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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."
The first?
And Only?
You've just given another argument to hard-liners in the middle east to push their countries to go nuclear.
Seems to me that cruise missiles have been around for a while, and one of the defining properties is that it 'steers'
That plus a nuke warhead sounds great for killing big carriers. If push really comes to shove kiss power projection in the Indian Ocean goodbye. I wonder how long it will take China to buy one.
I didn't hear that coming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-500_Bazalt
Possibly first to deploy, but not the first to build, by a good 50 years.
I guess we can outsource our military development to India. Hitler's German was prohibited from making weapons prior to WWII (part of the WW1 peace treaty), so he outsourced the industry to Russia, and used the weapons against it. Obviously, after WWII got started, Germany developed its own military industry.
...Soviets had supersonic air to surface cruise missiles and surface to surface missiles. It's where the Indian tech comes from. Kitchen and Sunburn were the ones that spring to mind immediately.
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The headline says, "India First To Build a Supersonic Cruise Missile". In order to even accurately reflect the article, it should read, "India First To Build a manoeuvrable Supersonic Cruise Missile". But even so, the article is wrong;
from wikipedia, P-500 Bazalt
The P-500 Bazalt (Russian: -500 ; English: basalt) is a liquid-fueled, rocket powered, supersonic cruise missile used by the Soviet and Russian navies. Developed by OKB-52 MAP (later NPO Mashinostroyeniye), its GRAU designation is 4K80[1]. Its NATO reporting name is SS-N-12 Sandbox. It entered service in 1973 to replace the SS-N-3 Shaddock. The P-500 Bazalt had a 550 km range and a payload of 1,000 kg, which allows it to carry a 350 kT nuclear or a 950 kg semi-armor-piercing high explosive warhead (currently only the conventional version remains in service). The P-500 Bazalt uses active radar homing for terminal guidance, and can receive mid-course corrections by the Tupolev Tu-95D, the Kamov Ka-25B and the Kamov Ka-27B.
So many levels of fail in this submission
Not ones that go faster then the speed of sound. It ain't all that hard, it is in the bloody title.
But don't worry. The US still leads in idiots I see.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
India, the Barney Fife of nations.
screenshot or it didn't happen
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
I doubt Pakistan can be happy at all about this development. It's one thing to have a nuke, another to be able to deliver it. This makes a first strike weapon from Hell. About the time you figure out the war is on....it's over.
Isn't one of the benefits of cruise missiles is that they are quiet and low altitude enough (terrain following to a degree) that they are hard to spot, preventing intercepts? A supersonic missile sort of defeats this purpose - it can't be too maneuverable if it is supersonic and is much more readily acquired than subsonic missiles would be. Sort of a hybrid of ballistic missile and cruise missile with some of the strengths and weaknesses of each I guess, but with radically reduced range.
Tech Support: Thank you for calling Maneuverable Supersonic Cruise Missile tech support, my name is Tom, how may I help you?
Missile Owner: Hello. My maneuverable supersonic cruise missile isn't the first.
Tech Support: I do apologize for this inconvenience. Am I correct to understand that your maneuverable supersonic cruise missile is not the first?
Missile Owner: Uh, yeah. I was told it would be the first.
Tech Support: I do apologize. Have you tried flashing the BIOS?
Missile Owner: WTF?
it is not obvious what advantage supersonic cruise missiles have over ballistic ones.
Huh? Ballistic and Cruise are opposite of one another. There is no such thing as a "Ballistic Cruis Missile". It is an oxymoron. Please review the definition of "Ballistic". "Ballistic" means following a trajectory dictated by free-fall/gravity. An artillery shell follows a ballistic trajectory. An ICBM ("B" means ballistic) follows a ballistic trajectory in that once it reaches it's highest point (or even before) it is no longer powered and instead free-falls (though somewhat guided/corrected aerodynamically) to its target. A Cruis missile powers itself in a flight path that is in no way a ballistic trajectory. I think the term you are searching for instead of ballistic is "sub-sonic"
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
What could India want with a manoeuvrable supersonic cruise missile?
I care not for your karma and your mod points.
The missile will carry a primary warhead consisting of excess jinglys picked up from the nearest poopy streets. Upon detonation the hapless target is rendered uninhabitable for 500 years due to the pervasive stench of regurgitated curry and unwashed armpits.
