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India First To Build a Supersonic Cruise Missile
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt: "India successfully tested Sunday a 'maneuverable' version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile which it has jointly developed with Russia, news reports said. The vertical-launch version of the 290-kilometer range BrahMos was tested from a warship in the Bay of Bengal off India's eastern coast, the PTI news agency reported. 'The vertical-launch version of missile was launched at 11:30 (0600 GMT) hours today from Indian Navy ship INS Ranvir and it manoeuvred successfully hitting the target ship. It was a perfect hit and a perfect mission,' BrahMos aerospace chief A Sivathanu Pillai was quoted as saying. 'After today's test, India has become the first and only country in the world to have a manoeuvrable supersonic cruise missile in its inventory,' Pillai said."
Hard-liners in the middle east don't give half a shit about what India does. The Pakistanis do sure, but they already are nuclear. The hard-lines in the middle east want to go nuclear because of Israel.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Oh, don't give him a hard time.
Personally, as a guy from a military background, and enjoying military strategy games, etc, I agree with him completely, I don't see much advantage of SS cruise missiles over a ballistic missile, at least for most countries and most situations.
The advantage a subsonic cruise missile has over a ballistic, is primarily payload fraction. Consider a tomahawk that weighs 3000 pounds of which 1000 pounds is warhead. Put another way, if you want 1000 pounds of boom on target, and want to use a subsonic cruise missile, you get to haul an additional 2000 extra pounds of missile around, instead of an additional 2000 pounds of aircraft fuel or food on a submarine or whatever.
In comparison, lets consider an ancient ballistic missile, a Polaris carrying a W47. A W47 only weighs 700 pounds or so, in comparison to 1000 pounds of "boom" on a tomahawk. Yet, a Polaris weighed freaking 28000 pounds. So, you can VERY QUICKLY deliver a mere 700 pounds of boom on target, if you're willing to haul around an extra 27300 pounds of missile.
Supersonic missiles combine the fuel efficiency of a ballistic missile, with the simplicity, reliability, and low cost of a cruise missile. Note the slight sarcasm. Pretty much a total failure EXCEPT that they can deliver extremely quickly.
If you dominate the air land and sea, you get quick delivery by stationing a boring old fashioned B-52 directly over the target and dropping a simple iron bomb straight down. Or, if you're not planning a pre-emptive nuclear strike, you simply don't need that capability to reach your goals. India, on the other hand....
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The hard-lines in the middle east want to go nuclear because of Israel.
I'm guessing by 'hard-liners' you mean Iran and Syria, since no one else really seems interested in acquiring nuclear weapons in the middle east, and I'm further going to suggest that they aren't so afraid of Israel (who doesn't really have a history of aggression) as they are of the United States (who definitely has a history of aggression, in particular against Iran).
I don't even particularly blame them, either. If I were Iran, I would be working very hard to build nuclear weapons as a defense, it's only logical. On the other hand, I am not Iranian, I am American, and I don't particularly favor a country who has an official chant "Death to America" getting nuclear weapons. I am aware that it is not entirely 'fair' for America to have nuclear weapons and Iran not, but in this case my self-preservation instinct over-rules any desire for fairness.
Qxe4
Biggest problem in Iran isn't so much the Iranians as it is the government, AFAICT.
Biggest problem in {Iran, Egypt, Syria, Israel, Turkey, Russia, China, The UK, America, etc.} isn't so much the {Iranians, Egyptans, Syrians, Israelis, Turks, Russians, Chinese, Americans, etc.} as it is the government, AFAICT
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
It is ironic that the technology that goes into such a missile, from the computers and materials to the social networks that plan and test such things could instead bring abundance to everyone in the world. Yet people still build such things from a scarcity-based mindset, not recognizing the total irony. The tools of abundance all around us now (robotics, computers, networks, biotech, chemistry, nanontech, nuclear technology, and so on) are so powerful -- we will destroy ourselves if we use them from a scarcity mindset. If used from an abundance mindset, we could instead make the world into a much happier place.
As Albert Einstein said, "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind."
We need to change our hearts towards providing abundance for all, before we all die of the unrecognized irony.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Firstly, most of Irans ruling council is not actually Persian, they are Arabs mostly originating from southern Iraq (hence the large Shia influence in Iran). The Persians and Arabs don't exactly get along, this is why the Islamic Republic maintains a large well equipped private military, the Basij (religious police and republican guards fall under the Basij) which is almost exclusively comprised of Lebanese (Hezbolla) and Palestinian (Hamas) Arabs.
Also there have been a lot of protests against the Iranian government recently and things have not gotten better. Huge racial issues are cropping up in Iran fanning the flames of old Persian/Arab hate. The acts of the Iranian government are not representative of the desires of the Persian people.
The biggest reason the Iran will never invade (or try to kill) Israel is because the Persians and Jews get on like a house on fire. There are several Persian members of the Knesset as well as the headquarters of the Baha'i religion being located in Israel (Baha'iism originated in Persia (Iran) in the early part of the 20th century). A lot of the Persians that fled Iran in the 80's did so through Israel. Any invasion would be an unmitigated disaster for the Iranian government as Persians simply refuse to fight or worse yet, get reunited with old friends from before the Islamic revolution. Even today most Iranians who travel east (to Asia) do so through Israel's Ben Gurion airport due to few nations allowing Iranian airliners to land and even fewer international airlines willing to land in Iran.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.