take-off glider-landing reusable space vehicle." NASA needs to simply glue machine guns to every launch vehicle they have to assure permanent funding.
IIRC, B-52 and carpet bombing with dumb iron bombs was last carried out in 1992...
I'm an animal rights activist. Cows would enjoy flying for awhile, and upon splat it would only hurt a second. The reason I oppose the meat industry and vivsection is because the put animals in prolonged pain unnecessarily and are tantamount to institutionalized torture. Flying cows splatting are a different story entirely. Do some research if you care.
Hey, that Cyrix comment is taking it a little too far.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/arsenal_sh ip.htm
"Arsenal ship was a joint Navy / DARPA program to acquire a moderate cost, high firepower demonstrator ship with low manning as soon as possible. The Arsenal Ship was planned to restore the naval support of the land battle, the modern day equivalent of the firepower that battleships provided during World War II and in Korea. The plan was to produce the demonstrator ship for initial operational capability (IOC) by the year 2000. Based on successful demonstration, a total force of four to six Arsenal ships would be funded. The goal was to develop an Arsenal Ship (AS) functional design by the end of FY97. This timeline from concept design (FY96) through fabrication (FY00) represented half the development time of previous naval vessels of this complexity. The Arsenal Ship would contains four times the VLS cells found on a CG-52 class ship, have a fixed unit sailaway price of $450 million, and a life-cycle cost 50% less than that of a naval combatant."
So for the layman - It was a ship that carried alot of cruise missiles (Tomahawk Land Attack Missile), an advanced gun-system and was mostly below the water line, with only a senor mast and navigation bridge and helipad above water.
"The ship would have the equivalent ordnance--about 500 vertically launched weapons from a wide variety of the military's inventory--of about four or five Aegis cruisers and destroyers. Employing the Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) "remote magazine" launch concept, the arsenal ship would provide additional magazine capacity for Theater Ballistic Missile Defense (TBMD) and Air Supremacy missiles. "
It would have a crew of roughly fifty and would have been 500-800 feet long.
Oh yea he did imagine such things.
LeMay was the main reason the President made sure that the release of atomic weapons was always a Civilian responsability vs. it being in the hands of the military.
There's alot about LeMay in Black Sun, the history of the Hydrogen bomb and in books about the 8th Air Force.
From what I've seen and heard about him, he was a serious nut that had no qualms about going toe to toe with Russia or China. He favored a joint US/Soviet nuclear strike on China in 68-69 when the Soviets brought up the idea of taking out China's nuclear weapon infrastructure. He favored an invasion of China in '50 and later when they took some small islands from Taiwan. He favored invasion of Cuba in '62 and a first strike against the Soviet Union.
The Soviets did do alot of work on FOBS (Fractional Orbital Bombardment System) in the 60s,
http://www.rocketry.com/mwade/lvs/r36o.htm
"The Global Rocket 1 (GR-1) requirement of 1961 called for a system to place a large nuclear warhead equipped with a deorbit rocket stage into a low earth orbit of 150 km altitude. The warhead could approach the United States from any direction, below missile tracking radar, so little warning was available. Not only could such a missile hit any point on earth, but the enemy would also be uncertain when it would be deorbited onto target. The main disadvantage was lower accuracy of the warhead in comparison to an ICBM. "
"Flight trials of the system were conducted 1965 to 1972. Since orbiting of nuclear weapons was a violation of international treaty, the Soviet Union conducted all tests on a 'fractional orbit' basis - i.e. the test warheads were deorbited after less than one orbit of the earth. The system was in service at 18 siloes at Baikonur from 1969 to 1983. "
I count 28 tests from 1961 through 1971.
So yes, the Soviets did orbit nuclear weapons. The US also worked on these projects, but I've got food poisoning and am not going to look through Encyclopedia Astronautica for a link, I though the US FOBS was based on the Titan II and the 9 MT warhead they carried.
There's alot on Soviet and US combat space craft there too, links at the bottom of the page.
http://www.rocketry.com/mwade/index.htm
Personally, I think the X-33-as-bomber is about as bad an idea as the X-33-as-launcher was. Let's face it, it failed as an x-vehicle testbed for launcher tech, and for a lot of the same reasons, it would make a lousy bomber. I would guess the military would rather have something that a) took off from regular runways, b) used easier-to-deal-with-fuels like kerosene, and c) was more structurally efficient. X-33 didn't get anything from its lifting-body shape, and eventually wound up with bigger wings than competing designs).
(currently testing something about signatures here)
Ah, on the Internet no one knows yer a dog...
Forget the "amerikan corporate government" - you should know that a good percentage of the average guys in my neighborhood bar would be quite OK with nuking the entire Mideast (then we could just take the oil) and taking out China to boot. Just because we're tired of hearing a bunch of crap like this. The only thing saving you is we love Oriental women, and that nifty cheap furniture at Pier One.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Since it seems a lot of people believe this, I'll comment. Because of its shape, a penny flutters like a falling leaf and reaches a terminal velocity too low to do any damage.
See this site for confirmation.
See also Cows with Guns .
OpenSourcerers
So the 1986 attack on Libya hit Gaddafi's home by accident? And the CIA never planned the assassination of Castro? And the USA had nothing to do with the assassination of Allende in Chile?
Slashdot should have a "Horrific Pun" moderation setting, but I'm torn between it being a +1 or -1.
or any other stupid loonie that messes with the US or its allies
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You mean Franklin Delano Rosenfeld wasted his entire first term before turning the counrty over to the Elders of Zion? Darn, another paranoid conspiracy theory shot all to pieces.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Who says turkeys can't fly? I've seen them take flight in the woods before.
(I don't know how far they can fly though...)
Your password has expired, please login to change it.
We also have the 1928 League of Nations treaty outlawing war whose major signatories were all at war within 15 years.
War is a habit...I am not appaulling it, I am merely pointing out a fact.
Chemical weaponry knocks you dead to, nonetheless the use is prohibited. Even the Nazis obeyed at least this rule as they did not use them in war (Hitler ordered the use of them, but the order was disobeyed)
But it is quite possible the Japanese didn't. Arguably the US did it in Vietnam (was Agent Orange banded chemical warfare or was it legal?), Iraq certainly hasn't. The Warsaw Pact routinely trained for it and had it carefully integrated into their breakthough doctrines.
I would argue that the real reason Germany didn't use it in WWII is they lacked effective countermeasures to protect their own troops and thus its value was much less than its risk. It was this issue that had created problems with the usage of gas from Ypres on in WWI.
With infantry in an explotation role mounted, effective suits for unmounted infantry securing an area, and positive pressure filtering systems on vechiles have made gas much more effective.
Expect to see it used to break a statemate in a conventional war with 20 years.
Not by the US or the western nations...probably not by Japan or even Russia, but by some minor power whose leadership worries less about public outcry and more about victory.
Saddly the same is probably true for tac nukes. My bet is tac nukes get used first, actually, during the next India/Pakistan War.
Herb
Herb
Again, feel free to sentence me to death if my questions annoy you. I'll come back in 5 minutes anyway. -Sythi
Why is that bad?
Nuclear weapons have to be set off intentionally...you don't just drop it and have it go off like a cheap pistol. Trust me, the US military alone has "tried" this a lot.
In fact, US weapons are specifically designed NOT to do this. The detonating explosives require specific timing to get the correct denisty/surface area ratio to get the uncontrolled chain reaction. The signalling wires are designed so that relatively small errors in the wire length will prevent correct detonation timing. And if it doesn't explode then we have roughly the same dangers as other radioactives going into orbit, which has nothing to do with militarization of space.
Herb
Herb
Again, feel free to sentence me to death if my questions annoy you. I'll come back in 5 minutes anyway. -Sythi
I have to wonder if these people ever paid attention.
Have they heard of Blue Gemini? Are they aware that half of Salyut series of Soviet space station were military? That both the US and Russian have mature anti-satillite technology (and probably the ESA and China as well)? That both the US and USSR had designs for orbital nuclear platforms? That the USSR's platforms re-entry vehicles may have been tesed (mixed reporting on that one still)?
Space is militarized and will continue to be. Why, because war is humanity's racial bad habit. I fail to understand why bombing someone with a suborbital bomber is somehow worse than doing it with a B-2, a B-1, an F-117, an F/A-18, or even a 155mm or 203mm artillery piece.
All will knock down your house and leave you dead.
Want to hate war, good for you...coming from a long line of soldiers I'm not a big fan either (we tend to die a lot)...but to decry this plan as militarizing space is to ignore current reality, history, and human nature.
Herb
Herb
Again, feel free to sentence me to death if my questions annoy you. I'll come back in 5 minutes anyway. -Sythi
Prime example: the (sr-71a?) blackbird. The thing had major titanium components. To this day titanium remains extremely hard to work because mcnamara ordered the skunk works' custom titanium tooling machines to be destroyed in the name of national security. The engineers are all dead now and we'd be hard-pressed to build another blackbird if we needed to.
It's frightening to think that Slashdot can actually be prophetic.
This very possibility was discussed when the X-33 cancellation was posted.
If youre gonna quote, at least quote it right.
Yea, but that would have to be the French space program, not ours...
The Canadians I know say otherwise.
The health care industry here is *very* profitable, think about how interested they are in having you believe that the way we do things is the only way.
--
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
You like US sovereignty, huh? Do you know anything about the World Trade Organization? Did you know that foreign corporations can sue us if they don't like our environmental regulations -- and force us to change them? In fact, it's already happening. And the Bush administration is all for it.
--
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
- NASA needs to simply glue machine guns to every launch vehicle they have to assure permanent funding.
Well why the hell not? Our space program owes its existance to the arms race anyway.In the early days of the space program we had a choice between missiles and spaceplanes. Spaceplanes we would have had to develop from scratch, but missiles we had plenty of.
