US Military Seeks Hypersonic Weaponry

Dr. Eggman writes "In an interview with the Star-Telegram, the Air Force's chief scientist, Mark Lewis, talks about the USAF's latest research direction. The service is working on hypersonic missile and bombers for the purposes of reconnaissance and attack. In response to Chinese and Russian anti-satellite developments, the Air Force plans to develop weapons capable of sustained travel at Mach 6 to allow them to deploy against and take out anti-satellite launch sites before the enemy can fire their missiles. Furthermore, should the US spy satellite network be brought down, the Mach 6 recon flight systems would be capable of filling in. Air Force officials hope to deploy a new interim bomber by 2018, followed by a more advanced, and possibly unmanned, bomber in 2035." We've discussed on a number of occasions the scramjet technology that would power such vehicles.

Comments

Dead before you hear it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, Pynchon in his Gravity's Rainbow frequently made the point that the V-2 was an especially inhumane weapon because, falling faster than the speed of sound, it killed you before you even knew it was coming.

Re:Dead before you hear it coming

[Ykant]

Funny, that seems rather the most humane possible way of obliterating someone. After all, as you said, they don't even know it's coming. I might call it the least *sporting*, though...

Re:Dead before you hear it coming

[khallow]

Uh, I didn't know there was a humane way to kill people with military hardware. I must know more.

Re:Dead before you hear it coming

[CodeBuster]

I think that you have it exactly backwards. For example, one of the primary goals of the Geneva conventions, other than laying out the rules for treatment of POWs, was to ensure that only weapons which deliver a quick and certain death, with the minimal amount of suffering, were used in warfare between signatories. This is why weapons such as the crossbow and others not deemed lethal enough were banned because they caused more agonizing deaths too frequently to justify their use in the face of better available weaponry (i.e. the only reason they would be chosen over a standard rifle would be to increase the suffering of the enemy which was not a valid reason under the agreement).

Re:Dead before you hear it coming

[greyhueofdoubt]

How is that different from any other way of dying in modern warfare?

Bullets, bombs, missiles, grenades, lasers, modern cannons, etc.: You will be dead before you know what's coming.

Arrows, poison gas, mortars, knives, crowbars, flames, etc.: You may have a split second or so to understand what is about to happen to you. Then you die.

No fair calling out radar or other sophisticated sensing systems, here. You could know that a V2 was coming through intel or visually or through crude radar even during WWII. You didn't have much time, no, but RF signals travel much faster than a V2. Even then: If you are the target coordinate of pretty much any modern weapon, you are on the fast track to fine-pink-mist-ification.

War is hell. Nothing can change that. Killing has become our most efficient national product. From the standpoint of a potential victim, I think I'd rather be instantly killed than mortally wounded so that I can spend a few days in agony before I die and my blood and organs are infected beyond use to anyone else.

  Frankly, I don't want to see the V2 or missile or bomb coming for me. I want either an early warning system that would allow me enough time to have a chance of survival (like we have already, the phalanx or CIWS- it has saved my ass); or else I want to go from a state of stupefied boredom to dead in the time it takes a fast explosive shockwave to dissociate my neurons.

There, I said it. Call me a coward, but I've actually dealt with the whole idea of staring death in the eye, and it is over-rated.

-b

Re:Dead before you hear it coming

[SETIGuy]

Bullets, bombs, missiles, grenades, lasers, modern cannons, etc.: You will be dead before you know what's coming. Actually, the bullets from small arms are designed to wound a large fraction of those they hit rather than kill them. That's one reason military rounds are typically full metal jacket rather than soft point. Soft point bullets expand or fragment upon impact and deposit more of their energy in the body. Military rounds are often designed to pass through the body with little expansion.

There is a logical reason for this. If you instantly kill an enemy soldier, you've removed one soldier from the battlefield. If you wound an enemy soldier, you've removed the wounded soldier and the two who are carrying him to safety from the battlefield and also terrified anyone within earshot. You've also increased the number of vehicles needed to carry the wounded, the number of hospitals, doctors and nurses required, and the overall cost of the battle. It's cold, heartless logic, but logic none the less.

Black Helicopters

[explosivejared]

I don't get it. If the government has a secret database of information on everyone in the world, including enemy personnel, and they have black, stealth helicopters waiting to attack anywhere in the world at a moment's notice, why all the nonsense about hypersonic attack craft?

Re:Black Helicopters

[Mr2cents]

Because The military industry think they can sell it to congress. And I have to admit, they have come up with a nice threat to make it sellable.

