Slashdot Mirror
DARPA Looking into Hypersonic Bombers
while(true) writes "As reported previously here on Slashdot, hypersonic jets from NASA has recently been in the news. Now DARPA is showing interest in the military applications and is to host a conference on hypersonic unmanned bombers. These bombers could be based in the US and yet strike from space at any place in the world within 2 hours. BBC has a report about these air/spacecraft that could be operational by 2025."
Another story from The Guardian here ...And if your interested in another or Darpa's projects which might fall under the YRO category: here
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
Why do you have such fast bombers?
The better to bomb the living fuck out of you, my dear.
"Darpa says: "This capability would free the US military from reliance on forward basing to enable it to react promptly and decisively to destabilising or threatening actions by hostile countries and terrorist organisations.""
Someone should let them know the solution is 50 years old.
Kevin Fox
What the U.S. Army needs is, invisible hypersonic GIs. It appears, winning a war is not a matter of throwing bombs alone, see Iraq, see Vietnam...
Due to security regulations, we can't let the American media find out about project FALCON. If information were to leak, enemy countries could have teams working towards the same goal.
Hey, who's that British guy?
Mom says my
So we can respond in two hours, now all we need is intel that isn't two DAYS old...
And these would be useful how? The USA already has the capacity to project massive physical force anywhere in the world within a matter of tens of hours (or minutes, if you include the Minutemen). How much more do they need? In any case, B-52s are more than good enough for the kind of wars they've been fighting lately.
Why on earth would I care about DARPA projects? It's not like they've affectd my day-to-day life. I mean, why do people care about DARPA anyway? It's not like they built the internet or anything. Oh well. Maybe I'm just out of the loop.
---- Move SIG...For great justice!
sounds like a posh ICBM to me. Wait until the funding gets cut, and the bombs will have to travel by boat, train and coach.
It seems that the U.S. government has an endless amount of money for killing people and destroying property, but not very much for making good relationships.
The least sophisticated way of relating to other people is killing them.
I'm sorry, IANAMT (I am not a military tactician) but do we really need to be able to strike someone within a period of two hours? Hypersonic jets are cool and all, but I think they would be better applied in the commercial market, not the military.
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
in my understanding, the speeds of manned fighters and bombers have been limited by the need to keep the human inside alive during excessive G forces.
... haha
I wonder what the upper limit of these speeds might be, that wouldn't tear up the ship itself (like some falling meteor).
But the article did mention that a simple titanium rod would serve as an adequate 'bunker buster' only from the speed it would be traveling from space. In rod we trust
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
I can just see the Generals walking around grunting in their Tim 'tha ToolMan' Taylor flannel shirts boasting 'More Power' ...
think before you write, it'll save me moderator points.
It should make us wonder if this sort of rapid response is always a good thing to have? Perhaps having more than two hours to decide to blow someone up is a good thing given some folks apparent rash decisions.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
An unmanned system to deliver a bomb to any point on the Earth's surface within two hours... Well, what's wrong with an old-fashioned ICBM? Seems a whole lot of money to spend, and the only benefit I can see is that this thing is reusable. Reusability isn't necessarily all that great - look at the Shuttle...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Check out article four of this treaty.
--
Freeper Logic
here.
I have to say I think the idea of intercontinental ballistic missiles loaded with a conventional warhead makes more sense. You could put a couple of those anywhere in the world with only 30 minutes notice.
"The whole project goes under the acronym Falcon - Force Application and Launch from the Continental United States."
hmmm... I think that's the most contrived acronym I have *ever* seen... was "COOL DEATH EAGLE" already taken?
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
Two hours was the striking distance for the roving bombers in Dr. Stragelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Hypersonic bombers able to blow anything anywhere anytime. That's so what the world needs!
America, leading the way as usual. To where?
are really cool, they go quick as h3ll but need much less fuel than rockets.
If they actually manage to develop scramjets there are a lot of more applications than bombers.
Cheap space travel comes to mind.
Tor
Next destination :
North Korea? no they have some A bombs.
Iran? no they have some A bombs.
France? no they have hundreds of H bombs.
uh...
It's sadly a HUGE AND INDECENT waste of money for bombing innofensive third world countries and people...
One has to wonder whether the US will admit to it's already built hypersonic aircraft nicknamed Aurora.
Sure, this is a very effective way to, right, kill people and destroy buildings etc.
Now, I hope noone minds that other countries also investigates the possibility to have the same kind of technology? And I most certainly hope that countries conference with each other before anyone starts a program like this - as earlier space-like warfare programs have been stopped because of diplomatic reasons (e.g. if your country has it and can bomb us with it so fast, we're gonna have it too).
And is there _really_ the need for yet another way to bomb stuff? Really?
Allies? We don't need no steeking allies!
You would get hit by a bomb before you would hear the plane go by! That's one helluva suckerpunch!
Ouch! Who did that???
Hmmm...
The damage these things could cause would be incredible. You don't even need explosives, just drop an iron girder from orbit at hypersonic speeds and the kinetic energy would be pretty darn impressive. Cheaper munitions, more damage. Some military budget analyst probably just crapped his BDU's.
If you want a description of these things in action, read either Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, or Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton. Both excellent books in their own right, BTW.
In the next war the enemy combatants will be in the US on student visas.
In what appears to be another carefully planned "shock and awe" tactic, DARPA is running its www.darpa.mil website on the Microsoft IIS/5.0 server.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
In case people make fun of our President's
penis or the economy goes into a severe recession.
Who Do You Want to Liberate Today^H^H^H^H^H In 2 Hours?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
They could do something usful with the tax dollars they spend. At one time they actually supported OpenBSD. Of course - that funding was pulled.
Now they are out looking for better ways to kill people? I think DARPA should be shunned. JMHO.
So my question is: Do the DARPA ppl actually contribute anything positive at this time?
I was in grad school as an aerospace/fluids engineer in the mid 90's during the aerospace boom (a bit like the dot-com boom). Hypersonic aircraft were on the drawing board but never made it. Turns out we didn't have a sufficient understanding of hypersonics. Building hypersonic wind tunnels and shock tubes is very difficult so computational models were used heavily. The computational models did not have sufficent validation due to lack of experimental data, so designing hypersonic vehicles turned out be a lot more difficult than originally thought. Also the materials problems in building aircraft that can tolerate the heat of hypersonic flight is still very significant. Titanium ceramic materials were developed, but manufacturing and machining with these materials was prohibitively expensive and difficult. Back then it the thinking was that the hypersonic modelling and material problems could be rapidly overcome and this technology was a few years off, it never happened though. I kust wonder if this is not just another Darpa pie-in-the-sky project where they are assuming difficult and unsolved problems can be surmounted. Guess we'll see if this project materializes, but I am skeptical. I think the Columbia disaster painfully illustrates the significant problems of hypersonic flight. MM
Already mentioned is the use of a titanium rod as a payload. Kinetic weapons have the possibility to deliver effective yields greater than any of our current chemical devices.
This will also push the development of a real replacement for that space pig the shuttle as well as hypersonic passenger planes. The military will blow up as many prototypes as necessary to make it work. They're not as sensitive to adverse publicity as the camera hogs at NASA.
Maybe we'll get that moon colony after all!
www.bannination.com Two things float to the top he
We already lost the next war.
http://livebackwards.blogspot.com/
Why is the only other country in the world interested in building up more and more N. Korea? Ge, great company.
Jeez mods, isnt this more of a troll? Offtopic implies that its not talking about the article's topic, which this and about a dozen other anon. posts are. Yet they are all marked off topic instead of troll/flamebait as they deserve. Give the trolls some credit, eh? And develop some brain tissue so you can tell the difference in the future.
at some point someone will realise that for the cost of bombing a 3rd world country (cruise missiles cost something in the order of 1/2 a million a piece, supersonic space launched glide bombs are NOT going to be cheaper) you can wage the sort of political-economic campaign in which every one wins (well to be fair - not everyone - you probably can't win a rah-rah election campaign in the US this way)
You wouldn't have a computer to play on and entertain your bullshit notions about the world if not for the sacrifice we make in this country.
I'm an athiest, but God Bless America just the same for this.
I suggest you read Slashdot
Namaste
It seems like warfare is becoming like a bunch of people locked in a closet with automatic weapons. Just too easy...
Hypersonic Bombers ??
I thought they were called missiles
Cool! Now I hope this moves the arms race into a higher gear, and Russia just becomes the lap dog of the US. With these new bombers, hopefully we can wipe out command centers before they even detect a first strike.
All your fucking bases belong to us, now motherfuckers!
USA! USA! USA!
Great plan! Let's put bombs on incredibly expensive manned platforms, instead of just sending them there on top of an ICBM.
These will probably end up going the way of the British V bombers (the best looking supersonic bombers ever) - obsoleted rather fast by extreme range stand off weapons and precision guided munitions on large stand off C2 aircraft like modified C130s.
Beep beep.
imagine Beowulf of those ...