Just take out the warhead and put in a payload and voila, you have a space program.
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I can see the fnords!
Exploring has always taken a high toll in lives and it is only our lately-super-sensitive society that holds us back in this new arena of space travel.
It's not even our "super sensitive" society that is to blame. Talk to just about anyone and you'll find most agree that exploration and colonization of space will cost lives, and that that is to be expected. We are somewhat indoctrinated into blaming ourselves, or "society" in general, but for this the blame lies squarely with a two party congress that acts in its own interests and not the interests of the people (and who have the system so sewn up that we have difficulty throwing the bastards out), and the lifestyle beaurocrats that serve them (or perhaps are served by them, who can tell anymore?).
Its political and beaurocratic "cover your ass" that is to blame for the unwillingness to take risks and accept the inevitable costs of doing something profoundly difficult but extremely worthwhile like manned space flight.
While there are some who argue the money would be better spent here, I think most people agree that a strong space program would be useful, and it is their dreams which are being betrayed, not by their own "hyper-sensitivity" to risk, but by hordes of beaurocrats and politicians who would rather let the dream of spaceflight die than take even the smallest political risk.
--
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The USAF has been using concrete bombs to attack Iraqi air defense installations. The concrete bombs destroy the target without causing collateral damage to civilians in the area.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Reminds me of a wierded out episode of some wierd early nineties Disney cartoon whose name I can't remember where Novembria, a nation sort of like the USSR used cast iron bathtubs instead of explosive bombs.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
I can just see a bunch of NASA engineers out at the skunk works with a big box of LEGOs and Erector sets gluing mockups on the X33/34 for a dog and pony show for some LeMay-esque general.
" Yes general, to convert the sub-orbital system to a fully orbit functional craft requires only a minor thrust conversion package, the Lets Enter Geostationary Orbit (LEGO), available for few more billion per system. To convert the gravity assisted kinetic into a more gerenalized hit to kill (HTK) system, referted to as KINETEX (Kill Interorbital NETwork, EXperimental) requires another small modification to the internal weapon system bays. And finally there is the Exogenous REntry Constructor and Terrestrial Orbital Respoder (ERECTOR) package to allow total defense against any terrestrial as well as extra-terrestrial threats.
All of the packages are available under a unifed options package, The Joint Unified Neo Kinetic, Yearly Allocated Resource for Defence Weapons- Aerospace Research-scientist Support ( JUNK YARD WARS).
We kindly thank the Group of Researchers for AVaracious Yearly TRAnsfering INcome (GRAVY TRAIN) for their kind support in funding this anaylis.
(Full disclosure.. I worked as a nuclear physicist and like the Xplanes.. The researchers just recognize that future funding is more likely to come out of DOD than NASA) anyway, writing this was fun.
"Fechez la vache!" "The what?" "The cow!" *moooooo* *sproing*
:)
"Run away! Run away!"
Hey, if it worked on King Arthur, it should work on Saddam, right?
Lemon curry?
Also, although it'd reach any point on Earth in 90 minutes, I suspect the time needed to actually prepare one for launch would be substantially more. The X-33 uses liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen so unlike an ICBM, it can't be kept on the pad, fueled up and ready to go at a moment's notice as the propellents would boil off.
I'm not knocking this. I think it'd be superb if the Pentagon foots the bill to get the X-33 flying, it's just I can see some serious flaws.
NASA (rightly) wants to track Near Earth objects and keep an eye out for things that might hit earth (as one should, sooner or later). You have to figure the logical next step is to develop a plan to move said objects out of the way (as they say, the sooner you move it, the less you actually have to move it). But because it requires vision beyond the next election, it is difficult to fund.
Nasa just needs to point out that this technology has easy crossover application of creating a military mass-driver. Through asteroids at the enemy (especially big ones which are easy to hit). No need to be manned, or carry guns, just engines and fuel.
What is wrong with the US military performing it's constitutionally mandated duty: defending the United States.
I don't understand how the US maintaining military superiority will "end the world as we know it."
If memory serves me correctly, it's always Europeans who keep trying to take over the world.
Ungrateful, anti-american fuckers like you really aggrivate me. Do you doubt for a minute that communist China or some other facist nation won't some day try to attack the US? Get real! I hope that when they do you're living in ground zero of their attack.
The US should have a strong military to defend and protect Americans. Period. The US government must remain soverign, never abdicating power to a higher authority - whether that authority be the UN, EU, or global opinion. We shouldn't give a flying fuck about what the French (or any other European nation) think about our defenses. They're our business, not theirs - and I'm glad the military (and the Bush Administration) aren't backing down.
I hear the complaining about budget spending on weaponry versus other things in the United States all the time. You can complain all you want, but with a quick read of the Constitution you would see that this is one area that the federal government actually is supposed to be spending our tax dollars. Everyone gets that warm feeling when they see money going to farms, fun little really fast planes, train stations named after Senators, Internet connections in libraries, and all kinds of other pork barrel projects that are not provided for by the Constitution (Unconstitutional legislation is another matter). Defense spending is covered by that document composed by those old 18th Century extremists.
If it ain't a Model M, it's a piece of crap.
Well, I've never been inside the United States and I don't understand your posting either.
-- Spelling and grammar errors tend to be a sign of erroneous thinking.
I'm sure that every Buddhis priest and Shinto priest prayed to whatever they think was powerful to rid the Mongols when they invaded. They had conquered the whole Asia and half the Europe by that time. There was no way tiny island nation Japan could push them back.
The reason why the magic seems to have worked sometimes is that at every single war, both sides pray to God/gods/Buddhas to win. Most cultures have rituals for the preparations for war. In most cases there is a winner and their magic have worekd while the others' has not.
Hitler was unique in that he was so much into occult. But the Japanese cannot laugh at him for they (at least officially) believed that the Emperor was living god.
WWII was perhaps the first war the science won (atomic bomb and radar), which I think is good.
IIRC one of them sunk the cruiser(?) that had carried one of the atomic bombs to Tenyan.
I wish that man were peaceful. Unfortunately, as long as we disagree, we will fight. And as long as we fight, we will need to ensure that we win our fights. And as long as we need to win, military applications of technology will generate a sizable return on our investment.
Now, if you want to lose, it's pretty easy. Quit spending on military hardware. In fact, disband the Navy, Army and Marines (the Air Force is a Faux Force, its duties covered by the above). Then sit back and relax as everyone and his brother realises that you've land, resources and people free for the taking.
We could easily have won that war in other, humane ways, too, had it not been for the micromanagement of the war effort.
D'you mean making space just as prone to conflict as the rest of the world? Hate to break it to you, but anywhere there is man, there will be conflict. Anywhere there is conflict there will be violence. And anywhere there is violence there will be the need to counteract that violence. And by counteract I do not mean `Please, stop shooting us. It's not nice, y'know.' I mean `Don't even think about shooting us, 'cause if even one of us dies, you and everyone you care about will be reduced to ash before you get a chance to blink.'
When and if the full-scale colonisation of space commences, there will be a need for weaponry. Those who are foolish enough to believe in some utopian dream of a peaceful space are not only ignorant of human nature, but prime candidates for the Darwin awards of the 22nd century.
Thank god. I was hoping there was a rationla explination for those, I kept thinking to myself, even Hollywood cant be that stupid.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
it was an "out there" idea in the 30's because of the technological requirements. right now it's not that "out there" because the gap between what we currently have and what we want to achieve isn't nearly as large as it would have been in the 30's.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
We all who? I'm 26, and grew up reading books like "The Bug-Life Chronicles", "Schizmatrix", "Neuromancer", "Hardware", in addition to the more traditional "Childhood's End" and Cordwainer Smith's "Instrumentality" series.
I've never been under any illusions that space would somehow be a "Golden Land of Opportunity and Adventure.." to quote Bladerunner.
Our conflicts may become more esoteric, and use more frightening weapons, but we'll still have conflict, of that I'm certain. Perhaps I'm wrong, maybe we'll advance to the point that killing will be a barbaric practice of the past, but I wouldn't bet on it.
"Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
take World War II - the U.S. killed more people in the burning of Tokyo than in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. But most people have forgotten that by now.
:-|
Unless of course, they've never seen Grave of the Fireflies (or Tombstone for Fireflies, depending on the translation), which depicts the death (the VERY SLOW death) of two japanese children in WWII Japan, when their home town gets fire-bombed. It was not an easy movie to watch, but if you've seen it, the horror of US fire-bombing is not something that you will soon forget.
--
Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
First off, a lot of people have asked: why is this worse than a cruise missile? A B2? etc.
Well, a conventional explosive won't do too much. You'll need a lot of them in order to really damage a country's infrastructure, and that takes a lot of time, effort and money (e.g. Gulf War, Bosnia to use US examples). So, you go to nukes. Problem is that there're long-lasting negative effects from nuking (radiation), not just to your target country, but to large portions of the surrounding geography (even the world, of you use enough).
When you're dropping a rock (or car, whatever) from orbit, you have nearly no radiation, and total devistation of the target. So, you can take out N. Korea without any more than kicking up a whole lot of dust at S. Korea. So... why not?! That's the key problem with this kind of weapon: it's a weapon of mass distruction, which cannot distinguish civilians from military targets, and there's very little to hold one back from being the first (an possibly last) to use it....
Second, there's a question of the continued military applications of space. Our population is getting uncontrolably large on this planet, and we may well *need* to start exploring the use of space for: mining, power generation, even manufacture in order to support our population. But, as long as the military presence in space stifles other forms of exploration (and don't kid yourself, right now, we squash any credible civilian attempt to gain a space-borne foot hold), we can't move forward.
Third, darn it, we gave our word (in the form of treaties) and if our word is this worthless, then I submit that we are too!