Re:Black Helicopters

[explosivejared]

Well since you and the mods have replied seriously to what was a light-hearted joke, I'll respond seriously to you. Having a potent strike capability that nigh instantaneous (as in a few hours) is pretty handy to have for merits that are obvious. I don't buy the whole satellite warfare line. Once we start blowing up satellites, then the orbitals become unusable. So barring a mad scientist destroy the world scenario, I don't believe satellite warfare is a real threat. It would be like poisoning a well that you drink from as well as the enemy.

Re:Black Helicopters

[eln]

Because, there is a government agency called the WCGI (Wicked Cool Gadgets Initiative) which is responsible for developing kickass technology for the military. The charter of this agency is simply to "develop the most awesome, wicked cool gadgets possible". If they can come up with something that sounds really sweet, they'll put money into developing it regardless of whether or not anyone needs it. If the tech is cool enough, the military will find some way to use it.

Re:Black Helicopters

[LoofWaffle]

It would be like poisoning a well that you drink from as well as the enemy.
Which is actually OK if you've developed an immunity to Iocane powder.

Aurora?

[urcreepyneighbor]

Is the Aurora finally coming out of the shadows?

It's hysterical

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Seeing the picture of the prototype being dropped from a 50 year-old B-52. And the design is 60 years old! They just don't build 'em like that anymore.

Re:It's hysterical

[dafoomie]

The B-52 will likely outlast it, too. Its planned to be in active service until the 2040s.

Re:It's hysterical

[Odin The Ravager]

Actually, the planes themselves aren't that old. Every so often (ten years, IIRC), they strip everything out of the planes, and rebuild them from scratch (same as pretty much every aircraft)

HVM

[Missing_dc]

Didn't we develope Hyper Velocity Missiles back in the early 80s? No payload, they killed by traveling at mach8. I wanted one as a kid.

Wasting resources?

[bogaboga]

I wish I could say that this is not wasting resources, but it is. All these plans would not be that necessary if the USA kept out of other countries' business. But we will not leave them alone.

There are greater threats to USA's security than these mach 6 planes will address. Things like terror are far worse. Imagine six 9-11's on our [critical] infrastructure.

These plans also assume that Russia and China are sitting idle. Once again, we shall be surprised just like we were when Russia put into service, a nuclear capable missile with independent, multiple war-heads. This made our missile shield obsolete.

This confirms to me that my president and his administration are just incompetent.

Re:Wasting resources?

[StaticEngine]

Imagine six 9-11's on our [critical] infrastructure.
Wait, do you want me to imagine 5466, or -12?

Re:Wasting resources?

[IndustrialComplex]

Imagine six 9-11's

I tried to, but I couldn't figure out what part of the pentagon the 6th would hit.

Re:Wasting resources?

[bigdavex]

Things like terror are far worse. Imagine six 9-11's on our [critical] infrastructure.

The 9-11 attacks were horrible for the people actually involved, but they're really, really small compared to a nuke going off in a city. Terrorism is bad, but it's not a threat to our nation's survival.

Re:Wasting resources?

[Dr. Eggman]

Aircraft capable of sustained speeds of Mach 6 doesn't just have to have military purposes. This research could be applicable well beyond, in space exploration and more. As a launch veichle, a reusable hypersonic design is one of NASA's prime goals. Materials capable of withstanding the forces present at Mach 6, and even more so, for sustained periods of time could bring great advances in material sciences and result in stronger commercial airplanes, enhance the durability of electronics, or at the very least provide materials more capable of dealing with extreme friction. Military spending just happens to be one of the easier ways to get approval for a range of applicable technologies.

Re:Wasting resources?

[Waffle Iron]

However, we do know that if you take our current healthcare problems, and try to bandaid on a fix like national healthcare, we will end up with some beast of a system that costs more and provides less.

Funny how you think that you "know" that, given that we're essentially the only developed country that doesn't provide some form of national health care, we pay almost twice as much for healthcare as the next most expensive country, and even with all that money we're spending, we're nowhere near the top of the list of healthiest or longest living populations.

Re:Wasting resources?

[cdrguru]

Funny that the US is the only country with a healthcare system that spends 90% of its resources on the elderly - specifically in the last five years of life. The rest of the world seems to take the attitude that old people die, so shut up and die.

Comparisons about what country is the "healthiest" is pointless - everyone else long ago figured out that if the government was going to pay they weren't going to get neonatal intensive care or transplants for 70-year-olds. Apparently it was decided that was an OK bargain. Except in the US and a few other places. The result is oldsters come to the US for care they can't get and can't pay for in their own countries.