How the heck is a supersonic _combustion ramjet_ going to help you in space? Unless you're carrying a metric crapload of O2...
When you're dead, you can't things like "The least sophisticated way of relating to others people is killing them." It is hard to win debates when you're dead, making whatever argument you have pretty much moot.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
The Republican war-mongers need something new to whack off about.
The first hypersonic plane useable as a bomber was actually proposed 20 years ago by President Reagan. See here or here for a description. Notice that the picture in the BBC article and the pictures on the referenced web sites are essentially identical. Also read the following quote from the second link I provided:
This was news 20 years ago.(By the way, the program was abandoned because (1) the technology was too hard and (2) ICBMs gave us all the international strike capability we need.)
This will prove handy-dandy when someone needs a-killin'
tone
ICBM's carry nuclear warheads that destroy cities. That's the wrong tool if you need to remove a bunker located next to a school.
Think 6,000 mph stealthed descendants of the B-2 launching guided munitions and cruise missiles, all while swooping into and out of the enemy's vision before he can defend against it.
Remember, the days of aircraft carrying dozens of unguided dumb bombs which are dropped at 50,000 feet are rapidly ending. We need to make an adjustment in what we think is a "bomb". Today, it is most often a guided, perhaps propelled, weapon.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I know we get to see the T-100 in the new movie, but which model # are these ones?
It is well documented that the USA has developed and maintains a large stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Even now the US is sitting on huge armaments of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, some of which are armed and ready to strike any city in the world within two hours. This rogue nation has already invaded and occupied one soverign state and has explicitely threatened several others. We cannot afford to wait until the USA has already struck -- we must force the Bush regime to disarm, or preemptively invade immediately to force a regime change. Our citizens' safety demands no less.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I suspect that these bombers will have conventional as well as nuclear capacity - a 475Kt W-88 is one hell of a shock and awe weapon, but it's not exactly useful for limited strikes, or anything short of total global devastation...
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
But I get this itchy feeling, now that the Military Industrial Complex has its dream-candidate figurehead president in the White House and a passle of ideological whack-jobs pulling the strings, that these destabilizing pipe dream projects could actually get funded and built.
Of course, given the current political climate and the GOP control of government, there will be little or no oversight. Defense contracts mean pork, n' plenty of it, for the home turf of well connected connected congresscritters.
Who cares if the tests are rigged, as long as the former generals giving the presentations at committee meetings are convincing enough? Who cares if there's no actual strategic use for a weapon systems, as long as there's a new bit of terrorism in the headlines to scare people into Unquestioning Acceptance mode? Who cares if the men and women of the armed forces -- the ones who do the actual dirty work -- continue to be underpaid, overdeployed, and underprovisioned, as long as the Administration can point to an upward trend on the defense spending graph?
Stefan
You may not be aware of it, but most of this 'new' capabilities was avilable to the US in the late fifties, in the form of the Navaho intercontinental cruisemissile. True, it was a one way weapon on operational missions, but test missions were flown with retn to base.
It's funny... the US developed the Navaho based on the idea the germans had in the A4b / A9, which was contrived as a way to lenghten the range of the A4 (V2), only to cancel it and develop the Atlas ICBM wich offered the potential for longer range and shorter reactiontime... History seems to run in circles, just like a wheel...
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
But for some reason, the mainstream media in the US has chosen to simply roll over and play dead for the government. Remember all the play given to that boring and irrelevant Lewinsky case? But the fact that the government lied to get us into a war, the fact that the government has marked the enquiry on what went wrong on 9/11 as classified, crucial things involving life and death for thousands of Americans, have barely been mentioned here in the US.
You wonder whether the Republican Party doesn't simply have thousands of incriminating photographs in a file somewhere...
Err, isn't the point that it would be cheaper to go out of the way to not create ObLs in the first place? And to do what you can to make his sort of view unpopular so he doesn't get support from other people? The most effective part of the "war on terrorism" has been prosecuted by law enforcement the world over, not by the use of the stick so big it doesn't fit in the holes of the moles you're trying to whack. It's not like the prospect of hypersonic bombers worry guys like him anyway. [ warning : metaphor change ahead ] Granting that the honey isn't going to be 100% effective, the vinegar you use has to be deployed much closer to the ground than 100000ft.
Read the article nothing.... now we have people posting who haven't even read the post!
There has been speculation around for years that this plane already exists. Contrails from pulse jets have been photo graphed probably a different plane but... I think the hyper sonic plane capable of what's talked about is called aurora. Old news. They're probably trickling info out now and a potential public announcement in a few years. Once the public hears about it or even hears about possible planes, they've aleardy been built and tested long ago.
yes, look at how nice the japanese are to us now....more bombs less talk....political correctness has made us soft.
If you wanna kill someone, send your own soldiers. That's the last safeguard against war the world has. But no, God's own fucking country sends disposable machines. And you're wondering why people become terrorists. It's disgusting.
I think the Columbia disaster painfully illustrates the significant problems of hypersonic flight.
No, the Columbia disaster painfully illustrates the significant problems of NASA's bureaucracy and incompetence.
GMD
watch this
- new language structs being born by the minute!
Just because every country with ICBMs also has nuclear weapons, doesn't mean ICBMs have to carry nuclear weapons.
Why do you assume that a Cav can carry a non-nuclear weapon, but a MIRV can't?
Kevin Fox
No guns and no bombs - just engines, cameras and a couple of pilots.
... which is apparently the peak US-bashing time on Slashdot. The US is wants to control everything. The US wants to burn fossil fuels until the planet chokes and eveyone dies. The US wants to poison everyone's language with transliterated American English. The US wants to destroy everyone's culture by building McDonalds and Walmarts everywhere. Blah blah blah.
Stow the rhetoric, please. Not everyone accepts that blather at face value.
An incredible amount of technology that we take for granted exists today because DARPA spent money on it and people complained about the size of the US defense budget (he says while sending his comment of the *internet*).
Hypersonic flight, whether ballistic or not, is incredibly hard to control. Manned or unmanned, incredibly hard to control. This sort of project will develop the skills and capabilities needed to engineer such an audacious plan. That knowledge barely exists now. How do you build something so insanely complex and difficult to control? How do you make it reliable? Someday, that knowledge of how to build impressive stuff will be used to build impressive stuff you'll use everyday.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.
The only supersonic passenger plane (the Concorde) is being retired and DARPA wants to build a bomber that travels three times as fast. There's something screwed up in this country when we place a higher value on delivering bombs than people.
How about almost everyone?
Much as I abhor the idea of war, I find myself fascinated by the instruments with which it is waged. I am ashamed of this.
American society needs to get over this Cold War fascination with ever larger, more powerful, and more complex military technology. The military is not the solution to every problem, they are just a last resort when we have no real solution.
We need to expend more effort developing technologies that will really improve our lives, no matter how gee-whiz hypersonic bombers, planetary annihilation lasers, and the like, may be.
Even human cloning would be better than this. Honestly.
I am chocked that so much people don't realise the lake of maturity onto this view. Civilisation history have show how mutch this is destructive to dominate the other, no matter the technologie used.
I'm going to take a wild guess here and state that English is not your native language, no?
I really have no idea what you are trying to say here.
..."This rogue nation has already invaded and occupied one soverign state ..."
Have you already forgotten Afghanistan?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Wait until FedEx gets a hold of this technology. With the difference in time zones their slogan can become a reality.
"If it absolutely positively has to be there by yesterday..."
--- I'm Green Hornet's sidekick not Inspector Clouseau's!
Hmmm...the US spends more on it's miitary than all other industrialized countries COMBINED...do we really need to be spreading even MORE fear with this crap?
Sheesh, when will we learn that we are the absolute worst at setting example. Don't even get me started on moral high ground. I'm sorry, but we suck. We want to rule the world via fear to breed consent, and we're doing a damn good job of it.
I'd hate us too...
I mean for Christ's sake, can we FIRST give health care to our children? Help our elderly pay for their medication? Fix our schools and pay our teachers a decent wage? Create jobs? etc... I read a story like this every day, and it makes me sick.
We could pay less to set better examples, but no, we want power, not an end to the reaons for hostility. Build better bombs, make them fear us, and we will rule the world! Mwuuuhaahaaahaaahaa...*hack* *cough!*...ahem...mwwuhaa haa...
What kind of IDIOT wants a world, albeit a possibly safer world, ruled by fear? If YOU do, then move to China. And you would have LOVED Iraq before we decimated it. Yes, you attempt to hinder acquisition of "interests" or even speak out against it, watch out baby...
Now, imagine it on a global scale...
Yikes.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
will 1/3 go to faith based abstinence solutions, as in other american programs?
2 0. stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/30288
It seems to me that this is a defense department end run around an incompetent NASA.
For a while, the Space Shuttle was the only government sanctioned method of putting anything in orbit, then the first shuttle disaster happened and the military insisted on redeveloping non-reusable boosters.