--
Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
Just use GPS.
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Caimlas
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Vietnam kicked our ass because we were being polite. If we had leveled the forests and wiped out any village that harbored resistance it would have been a different story...
:).
Fortunately, as the grandparent implies, we're too nice for that
Visit the
Of course, you're right. There is a huge number of things money could be better spent on to
help humanity....
... but, as it appears the world isn't going to disarm, but almost every country is intent on
getting new, better toys to kill people and destroy things, I'd don't mind that there is
also a side benefit which pushes technology.
If you've even flown US-Aus or UK-Aus, then you should be looking forward to sub-orbital flights
and travel time cut down from 20-30 hours to 5.
"The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName
Even though I'm very much anti-US military, and would prefer if they didn't try star wars again,
I am in favour of this.
From the military standpoint, it will only really make it a little easier than it is not for the US
to blow something up. Really, does it matter if it takes an extra 15 minutes to hit the target
because the boomer has to get to firing depth first? I can't see this helping the US too much.
What I do hope is that there will be a trickle down of technology which will benefit the entire
world. Sub-orbital space flight for the masses would be fantastic. This type of research will
slowly help to make this more of a reality.
Even if it fails totally after billions of dollars, it still means that there are alot more
people skilled in knowing what to do (or not do) to create a sub-orbital plane.
"The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName
Thanks for the heads up about drag and friction. You made a small error in the velocity calculation: the max theoretical impact speed is
v = g*t_i
where t_i of impact, in seconds from release.
So we have:
v(t) = g*t
d(t) = (1/2)g*t^2
so all we have to do is solve d(t) = 100000, for t
t = sqrt(2*100000/g) (~= 145 sec)
so we plug this into v(t):
v_i = g*t = g*sqrt(2*100000/g) = sqrt(2*100000 * g) (~= 1453 m/s)
No big difference, you'd think. But energy varies as the square of the velocity, so this reduces yeild to (v_i^2/2) Joules per Kg (~ just shy of 1 MegaJoule per kg). This is 1/220 th of your value. Assume we could drop a KiloTonne (assuming metric tonnes: 1 tonne == 1000 Kg), that would give us 1000 Gigajoules, or 1/4 as effective as good old TNT.
Not so great.
Near-space altitude obviates the need for warhead
Hrm. Is that so? I mean, you can easily calculate the kinetic energy per Kg. What is the terminal velocity of a warhead shaped thingie? A google search for joule kilotonne gives 4200 GigaJoule per kilotonne. The maximum payload of the x33 is 25000 kg, so counting backwards, we see that the payload needs to reach ~ 18300 m/s just to get a kilotonne yeild (and that's for a 40th of a kilotonne, which isn't great). Furthermore, that is mach 61, which I suspect is beyond the terminal velocity of anything in freefall (ie, without incoming velocity).
However, if you want to knock out infrastructure without serious casualties, dropping 25000 unpiloted slugs might do the trick. or 50000 1/2 kilo ones that have explosives. Especially if you can drop them in piloted packages to disperse at lower altitudes. Terminal velocity is your friend, since it basically means you loose nothing by dispersing late (presumably the smaller slugs have higher terminal velocity than the delivery package).
So actually, I see this as a fairly humane rapid suppression device.
I'd just like to set you straight on the B-2.
"Capable of hitting a small number of targets per trip (with high turnaround times, to boot)."
I'm not quite sure that you know what you are talking about.
The normal interdiction weapons load for the B-2A is 12 JDAM (Joint-Direct Attack Munition). The JDAM is a GPS/INS guided 2000-lb bomb, amazingly accurate, as proven in combat over Kosovo. The B-2A can, consequently, hit 12 DIFFERENT targets in one sortie.
The BEST part is, we have our aircraft safe in the continental US, yet we can use them to bomb anywhere in the world, returning to their base in Missouri.
Another note:
The US Air Force has stated that they plan on having 90% of their aerial fleet UNMANNED by 2020. Generally, we are looking to get the pilot out of the cockpit, and in to a non-descript building on base, and out of harm's way. The USAF spends roughly over 1 million dollars on each individual pilot's training, and it doesn't pay to lose them in combat or accidents. Likewise, the next generation of UCAV allows the USAF to save tax payers money on life-support (everything from pressurization systems on aircraft, to packing parachutes).
Providing Thetan's(TM) safe-haven for over 18 years!
GPS
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Well, everything the DOD gets is locked up for fifty years.
They got the microprocessor 30 years ago, several years before Intel. We civilians had to reinvent the wheel.
It's our super-sensitive military people that holds us back in almost every aspect of technological achievement.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
It looks like they're digging up the THOR idea from the Air Force "High Frontiers" project of the '70s.
THOR was a network of cheap satellites that orbited in such a way that they covered any spot on earth every 8 minutes. The sats were composed of a targeting system, optical trackers, and a few dozen steel (prob. depleted uranium these days) bars. On command the steel bars could be launched toward a target on earth, each bar impacting with the force of 25 tons of tnt (approx 12 times the power of the average AF bomb). Sort of like calling Lightening from the skies - hence Thor.
SF author Jerry Pournelle was a big advocate of this system, I believe you can find the actual text of the govt report in several of his short fiction anthologies.
For obvious reasons, this idea never flew, but the space plane is a new option. Rather than a sword poised over the worlds head, the plane only goes up when a strike is intended.
I know many will cry "My god, they're militarizing space, won't somebody please think about the children", but if you want a working space plane, this may be your only option in this lifetime.
NASA will never (and I speak from a position of some knowledge on this) get the kind of funding necessary to perfect a ssto plane. Industry will never put up the money to invent this kind of technology. If you want to see cheap space access anytime this century (barring some fundamental scientific advance that changes the mass/energy equations) let the AF have their plane, and fly it to the stars.
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal...
The US: Make it military, then we can hide how much it costs in the interest of "National Security".
Russia: We'll get dumb rich Americans to pay us to build it for joy rides. See here: Russia restarting Buran program for space tourism purposes.
Hmm, clever blokes those Russians, eh?
They are not really ballistic - just a little cross...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Sorry - we are pretty low on BSE now - we have killed them off.
We never had anything called "Hoof and Mouth" disease here sorry. We are still dealing with "Foot and Mouth" disease. Do you mean this?
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/ne wsid_1463000/1463172.stm
I suppose now we can blow up the Chinese embassy by mistake from outer space the next time we are bombing some obscure country into the stone age.
Actually, according to this history of the Internet , the researchers involved were already working for Rand and DARPA.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Damn. Just when I finally get the impression that mabe, just mabe the US military would leave thier fat butts out of this. You gotta love how the Pentagon always finds the perfect way to pervert the very technologies that will help us- help the entire world, and use them against the very people it was created to serve. But of course it must be done because "we need protection from evil rougue states".
Seriously, with all my personal problems aside, I can honestly say that if I was older, and had the ability to move away I would. Mabe to Canada or Mexico. Hell, even mabe to Germany. Its at times like these that I'm ashamed to be an American. The Pentagon is wrong. Rougue states won't destroy the world, and neither will madmen with nukes. The "end of the world as we know it" may very well be in the hands of the United States military, and I don't "feel fine" at all.
At this rate, things can only get worse if somone doesn't do something about it. I have this bad feeling in the back of my mind that if this idiocy keeps up on the part of the American government, enough nations will become enraged enough to reach one final conclusion- to wipe us out before we do the same to the rest of the world.
Calvin in Calvin & Hobbes was right: We DO have proof that there's intellegent life out there- none of it has tried to contact us!
At least I hope there's other life out there because otherwise, we may just destroy all sentient life in the universe yet. Ourselves.
God save us all! (Whoever that is for you)
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I will NEVER enlist. You can bet your life on that. I may have to become a freakin politicion if thats wat it takes to bail the human race's ass out. Dang. I thought I'd never say I wanted to be a politicion.. :)
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And then he discovers that he can fuse many rocks together to make a boulder. It is at this time, that he realizes that his homeworld has been oblitherated, and he has left himself out in the cold vacuum of space forever. Mabe we'll all get lucky and be killed by a giant alien death ray :)
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Yea you guys are all right. I had a bad last couple of days, I'm short on money, and my girfriend dumped me last night. Seeing this article at the top of Slashdot's front page first thing this morning did NOT help matters in the least. Ah well...-
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Good!
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Well...to get around problem 3, you'd probably need to enclose them in some kind of ablative heat shield, or maybe just pack a bunch of them together so at least the center cows reach the ground.
For problems 1 and 2, sure, you've got a roughly 160-fold (sqrt(19) =~ sqrt(16) = 4, 30 * 4 = 160) reduction in energy per unit mass (not counting the ablation), but remember that the point of this is to have cheap warheads. I'm not sure of the exact figures, but I suspect a well-engineered depleted uranium kinetic kill missile costs (per unit mass) well over 160 times your typical bovine. (Less, actually, if you use the bovines being slaughtered for mad cow disease: you could probably get a discount to take them out of Earth's biosphere long enough for them to become noninfectious.)
The main issue here is actually dollars per unit energy on target. Granted, the increased mass will also mean increased launch costs, so the further study might do well to include a comprehensive economic analysis. (Effectiveness of the munitions, aside from energy on target, is probably very similar: these would presumably be used on hardened targets with little ability to dodge, though the cows might be less accurate due to inability to correct for atmospheric irregularities, unless equipped with a guidance and targetting mechanism, which raises the price per munition.)
Can you imagine??? "Wow, there's about 50 ICBM's popping out of the US. Well, don't worry. I'm sure they're just inert warheads heading for country X".
A trackable plane would at least localize the area that could be hit, lowering the political risk a tad.
i think this plane is amazingly freeking awesome. i love inventions by accidents, you know they're awesome. hey look i goofed up and now it's awesome anyways!