Funny, the AARP seems to be behind the move to get the government paying for medical care. Their members are the ones that should be the most interested in making sure the situation in other countries is not repeated in the US but with a massive PR campaign the likely outcome isn't being discussed.

Re:Wasting resources?

[Red Flayer]

Imagine six 9-11's on our [critical] infrastructure.
Wait, do you want me to imagine 5466, or -12?

Wait, what?

What kind of order of operations did the teach where you learned to do algebra?

Clearly he meant 43.

Which, incidentally, is one better than the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

Re:Wasting resources?

[j. andrew rogers]

Funny how you think that you "know" that, given that we're essentially the only developed country that doesn't provide some form of national health care, we pay almost twice as much for healthcare as the next most expensive country, and even with all that money we're spending, we're nowhere near the top of the list of healthiest or longest living populations.

You are conflating demographic and environmental factors with healthcare outcomes.

If you, for example, remove non-medical causes of premature death (car accidents, homicide, etc) Americans outlive other industrialized countries. Healthcare is only a small factor in life expectancy, and average healthiness is almost completely unrelated to healthcare in the industrialized world. The environmental and demographic factors are atypically poor in the US relative to the industrialized world.

If you look at direct measures of healthcare outcomes, such as diagnostic accuracy and disease survival rates, the US leads the industrialized world by a large margin. The elephant in the room in the recent Lancet Oncology study, for example, was that cancer survival rates in the US are much higher than in any other industrialized country in the world -- about 20-40% on average depending on the country and the cancer. So in this sense, Americans are paying more but they are also receiving much more.

The real situation is that the US has terrible non-medical factors that drag down its statistics but compensates with the best average medical outcomes by a huge margin. In most of the rest of the industrialized world, you have middling to good non-medical factors and middling to poor medical outcomes. In other words, the aggregate statistics are not measuring the same thing. Since we pay the medical establishment to produce positive medical outcomes, it would seem prudent to evaluate their efficacy based on those results and not on the number of automobile accidents people are involved in.

At a minimum, it would be foolish to trash a medical system that produces results such as cancer survival rates that no other system is currently coming close to. The US system may be byzantine and inefficient, but it also outperforms the rest of the world in the key metric of medical results. Let's not throw out the baby with the bath water, at least not until a national healthcare system exists with equivalent medical outcomes.

Re:Wasting resources?

[Charcharodon]

Six 9-11's, for fuck sake more people kill themselves driving to work every year than the terorrist could do in 10 years. Wake me when something interesting happens.

Last time I checked Russia already had a nuclear capable missile with independent, multiple warheads.....twenty-five years ago.

And also last time I checked we only fuck with other countries when it is our business, Iraq our business (cleaning up the mess from GW 1), Iran yep still our business (damn revolutionaries kicked out our puppet gov't that was riding herd on all the fundamentalists), Afganastan yep again our business (we trained all those terrosist to fight the Soviets and the bastards wouldn't chill out afterwards so we're cleaning house (our mess)).

The only thing that is a waste of resources are college funds that continue to produce American hating liberal suck-ups too stupid to think for themselves and actually learn a little history so maybe they might realize that nearly all of the Bush Administration's diplomatic and policy "bunglings" that have "dragged" America down to it's current low have actually been in the works for over forty years and can just as easily be layed at the feet of many President's both Republican and Democrat.

I'm trolling for some "-1 Troll"

(This is an experiment to see exactly how much it takes to knock down ones Karma from Excellent.)

That and I'm really tired of the whiny Apple loving, Steve Jobs pole smoking, wanna be neo-hippy cosumeristic, President Bush is a bad bad man hating, brats that live off of their parents dime and then sit on /. spouting their constant dribble over how everything in the world is wrong even though they've never been farther abroad than a two week school trip to France and wouldn't have the first clue about how bad things in the really real world are and how they have absolutley nothing to do with anything the US has ever done and more to do with the ignorant fucked up societies that have populated most of the 3rd world for over the past couple of thousands years.

I'll take "-1 Flamebait" too, honestly I'm not that picky.

Re:Wasting resources?

[j. andrew rogers]

Undoubtedly, the most important "non-medical" factor is the fact that close to 1/4 of the population doesn't have proper access to the medical system in the first place, thereby exacerbating any medical problems that they have until it's too late. You can't just sweep that under the rug.