Now the second disaster. The military might just think that they need their own space plane. This can put small satellites into orbit. It carries a payload to the edge of space. That payload is bombs but could be other items. It can survive the worst part of re-entry.
In the US, sadly, it is much easier to spend billions on a weapon then on a NASA budget item, especially given NASA's track record.
If this thing gets off the ground, with a few changes, after 10 or 20 years as a weapon the tech transfers into a cheap launch vehicle, and/or a hypersonic commercial airliner. DARPA does have a track record of sponsoring projects others cannot do that turn out to have non-military applications (the Internet is just one). The military purpose is just a way to get money into the research.
The cold hard truth is that nations (especially powerful ones) that do not innovate get attacked, lose territory, and invaded (Egypt, Greece, Rome, Spain, UK). It's not nice thoughts and clicking your heels together that allows you to bitch about it, it's bombs and flesh.
As to the 3rd world, China isn't too far away from becoming first world, Europe and the US will continue to butt heads, Iran is developing nuclear weapons (oh the joy of having insane Islamic clerics with nukes and a hardon for destroying Israel), and last time I checked, Pakistan was a popular revolt from being an enemy. Add to that the possibility that our economic and cultural stranglehold on the world will slip over the next 50 years and I would say any fool willing to dismiss the fact that we live on a dangerous cesspool of a planet deserves getting blown away.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
They wave in slow motion from the background of our television news bumpers in tastefully darkened half-opacity. They flutter from car antennas just below the smiling Styrofoam Jack in the Box icon. They're available in choppy animated GIFs for display on your Animaniacs web page of fan fiction or fan art.
Old Navy is proud to reintroduce Old Glory. Undocumented, underage workers in China and Hong Kong are presently working overtime to produce these precious gifts for you and your loved ones. They've sewn, knitted, woven and stitched together more red white and blue yards of fabric than anyone ever thought possible. And they're all five dollars.
DON'T DIS OUR FLAG, MAN! MY DAD DIED FOR THE FLAG AND I'M OFF TO WALGREENS TO GET ONE MYSELF.
Dude, if you were patriotic you'd already own a flag.
Now all we need is a five megawatt laser and Val Kilmer and the prophecy defined by the 1980's classic Real Genius will finally be fulfilled.
umnnn...The Russians sneak into the maximum-security facility, steal the "hypersonic-bird" and threaten to use it(nahhh... sell it to Iraqis) if their demands are not met. And James Bond yet again saves the day ( and needless to say he also wins the Russian and Iraqi girls) :-)
ICBM's are to be eternally associated with nuclear weapons and as such there is no way to determine whether a launched ICBM contains conventional or nuclear payload. If a missile were launched then people in jumpiness may be forced to launch an overwhelming counterattack. ICBM's will never, ever be used to carry conventional weapons.
I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal.
...the U.S. has learned that it can't depend on too many countires for support. Especially when those countries are making a profit from savage dictators or bent on restoring the European status quo to where it was around 1680.
So, the U.S. has decided not to be in a position to have to depend on anyone.
If we're attacked, we'll be able to respond without having to listen to complaints from Middle Eastern kleptocracies, European hegemonists, etc.
Good move, IMHO.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Though I do agree with you in principle, ICBMs were designed with a warhead size and weight that are smaller than typical convential munitions. Modern mirvs are well under 1000 lbs.
Rigging a single ICBM even with 8 mirvs in the ~600 to ~800 lb range is pretty ineffective use of single-use extra-atmosphere delivery system. That would be less than 4 tons of munitions on target. I assume the that bomber would be a real bomber and carry several times that capacity.
The UN is asking us (once again) to get involved in Liberia and solve it's problems (the UN's and France's). We probably will. Will we suck then? How bout we ask the Chinese or Iranians to do the job instead? I am sure they are all for international peacekeeping and humanatarian aid...not!
Take a valium and chill. Just because someone thinks you suck doesn't mean you do. It's an interactive demoracy here. You have to stick with it in the hard times too. We suck today, we are everyone's friend tomorrow. Just know YOU don't suck and stick to your guns, everything will be OK.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
It's a hell of a lot easier to a) go straight up, go ballistic (think FOBS, Fractional Orbital Bombardment System), come back down, or b) put your stuff in orbit to begin with and then launch/release as needed (Thor = 'smart crowbars', kinetic-kill metal rods with no need for warheads; Thoth = missiles already on orbit, ready to be called down at a moment's notice) than to build a frigging -airplane- out of materials which don't exist yet to slog through all that air (and heat) to and from the release-point.
Stupid idea, old thinking. Much easier to punch -up- though 100 miles of atmosphere, then punch back -down- through 100 miles of atmosphere, rather than -across- thousands of miles of the stuff.
It seems to me that this is a regular "run-up-the-flagpole" idea that comes around every so often. It is rooted in the Sanger Anti-podal bomber project of Nazi Germany during World War II. Every 20 years or so since then, someone brings this up again.
Don't believe that this is right? Check out the x-20 Dyna-Soar project of the 1960's, or the Trans-Atmospheric vehicle projects of the 1980's. Remember the Reagan "Orient Express" speech?
Okay, move forward another 20 years, and now they are hypersonic bombers, not freighters or passenger vehicles. Now we are making no effort to conceal the military applications.
So it's supposed to be "cool" and all that, but it is just a re-tread and do we really need weapons of mass destruction? What happens when somebody cracks the system and uses one to attack our allies or attacks us? What then?
These things have always been too costly and too unproven to be workable. We haven't developed the engine technology as anything more than a drawing board idea.
It is the gee-whiz kind of idea that causes the rest of the world to crap their pants as we drum up another arms race that we don't need. It is a solution in search of a problem.
All Ad hominem replies happily ignored as the sender shall be deemed to lack the faculties to comprehend the equation.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Why? Because there are countries and people that are opposed to the US, and will use warfare to achieve their goals. Think of it this way: you are a soldier (something few of the people on /. were, is my guess), and you are going into a battle. If you are facing the US military today, with all it's weapons, and superior technology, it's almost certain that you will be found and killed. What's that? You're hiding in some trees? That Apache pilot will turn on his FLiR and see you, then shoot you.
And say instead you are facing... Indian troops in a different situation. Their technology is less developed than the US. No fancy laser targeting, not much in the way of IR. Yeah, they still have bullets, mortars, grenades, artillery, and nukes... but if they can't see you, then they can't exactly shoot at you.
And if you are fighting someone that can rain fire down from the sky, without ever seeing them, then you are pretty much not willing to put up a fight.
Another reason to support weapons is to look at the parallel between the US and the Roman Empire in terms of military might. The Romans (in their day) were superior. They fought as a unit, with every soldier equipped with armor and weapons, and they had good training. The Romans didn't always win their battles, but they ALWAYS won the wars. _Until_ the Roman government put less emphasis on the military (went with conscripts and less-trained soldiers, instead of pros). That inevitably created a situation where Rome could fall, because the military could not hold the Empire together.
Now look at the US military, we've won most of the wars we've fought. The ones we've lost, we have identified the errors and corrected them. We also develop superior technology to make sure that we have the edge on the battlefield. If we did not have that edge, we would face whole nations opposed to our ideology.
Besides, if other nations (or persons) become more advanced and decide to attack us, are we going to fight with insults and our money?
As long as there are threats, the US will need to have a strong military. The weak do not go after the strong. That's a fact of life. And the rest of the world should be glad that the US is not in the business of building an empire.
A plane this fast has got to have tremendous spy potential. Remember the U2?
Actually, we already have a hypersonic spyplane: the SR-71
GMD
watch this
With the leadership of this country seriously questionable, the developement of these bombers may further encourage irresponsible wars/police actions/whatever.
On the other hypersonic bombers sound really really cool.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
DARPA Develops Urban Surveillance System
B AA_03-15_CTS_PIP.pdf
Develops Urban Surveillance System
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon (news - web sites) is developing an urban surveillance system that would use computers and thousands of cameras to track, record and analyze the movement of every vehicle in a foreign city.
Police, scientists and privacy experts say the unclassified technology could easily be adapted to spy on Americans.
The project's centerpiece is groundbreaking computer software that is capable of automatically identifying vehicles by size, color, shape and license tag, or drivers and passengers by face.
Scientists and privacy experts are concerned about the potential impact of the emerging DARPA technologies if they are applied to civilians by commercial or government agencies outside the Pentagon.
DARPA Develops Urban Surveillance System
DARPA contracting document: http://dtsn.darpa.mil/ixo/solicitations/CTS/file/
- How much is this going to cost and can I deduct it as a percentage of my taxes?
- I disagree entirely with the idea that the key to world peace is better, faster bombers, can I opt out?
- If I can't opt out, could I write off a donation to Amnesty International or Greenpeace?
- Will it be possible to move out of this beligerent nation in ten years, or will ShrubCo seize power and prevent people from leaving?
I don't hate America. I hate the war-mongering bastards in power.I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Is this another "public" project where they try to sell it as something that anyone can routinely use in the future -- then the project takes twice as long to make, and the only people who can fly on it are really really rich? I'm glad I help pay for all this, I really am.
yay! for absolutely nothing.