But what about meteorites then?
We need protection against meteorites!!!
Natures final test, either an species intelligent enough and able to cooperate to destroy incoming meteorites have evolved, or it will die to leave space for new species to evolve.
But we are to bent on doing the meteorites work for them.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
What is an Arsenal Ship ?
f.
But ... Santa Claus already conquered the Martians! Oh, no wait, I guess I was wrong. It looks like Santa is set to re-conquer them in 2002. (Gee, why in hell would they remake such a bad movie?)
--
Here's a better idea: Since cows outnumber people in the US by something like 3:1 (I forget the actual number), why not just drop cows on the enemy? A penny from a tall building can leave a pretty big crater, so just imagine what would happen if you dropped a cow from 40,000 feet!
Not only would it be an effective weapon, it would confuse the hell out of any enemies we didn't kill. It would also be cheaper. McWarfare.
So write your congressman in support of highly combustable bovine munitions today!
Hitler also failed to capitalize on nuclear weapons. Germany had the materials and the brainpower to construct one. As a matter of fact, the allies staged a number of spec ops to destroy German held assets, including a heavy water plant.
Let's be glad that Hitler was rather conservative with weapons technology research and use. He could have used chemical weapons too, which would have made WWII much, much more gruesome. He forbid their use because he got gassed himself in WWI, and wasn't keen on its use.
Derek
This is a stupid idea -- not because there's anything wrong with using a SSTO device as a very high-speed bomber, but because there's absolutely no reason to use a manned platform for it. We can do everything that this can do with a semi-autonomous (or even fully autonomous) system. If there's no reason to use a manned platform for it, then there's no reason to build a reusable vehicle; the weight of the reentry equipment would be better used for payload. If there's no reason for that...then why not use ballistic missles for the same thing? They're cheap, easy to build, easy to conceal, and well understood.
And don't tell me about technology spin off. If that's what we want to do, then NASA needs to make that case itself, instead of hiding behind DOD's "national security" excuse. Military production is inefficient at the best of times, but undirected research without public review is a recipe for pure and unmitigated waste. The X-33 is still in a very pure research stage. The military won't do any better with it than NASA did, and will probably do much worse.
NASA knows that X-33 failed to meet any of its basic goals and they know that it won't meet any of them in the near term. Being good bureaucrats, they're trying to save the program. Instead of trying to justify the project to Congress any more, NASA's found some guy with scrambled eggs on his head and scrambled brains in his head who wants to get the military to underwrite the rest of his career. Typical conspiracy of crooks. What a crock.
I followed the X33 for years on the construction-floor web cam, and followed the discussion for years in the sci.space.* newsgroups. I realize the folks there are pessimists about anything but their own orbital access scheme, but there are a few objective considerations:
The X33 was a prototype vehicle, not meant to be manned. Nor did it have any payload capacity, to speak of. It's payload capacity pretty much was its avionics bay.
Then the composite LH2 tank failed its tests, and they went to a backup plan of Aluminum LH2 tanks, reducing the payload capacity further.
Besides, the X33 was a 1/3 scale test vehicle, and it was never certain exactly how to scale it up to the full-sized Venture Star. I guess perhaps you could make the X33 into an unmanned bomber, but given its miniscule payload capacity, isn't it closer to a mirv'ed ICBM, and don't we have those, already?
Then again, what's the point of an orbital bomber? A craft has to be designed for stealth, you can't fit it in, afterward. Besides, anything would be visible during boost phase, and then you've got a line to follow it, so there are no surprises. Plus even a guided bomb (as others mention) would take so LONG to arrive.
Isn't a cruise missile more cost-effective?
Sounds to me like project leaders grasping at any possible straw to keep their baby alive. (Actually, I approve of this one. I just hope the baby is born, and finds its way back into civilian space.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Man... you checked out the price of a nice Steinway concert grand lately? You'd have better luck tossing a Bentley out the window.
The pain was excruciating and the scarring is likely permanent, but that just means it's working.
it also greatly reduces the chance of war; no one is crazy enough to think they can beat an elephant in a fist fight.
...and it isn't going to deter unconventional (terror) campaigns either.
...Shadow alliances with the military/industrial/comercial complex merely feeds the notion that policy exists at the whim of corprate intrests--as well as making the position of those intrests stronger.
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Unfortunately, the mouse that sneaks in with a suitcase nuke (or bioweapon, or whatnot), and plants it in the elephant's back yard isn't too concerned about a fist fight. This is particularly true when the mouse either (1) isn't planing to claim responsibility for the attack, (2) isn't connected to a geographical nation/state (who do you nuke in retaliation then?), (3) cares more about the dammage they're doing than their own survival, or (4) any/all of the above.
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The U.S. is the only country in the history of the world to have been in the situation of knowing it could conquer the rest of the world and yet not do it.
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Disagreed.
The US can certainly nuke the rest of the world--and hasn't done it.
Conquering is something completely diffrent; as is--in fact--any objective less than the full scale destruction of a target. Vietnam applies well here as an empiric example.
...this is also a reason why we *don't* need suborbital bombers. We do--as you correctly point out--already have enough of a conventional presense to defend ourselves/our intrests against any other conventional force on the planet. Building suborbitals isn't going to raise that threshold...
The military's intrest in suborbitals does put those of us who grew up on space stories, and firmly belive that being in space is a good idea in something of a bind.
On one hand, it seems like a nice way to get funding for an interesting area of space travel, and it's military applications don't seem to have a particularly high chance of being used.
On the other hand, it represents a creaping ligitimization of space as a DMZ--which disturbs me for both philosophic reasons, and also becase it really doesn't seem to be the sort of space we all dreamed about in our youth.
More to the point, there is a flaw in the "we must trick our gov into funding a space program" attitude.
We do live in a republic where we have both the ability and the duty to infulence the direction our government takes.
If we want a stronger space program, we should stand up and say so.
Well, as someone living in Canada who is moving back to the US in a couple months, let me say that we have our fair share of problems as well, you aren't going to avoid that by running away to another country, all countries have their issues that are unfortunate. I'll take my chances with the US military in trade for good health care, which you just can't get in Canada. :)
Matt
Don't take life so seriously; it isn't permanent.
There was no concieveable way to make money out of it (there still isn't :),
Sure there is - porn. A subject dear to the military mind...
If you moderate me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
Seeking: Funding for orbital assault vehicle
In-field Testing: Over 2 decades
Description: The "DFA" Orbital Assault Vehicle is a multi-purpose space-based weapon. It features vertical take-off, a heavy-duty tank-like assault vehicle (depicted at left), a retractable missile-crushing remote controlled arm, an army of robot droids, and the ability to lock onto and board large military craft. If you are a member of the Pentagon or an aspiring third-world nation, don't hesitate to contact us to find out about our wide array of military applications!
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So long Mommy!
I'm off to get a Commie!
So send me a salami,
And try to smile somehow!
I'll look for you when the war is over...
An hour and a half from now!
--Tom Lehrer, So Long Mom: A Song for World War III (1965)
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I may be an aging hippie/peacenik, but I know enough military history to know that fancy toys don't win wars. The best they can do is make the job easier for the people who do win wars: the low-tech grunts who have to walk in (often literally) and take and hold territory. The most vociferously hawkish politicians and policymakers often seem to care little about such unglammorous aspects of miliary policy.
__
...then so be it. I hear all the whining "Waa, waa, weapons buildup is horrible (except for the economy)" and I've stopped caring. If it's the Defense Department that wants to pay for my fiends at NASA, then fantastic. I mean, better they spend my tax dollars on space-based weapons than on more bullets or something else I don't care about.
Our space program came to a grinding halt when the Challenger exploded, and I think that's a terrible shame, and a disservice to the memory of those who died.
Exploring has always taken a high toll in lives and it is only our lately-super-sensitive society that holds us back in this new arena of space travel. Excuse my irritation, but *I* want to get into space and unless things progress a little more quickly, I'll have to bribe some third world government with promises of blow jobs to get into space. And I don't want that.
And from this vantage point, where the unparalled magnificence of creation strikes the ape mute...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Good, now I feel safe again... or wait.. I live on Earth. (Of course they are only going to attack targets on earth, where else are there enemies ? :)
And how do they exactly mean... why shouldn't this cause an arms race just because the plane would attack its targets sub-orbital ? It is still a new military aircraft and it can fly in "space".
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
That not what this guy thinks ...
Never heard of Hamilton, but the kinetic missile concept for sub/orbital bombardment has been around for pushing 25 years.
If you like Sci-Fi, you should give Hamilton a try. In one scene a horde of ships drop thousands of kinetic weapons on a planet -- but these have been accelerated to a substantial fraction of the speed of light. Hamilton's description of the effects is pretty good; about like nukes without the radiation.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Not to worry, Pentagon officials say -- the plane would fly in a suborbital path and would only attack Earth targets.
Whew! At least they're only attacking Earth targets. Nothing to worry about!
Hmmm, to a certain extent I'd have to agree with the economic part. I believe a Clinton-era analysis revealed that the US would take a 4.5% GDP hit if the Kyoto Accords were implemented.
The ABM treaty however is another matter- as I have explained in a previous post ABMs ensure deterrence but not survival. In this case I believe the scrapping of the treaty is aimed at China, not Russia, but Europe will see an exponential increase in Russian efforts to create a credible threat with serious diplomatic consequences.
Of course the really interesting idea would be if the US is scrapping the ABM treaty to force Europe back into NATO due to a resurgent Russian threat. I don't think that is the case, but feel free to have a party with the idea.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
Dear Lord, you haven't been paying attention during your history classes have you? The Kellogg-Briand Pact was suppossed to outlaw war after WWI, and the Washington Treaty was supposed to limit everyone's obscene battleship building, the strategic weapons of the day. What happened?