If you eliminate accidents and homicide from the statistics, Americans live longer. Period. Do you realize how radically better US healthcare would have to be for your assertion to hold up in the statistics? Direct healthcare outcomes for the average American, rich or poor, are better than the rest of the industrialized world, but not that much better. You cannot juggle the numbers to make that fact go away, and its reality is well documented in the medical journals (e.g. the recent Lancet Oncology study). The problem with Americans is demographic, genetic, environmental, and behavioral.

You can try and dodge the elephant, but it is quite large. A poor person with cancer in the US has better survival odds than a poor person in the UK's NHS. Every state in the US has a public healthcare system for the poor, incidentally, since the US Federal government has no jurisdiction in these matters. The idea that there are people without access to medical care in the US is false; most of the argument is over whether there is a more efficient way. As someone raised on free public healthcare in the US in multiple states, it never ceases to amaze me that it supposedly does not exist. This is mostly just ignorance from foreign perspectives that fail to realize that individual US States are essentially the equivalent of countries in the EU and that public healthcare is dealt with at that level of government.

Re:Wasting resources?

[Waffle Iron]

You need to provide links to back up your assertions because your numbers don't add up as far as I can tell. The CIA Factbook gives Japan 4 more years of life expectency than the USA. With the USA's 6 per 100,000 homicide rate and assuming on average a murder victim is 25 years old, that shaves 3 months off US life expectancy relative to Japan, even assuming zero murder rate in Japan. Similar math on car accidents shaves about 6 months, even assuming that nobody in Japan drives. Since I highly doubt that people in the USA are much clumsier than the rest of the world, you have yet to explain an additional 2.5 years of difference compared to my overly conservative estimates. Then you have to explain why we're paying so much more than these other countries; we ought to be living to 120 years old on average at these prices.

The fact that there may be public healthcare for the poor is irrelevant to most people, who aren't poor enough (or don't have the requisite children) to get in the plan, but don't have a pristine health history that allows them to buy individual insurance.

Face it, the thousands of privately managed risk pools, middlemen, ever-changing contracts, murky and confusing billing procedures, etc. make our healthcare system an insane, broken expensive nightmare unless you work at a large corporation. (Which is probably by design, as it creates a feudal-like system to keep corporate employees loyal at the risk of losing coverage for their families.)

I FOR ONE....

[Agent__Smith]

I for one would like to welcome our new HYPERSONIC overlords...

Re:I FOR ONE....

[Dr. Eggman]

Well I don't! He ruins my world-domination schemes enough without going into super form, let alone hyper!

via the stargazer

[User 956]

In response to Chinese and Russian anti-satellite developments, the Air Force plans to develop weapons capable of sustained travel at Mach 6 to allow them to deploy against and take out anti-satellite launch sites before the enemy can fire their missiles.

Ah yes, the Picard Maneuver.

28 year planning?

[InsaneMosquito]

It may just be me and my youth speaking, but planning out 28 years seems a little...risky. Who knows what the hell is going to happen tomorrow, let alone 28 years from now. Does anyone remember thinking "Tomorrow is going to suck" on 9/10/01? PLUS...what about technology advancements? I seriously doubt that in 28 years "stealth" will mean the same thing it does today. How can we plan out 28 years like this? (Serious question...looking for insight from someone with more experience).

Re:28 year planning?

[Coffee Warlord]

It's how military R&D works. We're using stuff now that was developed what...20 or so years ago, if not more in many cases? The life cycle of this stuff is a lonnnnnnnng time (a combination of your standard red tape and just the time it really does take to properly push out this kinda stuff).

'Course, this often causes R&D to be fighting the last war. They're developing advanced technology that would be nice now, but not always useful for the next brand of warfare.

Re:28 year planning?

[gardyloo]

I would argue this. We're not necessarily using stuff developed 20 years ago - no more than we are using "computers that were developed in the 50s." Yeah, the extremely basic concept is pretty old (yeah, our planes still fly and we still call them planes, but they are a far cry from what the Wright brothers were thinking!).

Have you seen the F-22 Raptor? Is that really that old? And yet, from the very article you referenced...



In 1981 the United States Air Force (USAF) developed a requirement for a new air superiority fighter, the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF), to replace the capability of the F-15 Eagle. ATF was a demonstration and validation program undertaken by the USAF to develop a next-generation air superiority fighter to counter emerging worldwide threats, including development and proliferation of Soviet-era Su-27 "Flanker"-class fighter aircraft. It was envisaged that the ATF would incorporate emerging technologies including advanced alloys and composite materials, advanced fly-by-wire flight control systems, higher power propulsion systems, and low-observable/stealth technology.