Why do you assume that a Cav can carry a non-nuclear weapon, but a MIRV can't?
A MIRV could carry a conventional weapon, but why would you?
Accuracy sucks. ICBM's are flying a long way, over basically uncharted territory. The specific gravitational anomalies and wind conditions have never truly been mapped. Yes, they launch regularly from Vandenburg to some islands out in the Pacific, but they've been doing that so much, they know how to adjust. Over the pole has never, for obvious reasons, been done.
Modern smart bombs and air to ground missiles can hit within inches. Or hit a truck on the move. The pilot can adjust at the last minute, or decide not to drop at all, because the intel was bad, and there is a large group of civilians in the way. An ICBM merely drops on their heads.
Throw weight. An F-15 Strike Eagle can probably carry as much as an ICBM in terms of explosive weight.
Image An ICBM launch would start a whole chain of reactions, in a lot of countries. The plume will be detected, and someone might launch in retaliation (Use it or lose it), even though they were not the target.
It would be one big Taliban regime.
Without the US, the Nazis would have been overrun by the Muslims by now. Europe would be living under Sharia (sp?).
But your basic premise is 100% correct.
We're talking about the USA here. As they have been so anxious to prove in the past, their word is worth nothing anyway.
What're y'all talkin' bout? Is this mor'a that stinkin' NAY-TOE malarkey 'bout peace 'n not goin' ta war 'n alla that?
Dubya h'ain't never signed no damn NAY-TOE 'greemunt. He ain't never even SEEN the durn thing. Why in TARnayshin you think he aughter hafta foller it anyhow?
Yew ig-no-raymiss.
Mom says my
Yes I'm sure they've just recently entertained the idea of a hypersonic bomber. The reason they scrapped the Valkyrie project (if you're unfamiliar it was one of the coolest designs that never was, a supersonic bomber back in the 60's) because the need to risk life and equipment unecessarily when ICBM's could do the job at a lower price and faster. All I want is shorter direct flights from my airport. Say Honolulu in an hour?
Damnit, who let Bill Maher post again?!
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
That's supposed to be cooler than OpenBSD?!
to hate the US for. Let the hate begin again.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
'Hypersonic' is a fuzzy term, but there are relatively few people that argue Mach 3 fits the definition. The definition I've seen used most for the onset of hypersonic flow is somewhere around Mach 6-7.
The proposed bombers are much faster than the SR-71. And that's saying something.
Go USA, kill kill!
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Cyberdyne Systems has announced a new microchip design with revolutionary human-like properties. The government has already begun courting the company for use of the chip in defense projects, such as the aforementioned unmanned bombers. Cyberdyne hoped the chip would have been finished by 1997, but fell behind after a tragic explosion in their lab and loss of the initial prototype. Code-named SkyNet, the government hopes the processor will be driving all defense computer within the next few years.
"We want to bomb you before we have time to actually think about it."
:\
The faster the planes can bomb, the faster the damage is done. Do you really want to live in a world where: a ruler can do something imprudent yet, not worthy of anhiliation and have his entire country bombed before dinner.
I don't.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Its anti bush and therefor right.
Percentage of budget of US foreign aid: 1.0% (dead last among western nations).
Percentage of that dedicated to military aid to allies: ~50% (to Israel, mostly)
Percentage of total aid that comes directly back to US companies: ~70%
Percentage of people polled that think we spend too much on foreign aid: 75%
Average response to the question, "how much should we spend on foreign aid?": 8.4%
What you reap is what you sow.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Check out the 60s-vintage Mach-3 XB-70..
http://www.labiker.org/xb70.html
Designed to fly high and fast, out of range of Soviet SAMs and strike aircraft.
Shortly thereafter, the Soviets designed SAMs that could reach high enough that focus switched instead to terrain-following in order to avoid radar detection altogether.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
In the end, there's going to be man to man fighting anyhow. No matter what and no matter how many (innocent) people they kill with their wizz bang bombs.
Which Beirut do you want to go to today?
ba dum pah....ch!!!!!!! "over there, move toward that Iraqi grade school"
The thing that scares me about unmaned armed vehicles is that they are remote controlled. What is to stop someone from hacking them and turning them against us?
----
Squirrel
DoD thought of this sort of thing a long time ago when the "Blackbird" was still in development. It was going to be an interceptor, but the value of it being a camera-toting spyplane was greater. I always wondered why they never continued the previous phase of deleopment. Hell, 10 years ago I was thinking, just load a smallish nuke on a SR-71, take it for a ride, drop it at a manageable altitude, then before the bomb detonates push the plane to full go...by the time the flash is seen you're 400 miles away.
The SR-71 was supersonic, not hypersonic. Hypersonic speeds start about (not exactly) at Mach 5, the speed at which the shockwaves become merged with boundary layer airflow.
... supposed to be interesting why exactly?
Percentage of statistics that are made up: 35.7%
Unmanned bomber flights?
At some point, we cross the line. Unfortunately the line is not stationary, and generally moves at the same speed as "technology".
If you don't recall the background on the AI in Terminator, of course this won't make any sense. Gotta see that movie, and watch it once a year at least...
First of all, the SR-71 was not a bomber, it was a reconnaissance aircraft. Secondly, it is no longer operational. My web site (www.sr-71.org), details the history and operation of this magnificent aircraft.
It's fun to be a smart ass.
But the figures for US foreign aid and how much goes to military "aid" are accurate. Google for it, and you will find many reliable sources.
As for the other figures, they're just from a survey. From the Boston Globe, if I recall correctly.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
..our "current" technology seeming "current", saying that this stuff will be possible in the future. The Gov has to keep it's flying saucers secret so they can use them in the hoaxed space invasion thats scheduled after the "War on Asteroids" which should take place as soon as our current "War on Terror" has wound itsself down a bit.
:)
BTW, I don't wear a tinfoil hat anymore, I've had it grafted onto my skull
eom
If you post it, they will read.
Yes, the USAF and DARPA have been interested in hypersonic bombers for a long time. Hence the X-15 hypersonic test aircraft and the NASA X-43 hypersonic ramjet test aircraft. The stunning success of the SR-71 coupled with the shootdown of the F-117 over Serbia has soured the USAF's opinion of stealth slightly in favor of higher speeds for avoiding air defenses.
That is why the "Future Strike Aircraft" (which shall probably be designated "B-3") will be relying on high speed rather than purely signature reduction.
*Note that the FSA will not be hypersonic, it will cruise at 2-4 Mach.
That's the best laugh I've had all day.
Beware blue cats moving at
"Catapult - Harry and I Build a Siege Weapon" is a book about exploring "the mind of the weapon maker". An artist in (inevitably) California got an art grant to build a catapult by claiming it was conceptual art, to find out what it's like psychologically to build a tool of destruction.
He concluded that the project was a failure, because building the catapult felt just like building anything else. Bzzt! It was a success.
If you're like me, you're just as fascinated by the unarmed SR-71 as you are by weapons. The fascination is with the height of the technology the military uses, not with the horrors that it can produce.
I bet you're not at all fascinated by the machetes used in the Rwandan genocide.
What's shameful is failing to apply our critical thinking skills to the political process.
This is about the dumbest thing ever. We don't have the money to spend on such stupid bullshit as ultrafast bombers. We can already bomb anyone anywhere in the world, what's the big hurry?
Cut my taxes and axe this shit. Thanks.
While we are still trying to get manned space flight in order, they are developed unmanned hypersonic bombers that can kill many people in little time..
Great, just great
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
"Military looks into killing more enemies faster and more efficiently than before with less risk to our own troops." I would have never guessed.
:)
Sarcasm aside, I really think that we (America) need to go on a new direction. I mean, a powerful military is o.k. but the way to get new friends is by forming good relations with them, not by strongarming them or having the distinct impression of being willing to strongarm them.
At any rate, if we would just deploy alternative sources of energy and stop sucking the oil tit, a lot of problems would dry up because a lot of terrorist money comes from regimes supported by *suprise* OIL. That and illegal drugs... But once we stop spending God-only-knows-how-many billions securing more oil teats, we can have all those troops deployed at the border
Skynet!
Hacking the Network
oversimplification
Yes, but you've completely brushed over the fact that we have every reason to believe that 10 years from now the people of Iraq will be many times better off than they would have been had Sadaam remained in power.
"Oh!," you will whine, "How are they better off with their country being looted and much of their infrastructure damaged?".
Now, right now, they are already better off simply in virtue of no longer being subjugated to the whims of Sadaam's political party. And no, the U.S. is not presently "just as bad as Sadaam". Yes, there have been some questionable issues with unnecessary force, and the soldiers involved should be punished if this is true. However, we are not there to subjugate them to our will. We are not equivalent to Sadaam. That is a horrible insult.