The Great Depression allowed militaristic governments to arise in Japan and Germany who then did not give a fig for those treaties. Since every other country hoped for reason to prevail and was unwilling to go through the expense of arming, they were able to do so and not be stopped from aggression until they were fatally committed.
I'd say history proves that economic desperation fosters extreme governments who will ignore treaties, and arms control treaties will encourage said governments to test for weakness.
Finally, citizens of a world government that turned tyrannical would have no recourse. There would not be a United States to land on D-day or a Red Army to bleed for the world. I'm not interested in the illusory safety of a federation until the same sorts of lessons about democracy and legal resolution permeates the world on a deep-rooted cultural level.
Please kindly wake from your dream.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
"...that could be used to drop bombs on any Earthly target within 90 minutes of takeoff."
Better enjoy that illegally-downloaded MP3 while you can.....coz you ain't got long.
The US Government can afford to invest in some harebrained super high altitude bomber, but htey cant invest the money required for a crew return vehicle for the ISS.
Heaven help us!
Set the ISS up so it's just an icon and cantget any real work done by not provding a way to have a crew larger than three, but pour money into building a piece of insane war hardware. What hte heck is Shrub thinking???
This is a ploy to keep the research going - NASA can't afford to do it - so the hope is the Pentagon will. The valuable work that the military can do is cut the support requirement and speed up the rate with which the device can be reused. Currently the shuttle takes months between launches.
The air force has recently realized that they aren't interested in winning air battles 51-49; they want 100-zip. This point of view is eventually going to spread to the other branches of the military. Not only is this the safest thing for your own troops - it also greatly reduces the chance of war; no one is crazy enough to think they can beat an elephant in a fist fight.
As a weapon - it would take a huge fleet of X-33 type bombers (which would have to be converted to stealth devices) to have much of an impact on the outcome of a war. The U.S. is the only country in the history of the world to have been in the situation of knowing it could conquer the rest of the world and yet not do it. While other countries might bad mouth the U.S. they also realize this simple truth: at the end of World War II the rest of the world was at the mercy of the U.S., and mercy is exactly what the U.S. showed.
You don't need wars to have technology trickle down. You just need sensible expenditure. In any case, there are probably far more profitable things to be done for the good of humanity than flying round the edge of the atmosphere; the only problem is that such things aren't sexy enough for us blithe westerners.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
It must be great to be so easily pleased.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Apologies to FASA and New World Computing.
Tastes Like Chicken
Furthermore, since when was the first strike a part of the US military doctrine?
January 20, 2001?
Nah. This isn't scary. Scary is when someone gets around to putting a lunar mining operation into place, with a mass driver to shove stuff up into construction orbits. The ability to throw a 2 ton rock down the orbit well, on demand, every 30 seconds (or whatever), until you run out of rocks or power, is scary.
First, in a realpolitik world, you must be prepared and willing to play by the rules as everyone has decided/agreed to. Wilsonian visions of a utopian world only work when you can change the underlying social agreements and thought processes. Altruism only works when _everyone_ is being altruistic. Suppose, for example, that you and someone else are stuck on a boat. You have enough water for 14 man-days - and the nearest island is 9 days away. If you're both altruistic, you can (just barely) stretch your water supplies to get you both to the island. But neither of you can cheat in the slightest. OTOH, if you're altruistic, and the other person isn't, then you run out of water. Except for the little private stash he's laid aside. You die for lack of water, while he makes it to the island. Self-interest is a bitch, eh?
Second, even in a completely logical environment, you won't find true multi-lateral treaties observed for very long. The governing logic is Prisoner's Dilemma. There's a lot of research that shows that in a 2-person (aka bilateral) PD environment, cooperation is very common, because it's in both sides best interests. In a multilateral PD environment (3 or more actors), however, cooperation quickly breaks down, because even though cooperation is in their _collective_ best interest, it is not in any _individual's_ best interest. I did some research on this in the early 90s as it applied to arms control treaties, and verified that that was in fact the case - one look at the power structure involved in the treaty, and you could tell if it was going to work.
In sum, the 1967 treaty was perfectly workable as long as there were two opposing power blocs - neither side wanted the other to militarize space, so they were willing to forgo the benefits of doing so in return for the benefits of the other side NOT doing so. Once we moved to a multilateral world, however, all that logic fell by the wayside. So, as I said, you can expect a lot of agreements that made a lot of sense during the Cold War to fall by the wayside. The ABM Treaty being another _excellent_ case in point.
If I were the Chinese, where would I attack?
- Indonesia and Malaysia, to close the straights to transiting traffic. Threaten to shut off Japan's oil supplies, and they _will_ block American base access.
- The West Coast of the US. I don't need to threaten nuclear _impact_. I can threaten EMP strikes. One each against San Diego/Los Angeles, San Francisco/Sacramento, and Seattle/Tacoma/etc., and I've got a $100 billion economic target. Want to see a recession? Try rebuilding the electronics for all three of those from the ground up, and see what that does to the US economy.
- western Australia. Perth makes such a nice, _isolated_ target.
- Brunei. With 2 whole battalions of troops, they'd go under like a rock in the surf. And just think - all that oil!
Anybody who thinks the Chinese are going to go strength vs. strength against the US are stupid. They'll go for asymetric warfare, and threaten to cripple the US and Japanese economies.Lucky me. Hypocritical you.
War is like that - people make choices. Sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong. In those two cases, people didn't die due to lack of preparedness. They died because of poor decisions.
Preparedness, though, is having orders out/construction started/mobilization begun for most of the equipment used in the war, in 1940. Do you realize that most of the prototype work for the equipment the US Army took into battle _through 1943_ was done before 1939, before the war ever started? The US Army went into WW2 with _buildings_ full of detailed industrial mobilization plans. The US Navy wasn't far behind, either. All of the aircraft that won WW2 were designed and in production (LRIP, at least) prior to Sept. 1941.
Go read _There's a War to be Won_ by Jeffrey Perret for a look at some of this.
Glad to. It's kind of rare these days to find someone who enjoys history, and who actually has a clue on the subject.
King is still dammed, 6 months to admit a mistake that occurred, solely by his personality flaw. Admiral Sims during World war One recognised the threat of U-Boats and convoys as the only means to counter them, he advocated that to the British in 1917.
Well, to give the man his due, he had a few other things on his mind at the time. The folks I'd really go after are the leadership for the Atlantic and Home fleets - they're the ones who really botched up the convoy protection issue. A lot of people in the US didn't think the war would reach all the way across the Atlantic, though - they were quite surprised by the method of the US entry into the war, and by some of the immediate consequences. You might note how unprepared the French were, _6 months_ after they entered the war.
Read John Terraine's "Business in Great Waters, The U-Boat Wars of 1915-1945". It is the definitive book and damms King and the Navy (and in fairness, the British Navy in early World war Two gets dammed as well).
When I get a chance. There's a large pile of to-be-read books in my living room.
There is a flaw in much of military thinking, the cost is always paid in blood.
Always the case, unfortunately.
The first Zero, was captured in February 1942 and shipped to the US for evaluation. It crashlanded almost intact on Thursday Island off the north coast of Australia, following a bombing raid on Darwin (Feb 23 or 29th, 1942). It is easy to see why it has been overlooked historically, US forces didn't capture it, so it has quietly been forgotten. That Zero was used in the designing the Hellcat.
Interesting - I hadn't run into a reference to that one. Date was actually Feb. 19, 1942. Based on the condition of the plane (see the pictures at http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/statuepark/6 20/toyoshima.htm), it looks like it wasn't in flyable shape, so they probably disassembled it and looked it over. The 8/42 Alaska capture was the first one in flyable condition, so it's still arguable, a bit. I wouldn't be surprised if you're right, though, that some elements of the Zero design wound up in the Hellcat.
The Mustang is fascinating, it is the supreme piston engined aircraft of World War 2, but my point was, it was not designed as a long range fighter pre war, so no credit can be taken for it. It evolved almost accidently.
Umm, take that further. It wasn't designed prewar, _period_. North American didn't even start talking about a design for such a plane until mid 1940. The original design, with the Allison engine, was built as a low-level fighter - everyone knew the supercharged Allison wouldn't put out the horsepower needed above 15K feet. Don't know who had the idea to put the Merlin in, but all the design folks knew that would resolve the high-altitude performance issue. A couple other interesting points to note. First, the A-36 was designated as a dive bomber to sneak it into the US inventory. It was, in fact, a fighter from the get-go. Second, The P-51 is pretty much a descendant of the P-40. The North American NA-73 design was, it turns out, partially based on a Curtis-designed successor to the P-40.
Indeed the USAAAF prewar advocated the dogma of the self protecting bomber ie the B17. That dogma was persisted with despite its known fallacy, the ultimate dream was for an independent Airforce and bombing was the way the advocates saw to achieving it. The tradegy was in the pursuit of that dream, the planners condemmed thousands of young men to death, the lessons of the Britsh and the Germans were there, but ignored. Not until the second Schweinfurt did the USAAAF accept that their prewar plans were fantasy.
_Every_ prewar bomber command advocated large bomber strikes. The USAAF was simply the last to have the blinders taken from their eyes. To some extent, they had viable reasons for believing as they did. 1943 really was educational, though, in that it demonstrated the big logical fallacies that couldn't be ignored. BTW-- you might note that by Feb 1944, the bombers were essentially being used as bait, to bring up (and kill) German fighters, in preparation for the June landings.
As an aside the tactic used effectively by the Luftwaffe with head on attacks which rendered the B17's almost defenceless (till the G model) was copied from the RAF No. 111 Squadron, they first used it in the Battle of Britian to attack the German formations. Again a lesson was clearly there but ignored, the question is with almost 3 years to do something(1940-1943), that design flaw in the B17 should have been removed before crews were sent into combat.