A request for proposal (RFP) was issued in July 1986, and two contractor teams, Lockheed/Boeing/General Dynamics and Northrop/McDonnell Douglas were selected in October 1986 to undertake a 50-month demonstration/validation phase, culminating in the flight test of two prototypes, the YF-22 and the YF-23.

On 23 April 1991 the USAF ended the design and test-flight competition by announcing Lockheed's YF-22 as the winner. It was envisaged at the time that 650 aircraft would be ordered.[6]

This is just corporate welfare

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

All these pie in the sky projects are simple ways of creating high paying white collar jobs in the home districts of powerful senators. The real serious immediate threat facing America is the possibility of a terrorist group smuggling in a low grade weapon, nuclear, biological or chemical into the country and detonating it. These hypersonic toys do nothing to protect us against such threats. But border security customs security and port security creates lots and lots of blue collar jobs at the ports and borders. Not at the home district of "bridge to nowhere" pork barrel Senators.

Regan talked about welfare queens. These hypersonic engineers are the new welfare queens.

Re:This is just corporate welfare

[noewun]

The real serious immediate threat facing America is the possibility of a terrorist group smuggling in a low grade weapon, nuclear, biological or chemical into the country and detonating it.

Actually, the chance of any of those happening is slight because of the technology required to create them. Nuclear and biological weapons, in particular, require a technological infrastructure which terrorists groups--especially the modern, non-state, distributed groups--don't have and, frankly, don't want. The insurgents in Iraq are doing fine with nothing more complicated than explosives, detonators, cel phones and RPGs. Even 9/11 was a decidedly low tech attack: hot building with big, flammable thing. Modern terrorism is about sascading system failures, and you don't need a nuke to do that. Look at the steadily declining amount of electricity available to the residents of Bagdhad to see how you can paralyze an entire city with nothing more than simple explosives and carefully chosen targets.

The real issue here is the Air Force's refusal to acknowledge that its force structure is out of step with the threats we're facing now. The Air Force wants more and more F-22s, even though the F-22 hasn't been near Iraq and Afghanistan and it won't go near them, as it's payload and loiter time are too small for close air support, which is all our pilots and aviators are doing over there. Air Force brass also continues to give short shrift to the A-10, even though it's uniquely suited to the present, and potential future, conflicts.

Take a look at the Air Force budget request for the next budget and you'll see it's stuffed full of shit we don't need. Meanwhile things we do need, like more airlift capacity, more tankers, etc., are being ignored because they don't go Mach 2. All of the services are having to adapt to the current realities. The Air Force is doing the worst job.

The other side of the issue is that the procurement system is completely broken, but that's a whole 'nother thread.

Regan talked about welfare queens.

And he was telling a lie and continued to tell even when called on it. If you want to do some research you will find that, before Welfare "Reform", the average stay on welfare was 1.9 years. Only about 5% of welfare recipients were on welfare for more than 5 years. It was actually one of the most efficient and effective social programs this country has ever undertaken.

That said, I do agree with you that the broken procurement system has enabled corporate welfare of the worst kind.

Re:This is just corporate welfare

[merreborn]

All these pie in the sky projects are simple ways of creating high paying white collar jobs in the home districts of powerful senators.

On the other hand, cutting edge military technology is what allowed us to roll over most of Iraq in a matter of weeks. Had we stopped research during the last major conflict, we'd be going in with 1970's era technology, and American fatalities would have been much higher than the 1000s.

What's more, modern research focuses on reducing civilian casualties. The weapons of yesteryear -- landmines, carpet bombing, napalm -- kill far more innocent civilians than, say, a cruise missile.

Keeping America on the bleeding edge is more than just corporate welfare. It keeps us a superpower. And yes, as you said, it also keeps senators in office, and their constituents rolling in pork.

Of course, the question of whether we *should* spend what it costs to remain a superpower is a difficult one. Lord knows no amount of technology will actually bring lasting stability back to Iraq.

Re:This is just corporate welfare

[Xest]

I'm not convinced nuclear terrorism really is a threat, a nuclear strike on US soil would result in a nuclear response by the US and even people as nutty as Osama know that whilst they've been able to hide from conventional forces they can't hide from a nuclear retaliation.

Russia is heading further and further towards it's cold war state with it's assassination of Litvinenko on British soil, it's incursion into Japanese airspace, it's buzzing of US aircraft carrier in the pacific, silencing of opposition parties in election, threat to aim nuclear weapons at Europe and the Ukraine and so on and so forth. As such I'd argue that it's not unreasonable to keep up military equipment capable of dealing with a conventional enemy like Russia as the way things are going, Russia seems quite content with the idea of pushing for a new cold war.