Within 10 years, all of this will be rebuil. The people will have better access to education. They will be able to speak their minds about their leaders without putting the lives of their families at risk. They will participate in free and open elections. The average income and wealth will increase. They will have access to media of their own choosing. They will be able to raise them families in peace.
If you think for a second that the U.S. will not relinquish its tight control over the situation long, long before 10 years is up, then it is you who is being naieve.
Thousands died, but many millions will be free and not have to fear death to have it. These are the prices that must be payed. No, these people did not deserve to die, but for the good of the many, there was no other option. We have every reason to believe that there was no other option which would result within 10 years in the freedom and betterment of those millions who will see it come.
Are you aware of the U.N. universal declaration of human rights?
We, and the global community do not believe that it is "none of our business" when our brothers and sisters are being oppressed. We have an obligation to free them, even if the costs are sometimes high (and yes, there is obviously a limit).
The U.S. has not always fulfilled these obligations, and sometimes has acted recklessly and without regard for them, and for this those leaders and the people who supported them should be ashamed.
But that does not change the fact that we do have these obligations.
How dare you say that it is none of our business.
As human beings it is as much our business that a cruel and horrible man is torturing and harming people in Iraq, as it is were there a man or woman committing similar atrocities in Idaho or Texas, or any other state of this particular nation.
Is that all this is to you, a game? Should we just divide our planet up into imaginary little sections and ignore what happens on the other side of these imaginary lines?
Do these iamginary lines free us of our obligations as human beings?
NO, not for a second.
While the rest of the world is racing toward building the next gadget cheaper and better for the consumer - The US government is going to spend the big bucks in military equipment.
Percentage of the world's current military-political problems that are the direct result of 500 years of European imperialism and not U.S. foreign policy: 100%.
3.14159
Putting an asshat in his place- priceless.
I don't suck, most of my friends don't suck, and having lived in a foreign land a few times I can tell you this country doesn't suck. I am sorry if you get offended so easily. Perhaps there is a care-bear forum where you won't feel quite so hammered by someone objecting to a stupid, blanket comment. If anything shows the bad in America, it's idiots that generalize everything and expect us all to swallow it.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
I live in East Europe.
I prefer the US to research and have these weapons first, than some other nation.
The US has NOT been fair in many things. BUT compared to other countries, I still prefer them to have the hypersonic bomber.
Heck, why bother? Rumsfeld can blow up alliances at nearly the speed of light. He just needs his big mouth and CNN. :)
How did that get modded as flaimbait?
> Percentage of budget of US foreign aid: 1.0% (dead last among western nations).
b al health/aids/PWGFundingReport.pdf
Yes, if you ask what the US Federal government spends, as a portion of the total Federal budget, we look like punks. If you look at Federal expenditure as a portion of GDP, we look like punks. But when you look at the bottom line, we end up spending more dollars than anybody else. But that makes for bad anti-US rhetoric.
Take, for example, spending on AIDS/HIV prevention. Look at this document:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/nr/downloads/glo
The US government contributes more dollars to prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS than anyone else. (see page 34.) Should we spend more so that our percentage of GDP is more inline with the UK? That might be a good plan. But to assert that we do nothing because our percentage of GDP is too low - that's ridiculous. Everything you could ever want to know about the amazing work that done with that money is here:
http://www.usaid.gov/
Go there, look at the work that money does, and come back and tell me it means nothing.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.
The CAV stuff was the stuff of a SF book a decade or so ago for a USSR/USA war: David's Sling.
c h/x-4 1.htm
r net/d od/photos/cav.htm
r m/internet/f orceapp/init/html/cbmcav.htm
t /f orceapp/init/html/cavmsp.htm
/ locaas.ht m
... the Hyper-X series X43A, B and C.0 2072 4075743.htme ws/photos/200 2/photos02-182.html
X-41 CAV
http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/laun
And an unclassified "photo" of a CAV
http://www.wslfweb.org/docs/roadmap/irm/inte
More details on the system (using ICBMs for delivery -- conventional ballistic missiles):
http://www.wslfweb.org/docs/roadmap/i
http://www.wslfweb.org/docs/roadmap/irm/interne
(U) The Military Space Plane (MSP) could carry several CAVs, each containing multiple submunitions. Payloads under consideration for the CAV include three 250 lb small smart bombs, six 90 lb powered LOCAAS (Low Cost Autonomous Attack System) munitions, a hard and deeply buried target (HDBT) penetrator, a deployable unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) Hunter/Killer package, an agent defeat payload, and other special weapon payloads.
Interesting collection of items.
The LOCAAS system is like a mini-cruise missile
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart
And NASA is interested in hypersonic vehicles too over the next 20 years
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/07/
http://www1.msfc.nasa.gov/NEWSROOM/n
Nothing has happened yet. Writing a story about this is like saying that the US is drawing up contingency plans for an evacuation of Liberia. News flash! Military planners have detailed mission plans for a variety of operations in every country on the globe. By the same token, DARPA investigates new technologies all the time, but doesn't necessarily fund research with equal emphasis.
DARPA has nothing to do with whether the Democrats or Republicans are in charge of the government. Just as Colin Powell and hundreds of thousands of career military personnel have served under various Democratic and Republican administrations, the folks at DARPA do their job regardless of who decides what projects get priority.
I'm not thrilled about the direction this country has taken since 9/11 either, but let's not equate this DARPA story with the end of American innocence. Calling Chicken Little on all things military only makes non-Bushites look simplistic and ill-informed.
Don't blame DARPA. Blame your elected officials. More accurately, blame the American public for failing to exercise their democratic responsibilities. Blame those who don't vote, blame those who make excuses about why they don't pay attention to their own government. Blame the fat and happy Americans who wave the flag when we send the boys and girls to Iraq, then are totally shocked that the war isn't truly over.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Did the US announce thirty or fourty years ago a plan to develop stealth technology? This wonderful high tech gadgetry must be overshadowed by whatever development is not known about..
Bush will invade shortly to prevent the construction of these weapons. You can't have these dangerous WMDs. I hear there are nucular facilities in the same country too.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
...could mean the very likely possibility that the DARPA program could pave the way for a next-generation supersonic transport that could fly at Mach 2.0, seat 300 passengers, fly from Los Angeles to London non-stop, meet today's strict regulations for jet engine noise and exhaust emissions and generate no audiable sonic boom in the flight path when the plane is flying Mach 2.0 at altitude.
Sounds far-fetched? It's closer than you think. Scientists using the latest supercomputers to do computational fluid dynamics (CFD) research discovered the true reason for the sonic boom: a pressure wave buildup as an object travels faster than the speed of sound. Dissipate that pressure wave buildup and/or deflect the pressure wave energy away from the ground, and the result is that the sonic boom would be barely audiable or not audiable at all when the plane is flying at altitude.
Such a plane could be a huge boon for air travel. Imagine flying from Los Angeles to Sydney in HALF the time it takes now with a 747-400 flying nonstop, even if the new plane has to stop in Honolulu for refuelling. Or imagine flying London to Sydney in 40 PERCENT less time, even if the plane has to stop at Dubai in the Persian Gulf and Singapore to refuel.
I'm sick and tired of Slashdot politics. They were bought out by comie coks and are completely anti-Amricakn. Made up statistics, twisting the numbers, calulating the income PER CAPITA and arguing how much we consume and then turning right back and calculating the aid PER GDP. All nonsense, all the time. This site is as anti American as it is anti-Linux. Sureptisiously, hidden mole. Mod points given for the "proper leftie cook attitute" and so on. Slashdot sucks. This was my last visit here EVER.
...try to be at least one blast radius away from the computer this was posted from within 2 hours, OK? There is no time to explain why, just get going.
That's the standard answer. "It's percentages."
So, please.. think about what that means. Matter of fact is that countries that are doing much worse than the US economically, are spending a much larger portion of their (smaller) fortune on foreign aid. The US is dead last any way you see it.
But by all means, preserve "your way of life". It's what you're good at.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
"Simply carpet bomb the entire country and finish it with a few well placed nukes....blah blah" wow - thank you so much for your helpful advice. I'm sure we're all more enlightened for it. A 12 year old could come up with a better "we could just blast them into... " rant, and they'd probably throw in some cool machine gun noises - you know, like from Terminator 3, dude. Now what did mummy say about staying up late?
What amazes me is that Americans think they can kill other people, but no one would ever, ever be so negative as to kill them. That's amazingly insensitive.
at 6000 mph I would think there would be no need for stealth
Don't worry about the U.S. government invading Britain. France is next, not you. The logic is there. The French can be annoying, and France has deep-water ports, so the U.S. Navy can get involved. Besides, it is no fun invading all those really poor countries. And, while we are reforming the French government and culture, we can eat all that fine French food.
Tax payer money goes to these DOD and NASA projects. They are basically protectionist practices to help prop-up the high tech industry since they don't ever spend that kind of money on R&D. Why should they since the public flips the bill, the spin-offs are given to industry which makes a ton of cash on them and the tax payer never gets REALLY compensated. Also, military advances aren't needed for security or defense when your the #1 military superpower. There's no one to defend against. They're bascally used to maintain dominance, terror and crush any country that wants independence and emancipation from US imperialist rule. Usually defenseless but important countries.