There's endless points like that. Did you know that the primary reason the US forces went ashore with Shermans in June of 44 was because George S. Patton thought bigger tanks like the M-26 would be less maneuverable? Turns out that the M-4 had _higher_ ground pressure than the M-26, and was thus less maneuverable on rough ground. But the decision had been made in Jan. 1944, for delivery for the June landings. Once the production targets were changed (7/44), it took another 5 months for the M-26s to get into combat.
As for the Mosquito, it is an anomaly, so clearly superior to any other bomber be it British or American, fast, cheap to make, to maintain, less expensive in crews to train and man, the lists goes on and on.
Hmmm. Semi-arguable - the A-26 Invader had an illustrious post-war career (into the 70s, actually) for precisely those same reasons. But when it debuted, it definitely set the standard.
Were the lumbering fleets of four engined heavies necessary militarily or merely politically, Generals needs armies, without them their prestige is lessened.
Iffy, either way. Once the war started, everyone pretty much had to start building what they had available. B-17s, for example, were produced because they were what was available. Same with the F-4F and P-40. Hell, why do you think there were P-39s/400s sent to Guadalcanal? They were the _wrong_ plane for the mission, but they were also the only thing in the bucket to send. A lot of what was done, was theoretical, with very little way to check accurate results. So everybody tried out their ideas, to see what would work. Ploesti, for example, demonstrated that mass, low-level bombing was suicide. Yet Wewak showed that low-level tactical strikes _did_ have their place. The whole air-support campaign in the Solomons Slot, as well as the Battle of the Bismark Sea, showed what land-based air could do to naval forces, given the chance.
It's still true, though. Take the US Marines. Most of the amphibious doctrine that they used in the Pacific was written and tested in the 1920s. Their close-air-support doctrine was forged in Nicaragua and Haiti, also in the interwar period. Or, use the US Army. All of the tactical infantry doctrine was worked out in the 1920s and 1930s at Ft. Benning. Most of their counter-Panzer doctrine was developed in 1940, during things like the Louisiana exercises (I can't stress it enough - go read Perret on this - he says it far better than I can). Or, the US Navy. Carrier doctrine (as well as unrep capabilities, which were _just_ as important) was worked out in exercises during the 1920s and 1930s. Every major (and most minor) combatant design that the US Navy brought to the party was worked out and ready for production (if not already IN production) before 1939, and they were _all_ on the order books in the 1940/41 budgets. I can't accept your comments about poor decisons of King and Macarthur, they still equate to me to a lack of planning and taking Dixon's book in account shows a serious flaw in the military. Both men's command clearly failed when tested in battle. The mistake they both made was their egos could not accept they could learn from others, King from the detested Britsh and Macarthur from the enemy.
Well, that's an opinion thing. IMHO, Macarthur and King were well prepared, and had planned in-depth for the coming war. However, I think it would be an accurate thing to say that their plans were not necessarily the correct ones, and that they perhaps planned for the wrong war at times. Macarthur pretty much threw away the Phillipines, because (a) he and the War Dept. planned to fight different wars, and (b) once the shooting (and the landings) started, he didn't fight the war he planned for anyway. A great example is the huge supply caches he built up on the central plains south of Manila. After setting his supplies out front, so he could execute a fighting withdrawal, he wound up boxing himself into Bataan, and left large supply caches out for the Japanese to capture. King, similarly, didn't plan for the kind of war the Germans decided to fight - he was thinking offensive strategies in the Atlantic, and then had to strip _that_ capability to cover for the carnage in the Pacific.
I look forward to seeing your corrsponence on other issues in slashdot and will happily mod for you.
Glad to correpsond. Like I said - I like finding someone who knows what they're talking about.
The basic idea is pretty sound - a long chunk of iron/steel, with a guidance package in the nose, and basic aerodynamic surfaces for guidance. Shouldn't be too hard to build, and would be thoroughly nasty once they tough down.
- Washington Naval Treaty: Japan signs, then immediately starts building in violation of the treaty. After the initial term of the treaty ends, Japan declares its intent to withdraw from the treaty in the minimum allowable time, and commences construction as appropriate.
- Versailled Treaty: As part of the terms of the treaty, Germany is required to disarm in a number of areas, and is technologically restricted in a number of others (fighter aircraft, u-boats, other weapons development), and is not allowed to militarize the Ruhr, which is occupied by French troops. Germany responds by moving most weapons development work abroad - the Netherlands and the USSR are the two primary locations. The infamous 88mm Pak 18 was, for example, developed and tested by a design team in the Netherlands. The day after France pulls out of the Ruhr, Germany abrogates the relevent portions of the Versailles treaty, and moves their own army troops in.
- CFE (Conventional Forces in Europe) Treaty. This treaty reduces conventional forces for both sides by significant amounts. One loophole exists for "maritime" support forces, while another exists as a geographic loophole - Russia is only included up to the Ural mountains. As soon as the treaty is signed, Russia (a) moves large amounts of treaty-prohibited armor into parking facilities to the west of the Ural mountains (ironically, since that equipment wasn't maintained, it's now a huge pile of rust), and (b) redesignates some 20% of their frontal aviation assets as "naval infantry" support assets. NATO pulls a few tricks in similar veins.
The 1967 treaty will be observed as long as the signatories who matter want it to be observed. Quite frankly, however, I expect that most of those treaties will either die, or be ignored, in the next 10-15 years. PD logic is pretty clear that in a multi-power situation, the treaty is the first thing to go.Figure it out, guys - we're gearing up for a war with China, about 20 years down the road. Just like we started gearing up for a war with Japan, and Germany, in the 1920s.
There are more active things you can do. Follow the precedent of Henry David Thoreau and refuse to pay your taxes. It's called Civil Disobedience. Maybe you'll make it onto Letterman and have the chance to make a difference. :P
Seriously though, get out there and grow up. The U.S. has potential. "America -- Love it or Leave it" is supposed to be the catch phrase of the conservative assholes, not the intelligent next generation who could actually make a positive impact.
--netmouse
Ironically, it is much easier to disruptively destroy the infrastructure of a technologically advanced country than that of a third world country. Take out Union stations in Chicago and New York City, and airports in Chicago, Dallas, New York, Washington, LA, Houston and Seattle and you will seriously mess up the daily operation of this country. All you need to take out an airport is to destroy the radar equipment and conning towers and lay some land mines on the runways. Do it while planes are in the air and low on fuel and you might even take out large sections of our air fleets.
Of course, we'd adapt in a couple weeks...
Easily doable with conventional weapons. Even easier with Nukes. Part of the reason I don't live in Chicago anymore. Living in the blast radius of a military target made me itchy.
Actually, I would say the pressures to restrict the use of this are about the same as for nuclear weapons, and we keep maintaining those, but don't use them. But you're right that people probably won't have the same visceral reaction to it as they do with nukes. I mean, take World War II - the U.S. killed more people in the burning of Tokyo than in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. But most people have forgotten that by now.--netmouse
Boy oh boy. It's not bad enough that we go nukes to destroy the earth now we're going to have man-made asteroids. Good thing its re-usable those one way ICBMs are so expensive. Now how long before Dr. Evil puts his laser on the moon? Well, Superpowers have to stay ahead of the technology curve or risk falling behind to upstarts. While I appreciate anything that gets that kind of technology developed, obviously the application is not good. Certainly it's the military that has always lead the way in technological advances in exploration technology (the submarine and sonar for instance). This will possibly go down as one more example our contradictory society. Personally, I find the idea of boulders dropping from space a helluva lot more scary than boring old nukes.
So have a bannana and prepare yourself for our future ape overlords.
Space is where industry needs to go, and unfortunately government usually needs to lead the way in new technologies. Of course this just leads to slowdowns when it is seen as "risky" by the public. If there were to be something really spactacular happen for space again -- like the cure for 99% of cancer can only be synthesized in zero-g -- then people would be taking the risks, but the benefits would be worth it.
Eriol
P.S. I can't remember who said it, but everyone should remember this: (paraphrased) "If we do not go to space, all of our art, history, and human achievments will be worth nothing when the earth ends, for nobody will survive."
Might I suggest grand pianos and anvils as "payloads" for this scheme?
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Open Source Sysadmin
Conquer Britain first and then use THEIR cows. They all have either Mad Cow disease or Hoof & Mouth, so either way it works out. The ones without one of those can be infected with anthrax. THEN drop the cows - you can knock out 10 city blocks AND have a nice, wide dispersion of plague-spewing cattleflesh while you're at it. ;-)
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
This sounds a lot like those guys in the pentagon have been reading too much of Peter F. Hamilton's night's dawn trilogy - kinetic missiles.....what next? ZTT and blackhawks? neural nanonic weapons. heh :)
-Nano.
Not only was the idea presented. It was presented complete with blueprints for a prototype. The German military had been very serious about the idea.
If Adolph Hitler - an SOB who seriously considered using magic, for chrissakes! - thought space-based weapons were too "out there" (pun intended), does this mean the current secretary of defense is crazier than Hitler?
Well, magic has a real history in warfare. In the 17th century, Dr. John Dee, a prominant mathematician and court astrologer to Elizabeth the first was reported to have put a curse on the Armada shortly before it sank. A similar records are found in Japan regarding the Mongol envasion (the first two fleets of ships were wiped out by storms after ceremonies made in Shinto shrines-- giving rise to the concept of "Kamekazi" or Divine Wind). The US has used dowsers in Vietnam to discover trenches, and the US and USSR have emplyed military astrologers.
Hitler was in no way unique in his belief that magic would make a difference in war.