Re:This is just corporate welfare

[philwx]

No, the real threat is China. Not some boogieman terrorist distraction from our real problems and competitors.

This killing machine was much more obscure...

[TransEurope]

The device was called "Pluto VSLAM".

http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app4/slam.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto

It's from the 1950/60s. What a naive and stupid era.

Re:This killing machine was much more obscure...

[Digi-John]

No, i mean stupid. I see nothing awesome in the building of machine which kills everyone on the ground in it's flight path and spreading radioactive material all over it just before it's drops several nuclear warheads on it's primary target. There is nothing awesome in such a machine, except the unbelievable assholeness of it's creators.

Read the articles you linked. The "path of destruction" is created by flying only a couple hundred meters above the ground--something you would definitely avoid while over friendly territory; takeoff is done with solid fuel boosters. The wikipedia article says, "Contrary to some reports, the exhaust of the engine would not itself be highly radioactive."; the other page conflicts this with "Additionally, the nuclear ramjet continuously left a trail of highly radioactive dust, which would seriously contaminate the area below the missile." One of these is true; which is hard to tell, since atomic-haters like to basically make up danger, while nuclear supporters will downplay any real threats.

It's people who wet themselves every time the words "nuclear power" are spoken that killed cheap electricity and such things as the NERVA engine.

2035

[mo]

27 years is a long time to project for technology.
For example, Ray Kurzweil bet $10,000 that computers will have passed the turing test by 2029.
Even if you think Kurzweil is an optimistic hack, 27 years is 18 iterations of Moore's law. If that continues, we'll have computers with 200,000 cores and 32 petabyte hard drives by 2035.
I'm not saying that will happen, my point is just that it's probably not prudent to make such long-term plans wrt defense technology, because it's quite likely that technological advancements will make most of your plans obsolete by the time you get that far out.

Groovy, but will the Chinese be willing to fund it

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's going to pay for this, other than the Chinese? I doubt they'll enjoy seeing the continued armament of the USA against Chinese interests being funded with Chinese credits.

Advanced Military Systems are Great

[Phoenix666]

and their deterrent power shouldn't be downplayed.

But amidst news of new systems a lot of folks forget that the greater part of U.S. strength is so-called "soft power." Economic strength, alliances, energy security, cultural strength, and good-old fashioned good will are examples.

They are harder to develop but are also harder to fight and confer an immeasurable advantage. Building hypersonic weapons is a good thing, but it's a lot easier for your geopolitical competitors to steal the plans and copy it than it is for them to steal your alliances or international good will.

Sources of soft power aren't usually included in defense planning because areas like economic policy and cultural strength appertain variously to non-military departments or even the private sector. But they should be, because our competitors (like China) are.

That said, the United States has a lot of work to do to restore the soft power that eight years of the Bush administration has squandered. Let's hope the next administration is more astute and capable.

Re:Advanced Military Systems are Great

[SvetBeard]

Demonstating a willingness to invade an ill-behaved country (Iraq) is a form of soft power that your ideology prevents you from seeing.

I don't think you quite understand the meaning of "soft power."

From the Wikipedia article on Soft Power:

Soft power is a term used in international relations theory to describe the ability of a political body, such as a state, to indirectly influence the behavior or interests of other political bodies through cultural or ideological means.

and

Soft power . . . distinguishes the subtle effects of culture, values, and ideas on others' behavior from more direct coercive measures called hard power such as military action (hard power) or economic incentives.

"Willingness to invade" is classic hard power. Please make sure you know what you are talking about before reflexively posting a defense of whatever policy you espouse.

Re:Advanced Military Systems are Great

[onkelonkel]

So your definition of "ill-behaved" is that the country's rulers horribly mistreated some of its citizens. Tell me why this definition wouldn't apply to North Korea, Burma(Myanmar), Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Syria, Cuba or China or ....the list goes on and on. And why haven't we invaded them yet?

Re:Advanced Military Systems are Great

[DerekLyons]

Please make sure you know what you are talking about before reflexively posting a defense of whatever policy you espouse.

Advice you might consider as well.
 
 

"Willingness to invade" is classic hard power.

On the contrary. "Willingness to invade" is classic soft power - totally passive, inactive, and indirect. It's a cultural and ideological value. Of course, every so often you have to excercise hard power - and actual or positively threatened invasion to maintain the influence of the "willingness". But, that's true of every form of soft power - if you don't use hard power, the influence currency of soft power debases.
 