The Japanese had a more efficient way when they clobbered us in electronics. An ministry was set up to study where government funds should go to prop-up their electronics industry. Instead of wasting it on DOD and NASA programs and then hoping there is enough of a spin-off for high-tech.
Don't let the door hit your fat American ass on your way out.
I say pull out right now, and tell them if they rebuild to be asshats... we will be back... but not as police.
Couldn't agree more. So far it doesn't seem like most iraq's are totally against the US being there but there are a LOT of people. But if this changes we are in deep shit.
Hmmm... Pie...
Your comment painfully illustrates your complete ignorance. Any REAL problems NASA has can be directly tied to knee jerk whiners like you.
I bet your a Democrate.
Nah, just a sympathtic vibration inside your drains.
I thought BA had stopped flying the Concorde? If not, Real Soon Now.
Actually, I lived for a coupla years in Caversham, across the river from Reading. Its wheels were still down when it went over my house. Loudest damn airplane I've ever heard.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Even if Bush lied to us, mislead us, and only wanted the oil, this still does not change the fact that justice was done for the Iraqi people.
We have every reason to believe that within 10 years the Iraqi people will be overwhelmingly more free and significantly better off than they would have in 10 years had Sadaam remained in power.
If Bush did lie, mislead, and act only for personal gain, then he was wrong for having done so.
But that does not change the fact that justice was done for the Iraqi people.
If Bush has acted in this way, and for these reasons, then the greater good has been brought about by an evil and corrupt man.
The thousands of people who died (including Sadaam's soldiers) did not deserve to die, but the nation of people terrorized, tortured and impoverished by Sadaam's regime deserves better.
That needs of the man outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. Freedom has a high price, but it is a price that must be paid when the greater good outweighs the deserts and rights of the few.
We do believe this. The U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the first in a long string of documents agreed to by the international community that states precisely that we believe this. People have a right to be free, and it is the obligation of every one of us, in every free country in all the world, to free them.
We are advancing causes of freedom in many countries around the world.
No, we aren't doing this in other countries.
In some countries we are not doing this because war is genuinely not the most effective means to bring this about.
In some countries we are not doing this because the human costs of war would be too great.In some countries we are not taking the necessary actions and providing the necessary funding because we and our leaders are often selfish people who allow ourselves to be decieved: what we do not see, we do not have to think about.
In some countries we very probably are not taking action because there is not enough in it for us.
It is sad that this is so, but that does not change the fact that your "argument" is pitiful and does not have the force of reason or compassion
It seems that there have been very few comments about the really "big issue" behind this: Namely the interplay between science and politics. There has been a lot of preaching from the pulpit by American scientists, condemning their third world counterparts for getting involved in scientific projects which may lead to biological weapons etc, etc, etc... I find this arrogance utterly disgusting (the main reason I left physics myself).
Does it really make it better that America has WMD's and other countries do not? I think this is the height of racial arrogance to think that Americans are such superiour beings: that they know how to use this power "justly" or "righteously" and others who have this power are branded "psychopaths" etc etc. No, I think Americans are no different from any other human beings. I think they are equally evil and corrupted by power, but this is not my main point.
The point is that (contrary to what most scientists think) science and politics are inherently intertwined. From the time Galileo realised how projectiles moved, scientists have made the bombs, aimed the guns, designed the infrastracture and all the other things which provide governments and people with power. The power not only to make their own lives better, but the power to take from those who do not have the technical know-how. In turn governments provide the funds and the scientists flock like moths to a flame, unconcerned about the consequences of their actions.
I think it is time for scientists of all types and from all over the world to make a stand along roughly the following principles:
Of course everything I have written here is a utopian fantasy. So go ahead and shoot it down. But just remember that there are not my ideas. I think Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer would have at least partially agreed with all the points I made above.
The Slashdot political stance is radical Libertarian, not Liberal.
...is another man's war of liberation. I mean, have you been watching the pictures of mass graves we've been finding in Iraq?
As for the trade deficit, let me see, we send them pieces of paper, they send us cars. I like it.
Now, to your longest paragraph. Look at it like this: Europe couldn't organize enough to put down a fin-de-siecle resurgence of genocide just a few hours from Berlin. More recently, the French have gone on their own against their own EU to keep French farmers fat, dumb, and eonomically unproductive. As for the Japanese, I don't rate them at all. I mean, they've been in a recession for the last 10 years and they're government's on the verge of bankruptcy. As for the rest of the world, well, scratch Africa: it's basically Mugabe after Mugabe; the entire Muslim world exports less than Finland, after you subtract oil. Really, it would be in the world's interest to emulate the US.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to respond.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I agree with you that Saudi Arabia is a festering pustule on the backside of humanity, and that the sooner it's lanced, the better.
I don't see the President as being a Saudi stooge. I see it more like this: the Saudi's have spread the rot of Wahhabism far and wide throughout the world. I'm pretty sure the administration is leaning on the Saudis to stop contributing to terrorism. Meanwhile, the worst terrorist nations are being taken out. The day will come for a settlement with the Saudis.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
In 1959, we began development on the XB-70, which had a cruising speed of MACH 3, but ultimately gave up on the project because flight at that speed is far too unstable for something as big and as unmaneuverable as a bomber. In fact, bombers have been getting slower, not faster. The B-2 isn't even capable of MACH 1.
The more important thing here is the B-2's $1.157 billion price tag. That's for each plane, excluding the cost of development. How many B-2 bombers do you think the U.S. military has at that price? How many missions do you think they ran in Iraq? Heck, we don't even really use our B-1s all that much. There's a reason we're still mostly using B-52s, the same basic plane it was in the Vietnam war.
Obviously the hypersonic bomber looks to vastly exceed that cost in both development and in unit price. Even if they are taken into production, they will be more rare than even the B-2, and I hardly think they would change the shape of our entire military and foreign policies. That, combined with the date 2025, makes me think "yeah, so?" By then, far more important developments will come along.
Back when there was a Soviet Union we definitely supported some unsavory characters, on the basis that it's better to have a dictator we own than one they own.
Mind you, up until the ivasion of Grenada, the Soviets had been advancing across the globe. Only after Ronald Reagan rejected "containment" as a strategy in favor of active engagement did we begin to win. After his Presidency the Soviets collapsed.
Now we can turn our attention to the lesser evils.
I mean, our support of dictators may not have covered us in glory, but we're far from the 100 million - or so - deaths that can be laid at Communism's door.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
... or you would know what happens when you try to recall the bombers :-)
Anyway, on a more serious note, those hypersonic bombers would likely be drones. With a payload limited to 12,000 pounds, I can't see how they would blow up another 5 or 6,000 pounds just for a useless pilot or 2 and the associated life support system.
SNS Not Sig
Why should any other country ever appreciate old Uncle Sucker? You don't have to and you keep getting the gravy.
Just a thought, if another country is in a tight spot, who do they call? That's right, Uncle Sucker, who will spend lots of money airlifting things, and sending people and cash to help out.
God love Americans, you'll never find a group so compassionate yet hated, smart yet stupid, admired yet despised.
In a previous career I worked for Accurate Automation, who had several NASA and USAF contracts to design a Mach 5 aircraft known as LoFLYTE (Low Observable Flight Test Experiment).
In August 1996, the Times of London felt that this program was the cause of several UFO sightings over the U.K. and Belgium from 1989-1991 and printed a front page story to that effect. The Belgian Minister of Defense eventually closed the investigation of the UFO sightings by agreeing with this claim. The problem with these claims, however, was that the plane did not fly at all until December 1996, and the version that flew was an 8-foot long fiberglass aircraft with a top speed significantly below Mach 1.
One of the issues that the LoFLYTE program was designed to investigate is one that the DARPA programs will also face: How do you design an aircraft that can fly at hypersonic speeds but that can also be controlled at take-off and landing speeds?
One other thing to consider: Do you need a warhead in a hypersonic cruise missile, or will a hypersonic shockwave do all the damage you need?
They'll get my encryption algorithm when they pry it from my cold, dead hard drive.
Again, my claim, which I believe I outlined quite clearly, was that even if we don't take action in countries where we should, this is not an argument against justice having been done for the Iraqi people.
It is of course potentially the makings of a strong argument that the U.S. does not do as much as it morally ought to.
But then, why should we be surprised that a country does not always do as much as it morally ought to? Has there ever been one which has?
This is in no way excuse for this behavior, but it does illustrate nicely just how uninteresting any point you may have is: that we have moral failings is obvious of course!
And yet the press has me blinded, does it?
Which press might that be? I do not watch Fox News. I do not watch evening network news: I do not watch television unless either there is some particular important sporting event taking place, or there is a local or national emergency.
