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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
Check out article four of this treaty.
--
Freeper Logic
In any case, B-52s are more than good enough for the kind of wars they've been fighting lately.
Yes, lately. What sort of action will be needed in 25 or 50 years? The B-52 fleet is scheduled to fly well into the 2030's. A lifespan of 80 years or so. There needs to be a follow on aircraft of some sort.
This is one possibility.
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
The idea is to avoid having to lug the bombers all over the world along with bombs, crew, mechanics, medics, blah blah blah.
B-52 are old work horses, but to get them moved around and ready to go take some time. Having all these new bombers stationed in say some corn field in Nebraska would remove all this. 24/7/365 ready to go whereever they want to go.
This almost sounds like the Aurora project that does not exist
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
I should hope it has built hypersonic aircraft. Otherwise there's been a huge conspiracy to mislead the public, and that concorde thing must be a hoax too.
Hypersonic is five times the speed of sound. The Concorde is supersonic only. Although the x-15 has been acknowledged as a hypersonic test platform it was:
A. A rocket
B. A test aircraft flown by NASA
To date there are no known flying hypersonic aircraft. Although there are a few test platforms for various airframes and engines (ramjets, wedge shapes, waveriders, etc) I know of no flying hypersonic aircraft that is public.
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.
Quote: "Perhaps you'd care to name a nation that spends more on aid to other nations and their poeple than the USA does?"
oh oh let me!
Saudi Arabia gives a greater percentage of its gross national product to foreign aid that any other nation in the world. Following Saudi Arabia is Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Even countries like Luxembourg give 2x that of the United States. Per capita we spend less on forign aid than any of these countries. So what's so special about us? These countries are certainly not economic power houses but still manage to find the generosity to provide more of their money to forigners.
In addition, these are not accurate weapons. With a nuclear payload, 10 miles off target is close enough.
The published circular error probability of a Minuteman is 100 METERS, not 10 miles. In other words, they are pretty accurate.
10 miles is nowhere near enough for a nuclear weapon. Depending on the target, 100 meters is what you need.
See here for some more reasonable data on nuclear damage.
Oh, btw... otherwise I agree that Minutemen aren't the right thing for this job - too expensive.
The only good weather is bad weather.
How about almost everyone?
Right, sure.
Kinetic weapons have the possibility to deliver effective yields greater than any of our current chemical devices.
1 ton of TNT yields around 10^10 J.
You, accelerated to 1 km/sec, will yield approximately 100(kg)*(1000 (m/sec)^2/2 = 5*10^7 J on impact. Not even close.
Well for one those ICBM's are enormously expensive. A single minuteman costs 7$ million dollars. For another we just don't have that many of them. IIRC, there are roughly 530 or so Minuteman III ICBM's in the US and about 50 of the newever 10 warhead Peacekeepers. That's all (discounting SRBM's). Replace those Nuke warheads with regular warheads (and the minuteman I isn't mirv'ed) and that's not alot of firepower.
Worse yet, then you take away warheads that "need" to be there for the US's Nuclear Triad. Furthermore, you launch an ICBM over russia (remember to get to the middle east it is going to have to fly over either russia or china) and try to convince them that it isn't targeted at them.
The Federation of American Scientists should have the info you're looking for...it may take some digging...their info-base is huge...
Uhh...Norway? Japan? While the US may have the largest total right now (they didn't in 1999 or 2000), figure it out in terms of spending per capita, and the US isn't so hot.
S Ai d.asp?so=d2k#oda
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/U
I have a girlfriend whose name doesn't end in
Here ya go, as of 3 years ago.
And here as of Jan '99.
Well, you _can_ win by just dropping bombs, but the price is pretty horrific.
That depends on your definition of 'win'. The Vietnamese would not see the US as winners, nor would Laos, Cambodia, Korea, Afghanistan and the jury is still out in Iraq but I doubt the US can win that one either. Killing lots of people is, more often, likely to lose the war. The only way to win is to earn the popular support of the people and that is something that the US has yet to learn how to do. Ghandi did it without an army and he beat the British when they were the strongest force on the planet.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
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
Actualy the US spends suprising little on aid given its GDP. Most other high income nations are far more charitable. The idea that the US spends more on aid than anyone else is one our cultural myths. You can see a chart on US aid as a percentage of GDP and federal budget. This year about 0.106% of the GDP will be used on aid, but 40 years ago in 1963 0.526% or close to 5x as much. Or viewed from the federal buget perspective this year about 0.55% of the budget, in 1963 about 2.83%. I agree
The solution is not a pause button. Gulf War II took over a year to orchestrate. Hell, it takes months to build up a forward force before making an attack. You could see it coming months in advance.
No, this country needs educated, responsible citizens that understand the consequences (political, economic, and lives) of military action, and the will to look to alternate sources of information, now that the US media is owned by a few commercial military conglomerates.
It makes Christ's Second Coming a more likely event.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
No, the Americans beat the British when they were the strongest force on the planet. And in 1812 when they were weakened and looking to maybe pick on a disorganized fledging country they used to own, we beat them again.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
point taken, but the ABM treaty did have a withdrawal clause, given six-month notice, which the US did give. So the treaty was not actually broken. no idea if there is a similar clause in any treaties related to ICBM's.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
There's a US aircraft carrier within three days steam of any littoral point on the surface of the earth at any given time.
Problem is, once you get there, you need overfly rights from those pesky countries in the way. If your aircraft is in space, outside the national exclusionary zone, you can go wherever you please, and bomb the shit out of whomever you please, at will.
Derek
I'd rather send Glenn into orbit for one last hurrah, than continually spend for that orbiting turkey we audaciously call Space Station "Alpha". Remember folks, the Russians had Mir up there for 15 years before the mold did it in...
Seriously, we pay for life support and supplies for 3 astro/cosmonauts that serve as nothing more than a maintenance crew for a science platform! No plans for making this a stepping stone to the moon, or for space manufacturing. Too little crew for any serious work. If you want to look at a budget poorly spent, look at the ISS - it ALMOST makes the Los Angeles Red Line debacle look good by comparison.