Another hint: Wikipedia is great if you know nothing. It's no so great to use as a reference when don't. It's an encyclopedia, not a treatise on the details of international relations.

I am so tired of stupid "leave them alone" crap

[nunyadambinness]

"All these plans would not be that necessary if the USA kept out of other countries' business."

And just exactly how is that supposed to happen? How the fuck is the LARGEST ECONOMY IN THE WORLD supposed to "keep out of other countries' business"?

"But we will not leave them alone."

Again, how the fuck is that supposed to happen? The US withdraws totally and walls itself off from civilization? Total isolationism? Not only is that not possible, it doesn't do anything about the fact that the US has resources that some country somewhere will eventually want.

What then, Mr. Waste-of-Resources? I guess you could always complain on Slashdot if they invade...

We're part of the world. All the dumbass pie in the sky wishful thinking, passed off as peacenik wisdom, doesn't change that fact. Pretending it's possible to "leave them alone" just illustrates how far removed from reality you are.

And you'll notice, all the well thought out posts listing the very real reasons why your post is stupid sit there unloved, while your steaming pile is modded up. That says it all about the quality of thought that goes into moderation these days.

Re:Itchy Trigger Finger?

[coredog64]

1) There's no way to tell exactly where it's going until it gets there. If you know that country A has missile B with range X you can guess at where its going. However, anywhere North Korea wants to send a missile is probably someplace we don't want it to go.

2) No fallout. Worst case you're looking at a small scale cleanup job that needs doing on a military base.

3) Just ask GWB how well preemptive attacks work out for the US's world image ;)

4) Not really. The additional weight required to achieve this would increase cost and/or decrease payload. In both cases another country could "head fake" an ASAT launch to force the US to move satellites out of coverage. Current satellites could move out of position slowly which is good enough for most current ASAT technologies.

5) See the ABM treaty the US signed with the USSR as why this is a really bad idea (TM).

The UK and Canada seem to do all right.

[StarKruzr]

What makes you think we can't do it as well as or better than they do?

The point flew over your head

[aepervius]

Quote : "How the fuck is the LARGEST ECONOMY IN THE WORLD supposed to "keep out of other countries' business"?

There is a difference between being the largest economy of the world, and the largest bully. Nothing in being the largest economy of the world force you to have a big army, and a big nuclear arsenal beyond what is necessary for retaliation, and certainly nothing force you to invade other country which never heard of you, and nothing force you to blackmail other country against producing cheaping anti aids drug (a pet peeve of me, international treaty allow it for emergency situation but the US blackmail a lot of country against doing this, or even retaliate). The fact is that the US seems to be quite trigger happy and forget what diplomacy is. If it was not the case, you would not have so-unhappy-ally and falling out with decades old ally. In case you don't remember you had a lot of support a few years ago before you decided to squander it into what i would call bullying Iraq. Nobody ask you to be isolationist. But sometimes, sometimes, it would be nice if you could leave people which are not disturbing you alone in their own FUCKING country. And I am not even speaking of Irak alone. Nicaragua. Chile. Panama. And so on. You are part of the world, but most of the time your extern politic amount to "do whatever we say or we crush you, crush you so bad you won't believe it".

Remember kids, respecting others [person,country] goes into a long way to get respect back. Bullying other make you a nice target. And spitting on your friend make you look like an idiot.

Re:What a waste

[blincoln]

The world is NOT literally burning under our feet. Is this kind of hysterical hyperbole the best that human beings can do?

You must have missed Lord Dread initiating phase IV of project New Order.

Re:Dead before you SEE it coming

[BobSixtyFour]

What happened to lasers? With those, you get killed at the speed of light.
Now we're only going for a bit faster then the speed of sound?

Someone's losing fucking ground here.

Crucifixion?

[spun]

Crucifixion's a doddle.

hahaha

[StarKruzr]

"They just don't realize it yet." Uh huh. They OBJECTIVELY have the best standards of care in the world and have had their programs going for decades. When are they going to "realize" it?

"230+ years of watching government fuck up everything it touches." You're absurd. Government has fucked up the military? It's fucked up the road system? Boy, I sure hate driving on that Eisenhower Interstate system, don't you? Government fucks up the sewers and sanitation? Please pull your archlibertarian head out of your ass and think.