I primarily get my news from BBC online. I also regularly read a hand-picked assortment of publications which openly and very blatantly express anti-Bush opinions, as well as a hand-picked assortment of Arab and Asian-world independent online news publications which are kind enough to provide an English translation.
What's more, I did not even vote for Bush. I have never voted Republican in my life.
Are you suggesting that the BBC and an assortment of liberal-leaning news agencies are blinding me?
I assure you that they are not, but that if I were not a discerning reader they certainly would.
So, what was your question again?
Are all of our military thinkers as anachronistic? The enemy of tomorrow will operate like Hamas, not the Red Army. These bombers are pointless playthings that demonstrate a serious inability to grasp the evolving threat scenario.
Was the suffering of the Iraqi people an illusion, perhaps some mass conspiracy propogated by our representatives in Washington?
If so, they have fooled Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, two prominent international human rights investigative, overseeing, and documenting, organizations.
Both have been openly critical of the war and of some actions of the Coalition forces, for their own reasons and agendas (which they are indeed committed to, but which I do not always agree).
Shall I call them up and tell them that they have been duped?
Damn, I hope he was serious. Otherwise I'm just in a bad mood today.
Matthew
/. finds me to be 20% Troll, 80% Funny
I see this as part of an effort for the US to shuck off the need for military bases on foreign soil and "bring the boys back home", thus decreasing their need to give a flying &#^%* what the rest of the world thinks of their foreign policy. Of course I first saw this next to a story about how the US wants its current allies to deny the International Criminal Court, so maybe I'm seeing patterns here...
Freedom: "I won't!"
With the GPS-guided bombs arriving first, you won't need to hear the sonic boom.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
Who cares if there are any military applications? :-)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
When Bin Ladin got on his cell phone in the early summer of 2001, a bomber like this could have put a bomb on his butt within 2 hours. Of course, cruise missiles from the submarine that Bill Clinton had stationed in the Indian Ocean for exactly that purpose could have done the job in well under 1 hour, except that President Caterpillarbook had decided that the submarine should do something else, so that he would have a good reason to spend $Trillion on this boondoggle. No foolin', $Trillion it's gonna be. Diddly JSF is $300 billion. This thing goes back about 50 years thru the B1, B2, B-70, back to General LeMay, who was Jack D. Ripper in the movies.
Those crazy warmongering bastards. Has anything good ever come out of DARPA?
a) The British were not inclined to use force to suppress Ghandi. Other occupying powers have been quite able to do use force. Certainly the Chinese have made short work of Tibet.
b) The British were completely spent from World War II. Remember that the British buy themselves built more ships and more aircraft than the Germans did. This made their empire broke.
c) By the time of Indian Independence, the Liberals were firmly ensconced into power, and so the British leadership was morally opposed to colonialism anyway.
Bottom Line: Ghandi was lucky, and, with World War II, India might still be a British colony.
This is my sig.
All the bloodshed, all the anger,
All the weapons, all the greed,
All the armies, all the missiles,
All the symbols of your fear.
---Sting, ``Love is the seventh wave''.
Usans are so afraid that they are scary. When will they become part of the world? They will be welcome.
``L'imagination au povoir.''
I'm interested in what you mean by 'bottom line'?
Also, if I am not mistaken, the US recently sdtruck down an otherwise unanimous GA decision to give drugs to poor nations for cost.
It's like giving them money to buy things, then making those things as expensive as possible.
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I sincerely wish we could change history to get rid of clean nuclear power, if it meant we didn't kill hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians with atomic weapons.
I hope what I am saying comes across...
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92% of people polled would like to know who's doing the polling, what statistical slant has been put on the results, and who stands to gain what from the results.
I didn't know Ann Coulter read Slashdot.
Good thing she has someone to proofread her books.
Self abuse /. ing
Chastity
self abuse
self
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
True. But war has historically been a great spur to innovation (computers, rockets, etc.), and technology developed for the military often has peaceful uses. If the military can fund the expensive design and testing work on hypersonic engines, we may eventually see a mach-7 airliner.
Well?
Look at this way, what if China posted it was going to do the same thing, or North Korea? Or Iran? What do you think the US would do?
If a foriegn country was to plonk a large amount of military weapons near your border you would go apeshit. This more or less equates to the same thing for the rest of the world and we are supposed to say 'ahh lovely'?.
So get off your high horse.
As pointed out in Jane's International Defense Review a few months ago, the key point here is what happens to air defense once air assets go hypersonic. It starts looking a lot like... ballistic missile defense.
Many people, myself included, think that too much is being spent too soon on BMD, and it's certainly not ready to be deployed next year, as I think is still planned. However, you can see how tech like hypersonic drones and aircraft makes the need for advanced interception systems that much more urgent.
The only defenses against hypersonic weapons and platforms will be ballistic missile defenses. And, in accordance with the USA's $400bn defense budget, we'll be the only country with either.
If 300 million Americans donate USD$2 each, that's more noble than 16 million Hollanders donating USD$20 each? Hello? Is this brain on? Quick, go buy a lottery ticket, you might win!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
They won't tell you just how fast it goes, but one was clocked crossing Canada in much less than an hour and they start their landing approaches to Perth out over Kalgoorlie.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Have you also considered that the US isn't the only country in the world to have a terrorist attacks perpetuated against it? Other countries have been more restrained in their retaliation though.
Considering all past wars on other nations, there was extreme pains taken to avoid destroying strategic targets such as power generation stations, water reclaimation plants, amungst other targets. In fact, dispite the sounds of war, Iraqi citizens seemed to be largely unaffected unless caught directly in the middle of fire fights (noted by markets opened and filled dispite the siege occuring in and aroudn the capitol).
Well, I would say in comparison to other wars, it was much better choreographed and the media much better controlled to show only sanitised images. Maybe the reason that you think so few Iraqis died is because they decided not to count the bodies
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/bodycount.htm
The targets that they tried to avoid were more the oil refineries, etc. rather than anything else.
In fact a nuclear processing plant has been looted since the war, and large amounts of nuclear material has gone missing. This was one of the reasons that you attacked Iraq wasn't it? To stop terrorists from getting their hands on this stuff and making a dirty bomb, ironic that the it has caused the very thing that it was trying to avoid.
Maybe it's because the attack against Iraq wasn't to make the world a safer place, that was the "buricratic" reason given, as Rumsfield himself admitted. The reason was
a) to create a permenant military base in the middle east, they wouldn't be able to stay in Saudi Arabia much longer
b) Give Americans a military victory after the September 11th, and give Bush a election victory
Russia: We can destroy the entire world in 6 hours
U.S.: We can beat that.
I say pull out right now, and tell them if they rebuild to be asshats... we will be back... but not as police.
Hell, no!
You started this, now you finish it.
I, like most people in the world was against this war. The US administration pushed it through anyway.
Leaving an unstable Iraq now would be pure fucking evil. When the bushies attacked that country the administration took upon themselves the responsibility for the future of Iraq.
Now, show us that you were right, that this war would bring freedom, stability and prosperity (as advertized) not only to the US but to Iraq.
Show us that this was not Hitler invading Poland...
The communist morons that infest this place don't understand that strategic nuclear weapons are deterrence for war. The standoff between the USSR and the USA in a MAD scenario basically prevented the advent of WW3.
While not to have any need for strategic supremacy would be ideal, you are right in your idea, buy in is voluntary based on need for a supporting infrastructure. Being "rich" now is a Porsche here. Being rich in a post apocalyptic scenario may be as simple as having a tanker truck of gasoline. The guy with the Porsche doesn't want that. The rich willingly pay more taxes (progressively) in the US (and in most places) because they have more to lose, especially if the system breaks down. WRT the US and the world, the same is true.
If the US were to lie down now, and allow dolts like China or other retards to catch up in any real capacity, the end of the world as we know it would be eminent. Most pseudo enlightened in-college or fresh out of college radical morons who want to drastically re-invent the US's horribly flawed but arguably "least-worst" system will willingly experiment with the said system in place in the US dangerously to do what's "right."
Luckily, more seasoned players are on the court. Just as a in the game of chess, there are clear strata between mediocre hacks such as those who see the US as evil, and those who are grandmasters, who can step back from the daily news and appreciate the larger, 50-100 year picture and see the massive, rapid and wonderfully positive strides things have taken for the better. They see more moves into the future.
The other thing people don't get is unilateralism is universal, and all those than can afford to be unilateral, will be. People discredit the US for being protectionist, unilateralist, etc. But they take the AIDS funding, the military aide, weapons systems. When the AIDS vaccine is finished they'll take that. The leaders of China (Hu Zintao and more seriously Zhang Zemin) will take a Boeing 767 while plotting nasty things against the US. People are severely jealous of the successful. I'll admit to having a tinge of commie in me when the fat cats at WorldCom got indicted and carted off. But only because of jealousy regarding their wealth.
That's the hardest thing for people to admit. The self loathe when they hate the successful simply because they are not.