Sig: Tell all your friends NOT to download the Advanced Ebook Processor:
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Actually Germany had all sorts of crazy ideas for weapons of war that are only now being developed in the US. These included submersible aircraft carriers (inherent naval design problems-- performance vs. stability), Space bombers, etc. Most of these either were never developed of the prototypes did not do well.
Sig: Tell all your friends NOT to download the Advanced Ebook Processor:
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Ooops- I meant square root of 19 times for terminal velocity in part 2.
Curtains for windows?
It's a great idea (and ameliorates the excess cow problem as well). Unfortunately, in some studies we performed for BARPA (Bovine Advanced Research Projects Agency) a while back we encountered some serious technical problems:
That said, of course we recommended further study.
Curtains for windows?
That's just because you can't link to non-HTML content on GeoShitties -- they haven't figured out a way to embed ads in WAVs yet.
Liberty in your lifetime
Yahoo sez: This page is not available.
Yeah, right.
Nah, it was both Hicks and Ripley.
Yeah, right.
The rumors were true! I knew Hollywood was really a government front to prepare the populace!
That explains this classic quote: "Nuke 'em from space. That's the only way to be sure" -- Ripley, Aliens
Yeah, right.
NASA needs to simply glue machine guns to every launch vehicle they have to assure permanent funding.
So _that's_ why there were twin chainguns mounted on the asteroid rovers in Armageddon. I couldn't for the life of me figure that one out- until now.
Anyway, a theme he returns to throughout the text is the incredible over-supply of unneccessary, expensive instruments of mass destruction. If we're going to achieve anything this century, please god let us have real peace. And if it takes a world government to get there, bring it on, say I. Arms control treaties, by definition, can only be a Good Thing.
--
Something that might be useful would be depleted uranium encased in such a ceramic as a penetrator. It makes a nice penetrator not so much for its high density, but more for two other characteristics. The first of these are uranium is self sharpening. Instead of blunting, as it penetrates, the burs which are certain to form, and might blunt the point would instead peel back revealing an eversharp tip. The second quality of interest is it happens to be pyrophoric. While the penetrator itself might not detonate, the peices of metal that spall off it will be exceptionally hot and pretty well insure that such a penetrator incinerates anything living or useful. In this instance, the high density of the uranium would also serve to enhance the velocity of the penetrator, as the terminal velocity of an object is determined primarily by its density and surface area.
But a full on weapon that is designed to be lauched from a platform as ludicriously expensive as the one proposed would not likely be simple and cheap. One might certainly envision a large guided weapon with multiple warhead consisting of penetrators with explosives sitting at the front of a decent sized rocket. This weapon might glide to a few tens of thousands of feet above its target, them turn on its rocket for an extraboost before launching the warhead, which might scatter the individual penetrators just before impact. Or it may simply just be a warhead large, heavy and fast enough to dig down to and shatter any bunker.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
He probably are a injunear. You know, 135 hours credit with 12 humanities (and you can take "Boolean Logic" for the philosophy requirement). Injunears don't have to know how to spell anything except FORTRAN keywords.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
just great, those damn dirty apes.. making stupid bombs... why would someone make one?
Get your Unix fortune now!
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so i says to mable, i says
Thank god, for a moment I thought we might start killing other species on other planets instead of just slowly exterminating mankind.
Good calculations, but that's not the problem in your thinking. The problem lies in the fact that terminal velocity doesn't entirly apply to this scenereo. Terminal velocity keeps an object from accelerating beyond it within the atmosphere with only the earth's gravity to accelerate it. Unfortunatly, terminal velocity does not apply without the braking effect of the atmosphere acting on it. That is why meteors fall at very very high (read: much faster than terminal velocity) speeds. If something could only fall at terminal velocity , nothing would ever burn up in the atmosphere. In other words, with these theoretical explosivless bombs, all of there acceleration is done OUTSIDE the atmosphere, and hence they are able to accelerate to much greater speeds before the atmosphere acts on them. And even once they do impact the atmosphere, they will already be going so fast that the braking effect is negligable. Like a speeding frieght train hitting a tractor-trailor. Sure it will slow down, but it's still quite deadly. So yes, it is so. With enough force coming down on something, you won't just punch a hole in it, you'll obliterate it. Think of this, not as a bomb, but as a man made meteor. Yes, terminal velocity would kick in EVENTUALLY, but these bombs would have to be quite lite for them to decelerate to terminal velocity before they reached the ground. Okay, so now you've piqued my curiosity for the actual numbers...
The Meteor example I pointed out before is probably a bad example for our purposes, because those meteors don't (all) just rely on the earth's gravity for acceleration. Most already have a relative speed of many thousands of miles per hour before they ever get near the earth's gravity well.
Now, the article said that the bomber would be capable of delivering strikes from 60 miles+ let's just round that to 5000 ft per mile 5000 * 60 = 300,000 ft. Now let's round this again to 100,000 meters. I know it's not exact, but bear with me...
Now with an altitude of 100,000 meters, we simply use 9.8m/s^2 as our acceleration rate. This will give us a speed of 2243 meters per second at 0 feet. Keep in mind that this formula does not account for friction of the atmosphere. Now let's figure out how much force we're going to deliver, okay? The military uses 500 and 1000 lb bombs a s a sort of standard. These labels are for the entire bomb, not just the explosives. Typically half of that weight is explosives... So let's assume that they'll continue to use these denominations. Let's even go with the lighter one to support your argument. Now 500 Lbs is 227.27 Kgs Let's again round down to 225.
Now, let's recap:
We have our theoretical (frictionless) impact velocity:
2243 m/s
We have our mass:
225 Kgs
We have our altitude:
100,000 m
Now to calculate energy we use the formula:
mass * g * altitude where g = 9.8m/s^2
Using this we get:
220,500,000 joules, which according to your formula of 4200 Gigajoules per kilotonne is 0.0525 kilotonnes. Not much when you're thinking of things in nuclear proportions, but that is a hell of a lot when you consider that his is a single 500 pound bomb without a warhead.
Just for referance, the Hiroshima bomb had a yield of 20 kilotonnes.
Okay, by now half of you are thinking to yourselves that that's a big yield for a "conventional" weapon. And I'm sure a lot of you are still scratching your heads and saying "well what about the drag?" That's where Jovlinger is right. There *will* be drag acting upon the missile-meteor. Not only will it slow it down, but it is likley to reduce the mass of the bomb too, due to much of it's mass burning up on reentry. The only site I was able to find that deals at all with both of these paramaters (mass lost and drag that varies with variable atmospheric density) is here The test at the botom of the page is the most relavent one since it uses a 90 degree entry angle. However it is only a 100kg model. Even still, 66% of it's mass survives reentry and it impacts with 795 kilojoules... Keep in mind this is less than half of our theoretical meteor-missile. Now, what does all this mean? I havn't the foggiest idea. Is this weapon anywhere nuclear class? No. But these numbers, I believe are quite respectable for conventional weapons. By the way, if none of this makes any sence to you, it's probably because I havn't slept in 36 hours, so if someone wants to try and translate this post into something more human readable, be my guest ( :
Um.... yeah.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Interesting; can you recommend any papers or books that discuss this in more detail
Some of the more prominent texts that deal with this topic:
House of Cards: Why Arms Control Must Fail , Colin S. Gray (1992).
Explorations in Strattegy, Colin S. Gray (1996).
Both these works are viewed as seminal by several notable right-wind Republican theorists. For example, Dr. J.D. Crouch (whom I think is now an undersecretary for defense, although the Senate was close to blocking him at one point) at SMSU based a great many of his anti-arms control lectures on these works. Frank Gaffney, cited in the original article, also likes to refer to these texts.
For the record, Dr. Gray is a lot more complicated than his reputation would seem to make him appear; I have a lot more respect for him than I do for some of the views people express based upon his work. Dr. Gray is a wholistic strategist - that is, he favours taking into account all angles of an issue. Many modern-day Republicans (Gaffney, Kugler, et al.) only wish they could achieve insight such as this, in my (not so humble!) opinion.
Lead developer, http://wisptools.net
One of the primary targets amongst my right-wing colleagues was the Outer Space Treaty. In particular, they are upset by the "no weapons in space" rule (itself subject to some interpretation as to what it actually means), the "celestial bodies aren't owned by nations" rule, and the "free passage in space over any nation" rule. Finding a way to quietly erode this treaty would make them very happy, because the best way to get rid of a treaty is to quietly let it slip into obsolescence. That way you avoid all of the shouting that accompanies the current missile defense row, for example. The ASAT prorgam, Space Based Laser program, Brilliant Pebbles, and similar have already walked this particular path
The Pentagon has long talked about a Space Plane project. As it is, this is a bad program. The X-33 has technical issues, but I'm sure they will be worked out. On the other hand, it's heavy, relatively fuel-inefficient (for example, the failure of honeycomb design fuel tanks - and replacement with conventional ones - has resulted in significant weight gain/total fuel loss). It also wastes a HUGE amount of infrastucture on carrying a human crew - the same problem exhibited in other Air Force projects. Make something like this unmanned and you can halve the weight, greatly reduce development costs, and make running costs significantly lower - not to mention you don't have to worry so much about pilot safety.
This program satisfies several of these objectives. It further militarises space, gives the Pentagon a shiny new weapon, and gives Frank Gaffney reason to send more faxes to anyone and everyone. In reality, it will be like the B2; expensive, capable of hitting a small number of targets per trip (with high turnaround times, to boot). It's unlikely that very many will be built, and the X33 program already has significant cost overruns. Just like the B2, it will be dubbed as "equivalent to X conventional planes" (with X being a large number) despite the fact that you still need the other X-1 planes for more general purpose missions. Rumsfield is proving to be like Weinberger; willing to spend big bucks on technology that the services want without trying to fit it into any sort of grand strategy. His obsession with China can't be helping, either. Expect several more "silver bullet" military solutions of this type - arsenal ships spring to mind.