Why are we allowing HMOs and insurance companies to make healthcare choices? Why are we allowing them to make LIFE OR DEATH DECISIONS based on the fucking profit motive? We don't do it in this country with ANYTHING ELSE life-or-death -- JUST health care because so many politicians' best buddies happen to be health care execs.

"And why, oh WHY, would you allow your government ANY hand in your healthcare choices? Doesn't it worry you that such a system can be used to punish malcontents?" No one is going to allow that. Social Security isn't used to "punish malcontents."

Here is my favorite part of your ridiculous libertarian rant: "And how come the privacy wonks famously disappear when nationalized healthcare is discussed? Doesn't it bother you that your private health information can be used for more than treatment choices?" LULZ. You honetly think this isn't happening RIGHT NOW? Why do you think the (ineffective) HIPAA was passed? Because EXACTLY this is already happening. At least with national health care some kind of democratically-driven transparency can be enforced.

Rendering the Orbitals Useless

[qbzzt]

So barring a mad scientist destroy the world scenario, I don't believe satellite warfare is a real threat. It would be like poisoning a well that you drink from as well as the enemy.

If you're about to lose a war, you do what it takes to survive and ignore the long term consequences. Life without satellites is better than life without life.

Re:Now, wait just one second

[Smoke2Joints]

Please step down from your high horse for a moment - every nation has a right to have an army. If theirs is somewhat bigger than yours in some way, that does not make them automatically your enemy. By Xenu, the US is one of the most aggressive and militant countries in the world, should we (the rest of the planet) consider you an enemy? Your logic is absurd.

And dont make me bring up the illegitamacy of the Iraq war, because noone needs the inevitable clusterf*** that will ultimately ensue.

Maybe your country should, you know, actually try diplomacy with these people rather than throwing around words you might regret. ie. Stop trying to be the world police.

Re:Wasting protoplasm

[TripMaster Monkey]

I said you could start with manifest destiny. Now that you've admitted that your initial claim of "The only land the US has taken is for cemeteries for their dead soldiers." is false, perhaps now you can move on and actually learn something...

...or perhaps you can't. Judging from the quality of your posts thus far, I doubt that you have much capacity to learn.

I really don't care either way. As I said earlier, it's not my job to educate you.

We HAD mach 3 birds and weapons

[TheHawke]

The legendary SR-71 Blackbird, her kid brother the YF-12A interceptor, and the flexible, quick-shooting ASAT weapon. Why go faster? Hypersonic aircraft would run into even tighter restrictions flying in domestic airspace, fuel constraints, not to mention the logistics if the aircraft's requirements are so exotic it requires highly trained crews to maintain it.
"Kelly" Johnson, the father of the U-2/TR-1 and the Blackbirds, came up with a kinetic energy weapon that used no explosive in it. Dropped from 100,000 feet from a Blackbird bomber, the one ton device would have the kinetic energy of a large container freighter hitting at terminal velocity. No explosives whatsoever, just pure momentum. Couple that with a GPS guidance system and you'll have your own man-made meteorite that'll flatten whole city blocks from the impact alone, with pin-point accuracy.

Re:There was no point, only rhetoric like yours

[crabpeople]

"And just exactly how is that supposed to happen? How the fuck is the LARGEST ECONOMY IN THE WORLD supposed to "keep out of other countries' business"?"

Oh i dunno.. the ron paul platform?

- no tarrifs, especially retaliatory corporatist based ones
- stop secretly (or recently overtly) overthrowing other peoples governments (theres about 60 years for you to say sorry for currently)
- no sanctions against "misbehavior" (the very fact that americans are so arrogant to think they can tell people how to behave underlines this all. why can't iran have nuclear power again? why cant most countries legalize drugs?)
- stop acting like usa corporations write the worlds laws
- do not attempt in any way to be the worlds police or to think you know "better" for another country.

Its pretty simple. No ones saying don't trade with people, but speaking as a canadian, learn to trade fucking fairly. The US doesnt even follow its own trade body rulings. You can look up the history of softwood lumber or sugar cane to see the kind of "economy" and "trade" the USA wants.

"Pretending it's possible to "leave them alone" just illustrates how far removed from reality you are."

Pretending that its some how the USA's mission to do, well, anything "missionary" on the world stage pretty much ignores your own constitution.

We're back in 1960.

[Derling Whirvish]

We're about to elect a fairly fresh Democrat Senator after an eight-year Republican administration and resurrect hypersonic jets (the X-15) and supersonic bombers (the XB-70). Will British music, long hair, and brightly colored clothes be next?

Lasers?

[flyingfsck]

Laser weapons are faster than mach 6 for sure.