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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."
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
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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.
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.
The real things is bombers are recallable.
Launch, hold at the predesignated point. If the situation resolves itself, come home. If not, go forward and blow something up.
Once you get past 'launch' with an ICBM, it is out of your hands.
There are no clear cut ways to make "good relationships" with certain countries. All you will ever do is piss them off no matter what actions you take. BTW, the USA doesn't care to make enemies unless said countries begin to obtain the ability to make nukes. I just wish our leaders could have come out and said that instead of exaggerating claims about WMDs to justify an invasion.
yeah but if we are dealing with a state that backpedals once we actually launch, we dont need to be dealing with them anyways. Its like you get ready to checkmate someone after they've set themselves up and they go "oh wait let me make another move" once you are fucked you are fucked.
Unfortunately, we live in a world of arbitrary morals (Not everyone reads the same holy book... some of us don't read any), and 'who is right' is usually 'who is left (alive)'
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
I thought the hopping mines story was the most interesting today.
A minefield full of networked anti-tank mines that can leap up to 30 yards per hop (and up to 100 hops per mine). You can't lay down a strip of C4 and clear a path. The mines decide as a group what configuration is best and then move to fill the gap. It would be incredible to watch.
...
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.
Yeah thats makes a big difference.. Because you know its percentage that counts and not the amount given. Kinda like if luxemburg gave 2% of their GDP($20 billion) and the US gave 1%( $10.082 trillion). Luxemburg is preventing more people from starving because percentage is what counts not the actual aid amount.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
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
Then there is the clearing of these mines after a war, it would be one hell of a job to clear a whole minefield of these.
Yea but the TNT radiates it's energy in all directions from a volume that isn't as concentrated as a kinetic weapon.
All of the kinetic energy in a titanium rod by contrast would be directed on the target. It would penetrate a hardened target extremely well.
If TNT worked was effective against armored targets wouldn't modern tanks use explosive shells rather than depleted uranium darts????
I'm not sure that's fair. I'm sure these aren't planned to replace the manned bomber fleet, but rather to provide a new alternitive for certain things.
Carriers provide the ability to project power and do so well, but they only cover a small circle on the surface of the Earth. Our forward bomber bases similarly have a fairly small footprint, though bigger than a carrier. This still leaves huge portions of the world out of US reach. While an extended bomber mission with in-air refueling brings these areas into range, such a mission is expensive and very rough on the pilots.
The other side of this option is the balistic missile. ICBMs and MRBMs are both very accurate weapons, though AFAIK they do not approach the accuracy of the guided munitions we've seen our government cooking off in Iraq recently. Accuracy aside, however, people see a ballistic inbound and tend to get jumpy. Doubly so if it's launched from the United States or the former Soviet Union.
A hypersonic bomber allows the kind of responce time an ICBM exhibits (ok, a bit longer) while not encouraging everyone and their brother to whip out the 2,000,000 sunblock. A small contingent of these weapons would allow limited airstrikes on specific and high priority targets. A larger number would allow a massive projection of power at a moments notice.
A lot of this depends on what the pricetag is on these things. If Boeing can churn them out for $250 Million to $500 Million I think they'll be a valuable asset. If they come with a price tag like the B-2 Spirit maybe we need to rethink these things.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
No, I don't think the X-33 was a prototype for this project. The technologies you want for a launcher (which accelerates) and a "cruiser" (which hangs around at one speed inside the atmosphere) are
too dissimilar. Airbreathing is more useful for one,
but at the expense of worse thermal control issues.
And neither one of these really want to use hydrogen
as fuel.
(currently testing something about signatures here)
WTF?!? There was no aerospace boom in the mid 90's. It was a famine in the aerospace industry. Were you there??
Its a difficult question to entertain but, should you place a disarm code in the mines? It allows for easy collection and safety and whatnot, but it would be difficult to stop the mines from being comprimised and turning what was expected to be a closed front into a one sided slaughter.
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Open Source Sysadmin
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.
"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.
Well, we tried giving money away to make friends (Europe after world war two, Egypt, etc.) That didn't work very well either, considering most of them hate us too...
Actually, it worked great. The problem is that we also gave money to people like the Shah of Iran and Suharto (and Israel). And they loved us. Its the poor bastards that had to suffer under those despots because of US military aid that hated us.
The French are the French, but the rest of Europe generally loved us until the 1990's. I think it says much about their loyalty to call friend a nation that that massacres women and children (Mai Lai, Vietnam), assassinates democratically elected leaders (Allende) and installs murderous dictatorships in their place (Pinochet). (And mind you, these are not isolated incidents either.) Hell, our enemy in WWII, Germany, pretty much supported us whenever we asked for it, until Gulf War II.
Has it occured to your tiny intellect that perhaps human beings are capable of a difference of opinion? That maybe they didn't agree to help invade Iraq this time because it was merely an oil grab by the US? That muslims and latinos who get boned in the ass by the US are not going to be our friend?
With much hubris, you state that the key to international success is to make a smoldering crater of any nation that opposes us. Yet somehow, you don't consider the cost to American lives, or our prosperity, or how our living standard has gone to hell. Before the nineties, when did we have to worry about dying in a war, getting on a plane, or having a bomb go off where you live? Or become "disappeared" by the FBI/OHS. Who feels safer now that our boys are getting shot in Iraq, thanks to your philosophy of kick ass and kill, causing a record recuitment drive for Al Queda, and pushing Iran and N. Korea to produce nukes in order to get the US to back off? How is it that living worse than we did in the past is preferable because we can make our enemies more miserable?
The world has disagreed with the US before, Vietnam being the famous example. Their actions were no different than what they did this year. The difference is, as much as LBJ was a hick warmongerer, he wasn't a pinhead like GWB. They recognised the benefit of having allies, even if they didn't always support the US. LBJ and the media didn't retaliate against Europe (or Canada) and didn't invade France for withdrawing from NATO. Nor did they whine like bitches and maintain emnity with allies with spiteful actions. Perhaps, instead of acting like a petulant child, we should act in a manner that adults act when dealing with other people. This includes making nice with people we don't like, not shooting every drug user on the block (because it could be someone else's kid), and moderating our actions after taking a look at the BIG picture. It will put us in a better situation when China decides it needs to kick some ass to get some respect. And trust me, they aren't going to roll over like Iraq.
So, in a choice between my tax dollars going to Pierre or Mustapha so they can piss it away and still hate us, or spend it on nice, shiny galvanized canisters of whoop-ass (which employs a bunch of smart folk in this country to design and build) I know which way I'm going to vote.
Yeah, just make clear you'd sooner piss on Jesus than take his advice.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
But when they receive the encrypted signal they can decrypt it and check whether it was the disarm code.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"