We live in a world rife with hypocrisy, and it starts with these left leaning maniacs going to bat for the "little guy" - and the "poor countries" when they are relatively kingpins in the world (anyone with a personal computer is basically a kingpin in terms of wealth relative to everyone else in the world - that would be most all Slashdotters.) and love the wealth and convince of a western society but piss all over it at every given opportunity.
While everyone is complaining, read a little. In the Guardian article, it mentions how DARPA is looking at this as a future project down the road. How far? 25 YEARS!!!!!! Dont talk about wasting money when they are just looking at something that MIGHT be feasable in the future. They arent trying to do it now. It seems pretty reasonable to consider the options that might happen. Long term vision like that is what we need. Look at where we were 25 years ago? 1978, personal computer, Internet? It is very appropriate and right that the government looks at the future to see what might be coming. Remember, if we dont make it, someone else might. At least this way, we are more advanced, or equal to other countries. This might sound bad but it is better than the Europeans that couldnt really fight a war even if they wanted to. Anyone else hear about the Spanish troops that died when their RENTED plane crashed? They dont even have proper transport. Better that we are prepared than unprepared. If someone attacked Europe, what would they do? Launch the diplomats? They dont have much else.
Spends more on aid to other nations and their people? Well, living in a country that is on the receiving end of such "aid" I think qualifies me to tell you that such aid never comes without strings attached. Desperate nations like mine have no choice but to accept such "foreign aid", and along with it are forced to enter into disadvantageous treaties, having military bases built on our territory (and all the political, societal, and environmental problems that entails), taking it in the behind from every multinational corporation that comes our way, and seeing our natural resources drained until we're sucked dry. Yeah, aid indeed.
Nah, the US is just like any other customer, it won't give without first taking.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
IMO, these weapons are a good idea, since they'd save the lives of our troops (ie we wouldn't have to risk our pilots or infantry as much)... but god forbid the liberals admit that the lives of our troops are worth saving. Anyways. I see where this will end up... Awards to Inanimate Tungsten Rod for distinguished service! -begin off topic rant- Oh, and to all you liberals: If you hate the US so much, why don't you move to some 3rd world country like, say, Iran? Or perhaps South Africa? Or some other hick country with no TP. Take your pick. There's a lot of em out there. Oh, right. If you left you'd have to sell your nice house and car, and give up ever going to McDonalds to stuff your face again. If the US were anywhere near as authoritarian as you people would like us to believe it is, then you wouldn't have the freedom to wave your signs around under people's noses and burn flags. Instead, the local milice would call in the gunships and mow you down. Kind of the same thing that would happen, in say, Iraq at this time 5 years ago. As for the UN... I lost all faith in them when they stalled and stalled and stalled on Iraq. Iraq had the damn WMDs... the Kurds sure didn't gas themselves. If Bush had faked the WMD evidence, what would have stopped him from bringing in and planting some of our WMDs for the US to 'find'? Instead, the US is continuing to search Iraq for these weapons, even though the slim results so far are proving a major embarrasment to us. -end off-topic rant- Berrik
Current karma: Terrible (due to mods without a sense of humor)
Aurora is the mythical project that explains the "Thursday afternoon sonic booms" heard over the California coast for over a decade, as well as numerous sightings over the oilrigs in the North Sea as diamond shaped craft get in air refueling...
It sounds to me like this is the first step in opening it up to a production-level system where they can publically use the craft without fear of identification/national security concerns.
This is just what happened with the early stealth and B2 prototypes. A lot of skunkworks development was turned into a nearly-ready plane for purchase by Congress.
I wonder just how far advanced the prototypes have become?
Pimping my Karma Whore since 1847.
But by all means, preserve "your way of life". It's what you're good at.
How about paying your own damned bills for a change?
But by all means, preserve your "way of life", which involves instituting socialist nanny states, then mooching off the United States when you need help.
It's what you're good at.
Yeah I guess I was just thinking how happy the US gov't would be to not need a presence in Saudi Arabia (or Turkey, another human rights hell-hole ally which serves to make them look like hypocrites).
Freedom: "I won't!"
Well, you can't be a complete ape because you seem to have mastered the skills necessary to post on /.
That said, any review of world history since 1776 will have to place the US on the side of the angels, and the Europeans in hell.
IMHO, you're the one with the amazing and dangerous way of think(ing).
668: Neighbour of the Beast
The whole project goes under the acronym Falcon - Force Application and Launch from the Continental United States
Does anyone else see something wrong with that acronym??? Like it doesn't spell FALCON, is spells FALCUS!!!
When some documents leaked last year about the pentagon and mini-nukes a high profile officer of the US armed forces said that the mini-nukes were only the least interesting part about the document. It also talked about making the Poseidon system (submarine based ICBMs) more accurate.
Making them more accurate (supposedly to use smaller nukes, because at the moment their accuracy is very low, but that doesn't matter with a fat nuke) to strike within a ten meter radius or less would enable them to refit the poseidon with conventional warheads.
If this could be achieved within the next five years it would enable the US to launch a ballistic missle attack on any target in the world within 30 minutes. Cruise missiles still need to be in range, but with as many ICBM submarines as the US has floating around one could spread them around the globe and make this possible globally.
Combined with the "Star Wars" program that the Bush administration restarted, which includes the capability to launch weapons in space against targets both in space and on the earth I don't see how such an expensive plane would be worthwhile. Maybe the idea that the launch vehicle could be reused and only the payload would be dropped (kind of like the space shuttle) is attracting the attention (and the money) of the DARPA here. But remember that the huge developing costs of the original design of the space shuttle, which were sliced several times, brought out a much less cost effective solution.
But on the other hand, military and funding works in a different league than things like common sense and budget cuts or national deficit.
This looks a bit like the Rockwell XB-70 Supersonic Bomber "Valkyrie", which was shelfed as well in favour of ICBMs. I suppose the hypersonic bomber will go the same way.
"There is no B3 bomber!"
"I know that, I just said that!"
Shoot. Leave it to the Pentagon to ruin a perfectly good movie...
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Also, if I am not mistaken, the US recently sdtruck down an otherwise unanimous GA decision to give drugs to poor nations for cost
Translation: A decision to take drugs from drug companies (whom I would assume would have no say in the matter). Any time a government (or government-like body) gives something to someone, it has to take it from someone else. People like to conveniently forget that sort of thing.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
If 300 million Americans donate USD$2 each, that's more noble than 16 million Hollanders donating USD$20 each?
Who said anything about "noble"? This isn't some sort of "nobility contest". Why is personal sacrifice being held as the standard of value here? Which country is helping more in your example, the one that gives $600M or the one that gives $320M? Case closed.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
batteries arent a real problem ...these are low power RF devices with a builtin motor (for hopping). i'd imagine they can power up the motor and use it to recharge with very low power bursts of RF (think palmpilot) allowing batteries to run the system for a month or so, while the motor recharges them.
(1) If we don't have to arrange for overseas bases, we don't need allies.
(2) This thing brings near-ICBM speed to conventional weapons, or "tactical" nukes.
Some trigger-happy type could take advantage of (1) and (2) to obliterate someone before consulting with other leaders, or ensure they've got the right location. "Shoot first, ask questions later" is bad policy, but this enables it.
And remember, other nations and non-governmental entities could have it. At best, a useless arms race; at worst, a more dangerous world. My vote is to pass.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Aren't you Americans going to have to let out your drug victims - that is, the people in prison - so they can earn the tax needed to buy all this stuff? I don't HaVe A dRuG ProBLem Oh, and if you're talking to Americans, you better spell it LEGALIZING. uk has their own drug program for this
brrrrrrrrrppp 'Ey Homer...Why don't girls like me?
Personal sacrifice is the only realistic standard. After the flood, no raindrop wants to accept responsibility for causing it, but after the drought no raindrop wants to accept responsibility for not having fallen, too. In short, a country is made up of its individuals, and in order to comapre them fairly you would have to lop the USA up into 16-million-person chunks and compare each of those (at $32M each) with the Netherlands ($320M) to see whose generosity made the most difference.
.nl, they would give $7B versus our hypothetical United States of America at $600M. If they donated at the same rate each, the EU would still raise 15% or so more than the USA and by your definition be more useful.
Also, the one that gives $600M will almost invariably insist that it takes the form of American goods delivered by American service companies and/or military to the subset of the dependents that strikes Americans as being easiest to deliver to; the one that gives $320M will be more likely to distribute it through locals in whatever form and manner best suits said locals - which will in the end prove an order of magnitude more effective.
To turn it around and put it an an absolute-size footing so that you can understand that America loses even from your own perspective, if the United States of Europe (EU) donated at half the rate of our hypothetical
Should I mention that Western Australia has a single shire which is bigger than Texas? That might make us a better country by your standards. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
In real life it will be considerably higher. And yes, I agree that they're a bastard to refuel and maintain generally - but they are otherwise peerless. I like an aircraft that can outfly missiles.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
There is quite a large difference between giving something away and selling it for cheap.
The intention of that bill was to provide drugs at cost, not for free.
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