Lead developer, http://wisptools.net
The bombing mission profile doesn't make any sense either. If the costs of launching this thing are anything like the Space Shuttle than the missiles are cheaper. (and faster, at least with regard to ICBMs) Since the US refuses to learn from Russia and develop economies of scale in rocket production, the military would seem to be the perfect place to do it. The missiles would also be unmanned (much better for PR), and could draw on a much better set of guidance technologies than the kinetic weapons to be dropped from this thing. I think that the problem of targeting these things may turn out to be fatal. During reentry it can't communicate via radio (no GPS) and unlike an ICBM it doesn't have a miss radius. (It has to hit the target dead-on, it can't miss by a mile or two) Cruise missiles may actually be more viable, as only really the Great Powers poisess the technology to stop them and they don't have guidance problems as severe. They also don't generate US casualties.
This project is also indicative of the breakdown in US war planning. In an actual, all-out war, this thing is useless. It doesn't have nearly enoigh payload and costs far too much. This weapon only has value in Iraq II or Libya IV or whatever. The US needs to stop basing its strategies around the idea that we'll be dominant as we are now forever, because we won't be. This project, as it is useless and likely to start another arms race, is just another example of American arrogance. Let's hope we can shake off this arrogance before the next big war.
I posted and all I got was this stupid sig
If they are talking about it this seriously, it probably means we already have it (or at least that they are sure they can crank them out in only as much time as it takes to retool a factory or twelve.) Public knowledge is always at least two steps behind state-of-the-art.
It sounds to me like they are worried that they wouldn't be able to plausably deny what they *do* have since the other project tanked, and therefore need to create a way to go from here to there without their budget/motives/balls out in the open for the public to see.
NASA needs to simply glue machine guns to every launch vehicle they have to assure permanent funding.
:), so the researchers involved went to the military.
That's not actually that far off the mark.
To get funding for most projects, you need to demonstrate that there will be a return on investment, or, if you can't do that, develop it for military applications.
This is the reason the 'Net was developed by ARPA. There was no concieveable way to make money out of it (there still isn't
Shame that's how society works... either it makes money, or it makes war.
"Faith is the last resort of a desperate man" - Me
So the bombs don't need explosives then? Great, we can just drop our trash on our enemies, but at such an altitude it will blow them up... kind of like when you were a kid and you always wanted to drop pennies on people...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ now you know
Forward commander:We've confirmed the terrorist summit is going on right now at coordinates 1.343'34.33. Launch a strike with that 45-minute space bomber!
Bomber control:Roger that. We'll begin hydrogen fueling procedures and checklist now. ETA, 4 hours.
Forward commander:Too late; forget it. I'll launch one of those boring old cruise missles instead. It'll save the taxpayers a few hundred million anyway; maybe we can use the money to remodel the gym here at the base...
...and not much of a grasp of military history, technology, or operating concepts.
The US is the only country in the history of the world to have been in the situation of knowing it could conquer the rest of the world and yet not do it.I think a few million Russians (followed by a few million Chinese) would beg to differ. And note that NATO's creation was a response to Soviet military numbers in Eastern Europe. The Almighty US certainly did not want to foot the bill for Europe's defense by itself (let alone conquer it).
While other countries might bad mouth the U.S. they also realize this simple truth: at the end of World War II the rest of the world was at the mercy of the U.S., and mercy is exactly what the U.S. showed.And what could the US do otherwise? Blow up the same planet it lives on? The US sure didn't look merciful to the Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, Iranians, East Timorese, Nicuaraguans, or citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (And I am sure I am missing a cold war atrocity somewhere...)
Please make an attempt to examine your beliefs and verify facts before doing the US rah rah dance. It really embarrasses US citizens who know better.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
See: Lego Vs Mecchano & Engineering Knowledge
To recap: Word to you physicists...
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Cool.
Dropping rocks on people from space. Just like in Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Of course, in TMIAHM, they were dropping rocks from the moon.
Also, TMIAHM is the origin of the famous acronym TANSTAAFL.
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
As I pointed out on sci.space.policy, a Venture* vehicle would be very handy if you had to put a bunch of stuff up into orbit. Like anti-nuke lasers and anti-sattelite sattlelites(SP?)
Even if it only chopped the cost of launches by half, it would still end up saving billions.
Arthur Hansen
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
Actaully, accurate targeting is probably less of an issue. I'd guess such a weapon system would be designed to strike large, fixed targets (missile bases, ports, rail yards - whose position you can accurately fix) with enough destructive power that a few dozen feet one way or the other wouldn't matter.
You could probably adapt the star sight system used by ICBMs and fire a ballaistic trajectory to a target. Then you can fix your position relative to the target and calculate the trajectory.
Accuracy is relative, after all how far can you run if the shock wave takes an extra minute to reach you?
Of course, know you have to develop something to quickly shoot down aircraft at 300k feet.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
ICBMs (or more correctly S(ubmarine) LBMs, which is what I'm most familar with) guidance systems fixed their position by monitoring certain stars (similar to celestial navigation on the earth). The actual warhead was ballistic, but the delivery platform needs a navigation system to know where it is so it can hit its targets.
I'd guess ICBMs use a similar system.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Good point, but I often wonder if it's the military who wants this or a populace that will not accept a "good fight" where virtually everyone returns home in one piece?
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
I wonder how this is going to take place in the real world if it is ever used. When you get up to 300K ft, everything is obviously a lot smaller than viewing it from an airplane, and locating a target becomes that much harder. Winds at those altitudes will have significant impact on predicting where a bomb will actually land. Perhaps heat-seeking or otherwise guided missles are the solution to nailing a target from way up there.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
From the LA Times article: "The idea of a rocket-propelled space bomber has been around in various forms since the 1930s, when Austrian rocket scientist Eugen Sanger urged Adolf Hitler to build an "antipodal bomber" called the Silver Bird that could skip across the outer edge of the atmosphere to strike New York City. Hitler was cool to the plan"
If Adolph Hitler - an SOB who seriously considered using magic, for chrissakes! - thought space-based weapons were too "out there" (pun intended), does this mean the current secretary of defense is crazier than Hitler?
USA Intellectual Property Laws: 5 monkeys, 1 hour.
I'm the stranger...posting to
And a bomber which attacks from space demands a space-based defense against the bomber, just as conventional bombers are attacked by fighter/interceptors aircraft. And once missiles/satellites/planes are developed that can attack the space bomber, there needs to be some way of escroting and defending the bomber in space. Space based missile. Ground to space weapons. Air to space weapons. Suborbital fighters. And so on ad infinitum. Once we put weapons in space, more weapons will follow, even if they're just suborbital.
That said, the idea of kinetic bombs is sort of cool, just because they give you enormous penetrating power without using a nuke.
USA Intellectual Property Laws: 5 monkeys, 1 hour.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Would you rather we do it the traditional way? I happen to think the idea of waging the Cold War through economic warfare and propoganda was a brilliant way to avoid WW3. Of course the hundreds of millions of people who had to suffer for decades under communism because we took the "easy, clever way out" instead of confronting their tyrants directly may not agree; but, considering how sick of war and death the world must have been after WW2, who can blame Truman and the other leaders for coming up with a less violent alternative.
There is a great story I heard, but cannot remember the source. I cannot find any verification of it either; but it is so appropriate I will repeat it despite it's uncertain accuracy: It was back in the 80s and the USSR knew it was falling behind the US in the arms race; Reagan's administration was just begining to promote SDI and the B2. The upper levels of the Soviet military knew that they could not afford to upgrade all their ICBMs and their entire air defense network to counter these threats. They had begun studying the possibility of conducting a surprise first strike against NATO before they fell too far behind; and the Soviet Generals and their staff were working long hours considering the details. Even though these military men couldn't talk about the details of their work, many of their families knew some new dangerous twist in the Cold War was brewing from the long hours the men were putting in and the stress they where obviously under. Finally one night when one particular Soviet General got home he found his young son crying. When he asked his son why he was crying the boy said it was because he feared that they would soon be at war with the United States, and then the boy pleaded with his father for Russia not to go to war with the U.S. saying* "We can't bomb America daddy... that's where Mickey Mouse lives." At that moment, the General realized that he, the other Soviet Generals, and all their advisers studying the 1st strike plan were wrong; the war they were planning for was already over. It had been fought, and they had lost without ever realising it had happened; because the next generation of Russian children would not grow up thinking of the "evil capitalist West" as their enemy. Does anyone know where this story came from, and if there is any truth to it? I would love to know, but have been unable to find any references to it.
I suppose we in the West may be cowards because we are following a similar economic and cultural "engagement" in China that keeps them from profiting from waging war against us; while over a billion people live as property of their gov't "leaders" as we patiently look for a solution that doesn't envolve large scale death and slaughter. Hopefully history will not look too poorly on us for trying to be clever in our fights against despotism instead of being brave.
Or perhaps you are confusing the current trends toward reducing trade restrictions, combined with the effectivness of US many businesses in winning market share to be a form of "economic war." Funny, I don't see people protesting because Airbus has picked up too much market share away from Boeing, or because too many American kids are watching a Japanese cartoon, or because yoga is replacing "aerobics" in American gyms... Globalism is a 2 way street; so get out there and start spreading your own memes. May the best ones win.
*in Russian, obviously
Use this calculator to make your own hypothetical impact.y stem/Meteors/ImpactHazard.html
http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/Academy/SPACE/SolarS
Its located at the bottom of the page.
You could use this to figure out the size/speed of the projectile that they would have to use to do any sort of damage.
An optimist believes we live in the best world possible; a pessimist fears this is true.