Arguably, one of the shortcomings is that the US has more (a lot more) than one bullet, and isn't afraid to use them. Unlike either Sheriff Andy or Deputy Barney, the US can be quite unlovable.
C'mon, folks.
Can we PLEASE start spending all this cash on things that don't blow up?
Seems burning paper currency wasn't fast enough, now we have refined methods of destroying funds.
Supersonic is all well and good with a 290km range. But when someone else can hit you from 2500km (BTM-109 tomahawk) with a sub sonic missile is it really worth it?
"What?, it must be a supersonic missile idiot!" "Improbable sir, this one is curving and making acrobatics on the screen, actually I think it is trying to spell something" "What does it say?" "Catch me sucker!"
Didn't the 9/11 hijackers use a supersonic cruise missile?
Isn't this just a really fast surface to surface missile? The operational range is 1/10 of a Tomahawk. How is this any different from a short range ballistics missile, other than the trajectory? I don't mean to criticize an impressive achievement but I foresee it being very different in use from something like a Tomahawk. A Tomahawk can be fired from a huge standoff range and hit its target. With this missile, the attacker has to get relatively close to its target, thus making it vulnerable to defenses. A big part of the value of a cruise missile is that the attacker can stay relatively safe. I think this weapon is much more defensive in nature and this is perhaps a reflection of India's strategic outlook.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Weapons like the BrahMos are primarily aimed at ships. Yes, you could also use it as a precision-guided land attack cruise missile, but Pakistan's navy is small and almost irrelevant for conflict with India.
This weapon - and, indeed, much of India's military development - is about maintaining military competitiveness with China, and to some extent the ability to discourage the US from interfering if India conducts military operations in areas it regards as its sphere of influence.
The US Navy is apparently upgrading its cruise missile defences on its ships, replacing the Phalanx gun-based system with a missile-based version, because of missiles like the BrahMos.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
We have the first superkalafragilisticexpialidosious cruise missle in 3D!
Bah. Wake me up when they have a maneuverable superluminal cruise missile.
Slashdot: news for Apple. Stuff that Apple.
It's not the first maneuverable supersonic CM either. Russian P-500 Bazalt missile was both supersonic and maneuverable and it entered service in 1973 (!). Brahmos is an adaptation of previous generation Russian missile technology, and not even the most advanced variant of that. Russians don't export their latest stuff, particularly the kind of stuff that if push came to shove could be efficiently used against them.
A ballistic missile is pretty obvious. A cruise missile isn't quite so.
Huge market for such a device. Particularly if it was nuclear capable. Boom. There goes Washington DC. No clue who hit it. It takes the Mutual out of MAD.
Deleted
> If I were Iran, I would be working very hard to build nuclear weapons as a defense, it's only logical.
A lot of the Arab world looks up to Iran as a country willing to defy the US. As for nukes, they sometimes make sense as a deterrent, but almost never as a defense. Setting them off in almost any circumstance is also a violation of international law.
Biggest problem in Iran isn't so much the Iranians as it is the government, AFAICT. (As far as I can tell.) If they could get a government in power which weren't run by a couple of psychopaths, then maybe having a nuclear deterrent would make sense. But as long as the government is threatening to wipe other governments off the face of the earth, NOBODY should let them NEAR a nuke. Same holds true for every other government. You should not get a nuke if you're someone who would seriously consider using it when there were less than a few million lives at stake.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
I don't think India has ever faced any credible direct security threat from the U.S., well aside from aid to Pakistan, and the threat of war between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. India has very strong ties with Britain, vibrant trade with the U.S., developed nuclear weapons early, plays amongst the big boys economically, we idealize Gandhi, etc.
India projecting sea power more effectively definitely impacts China's trade routes however, especially with the middle east. India causing an increase in China's manufacturing costs would benefit industry in India, the U.S., and Europe.. and generally be cheered by all non-tools.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
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.
I was watching a recorded Rick Steves episode the other day about traveling in Iran. I'd actually like to go there now. He said the people were more friendly than many European towns. People kept saying "We love Americans" and that they wish our countries governments could get past our disagreements.
During a fundraising break, he mentioned he was sitting in a cab in horrible traffic and the cab driver said "death to traffic." He asked the cab driver what he said, and the driver said they say "death to..." when they are irritated by something. It was at this point, Rick realized when they say "Death to America," what they mean is "Damn America!" And given what we have done to the political situation in the middle east, especially by deposing their democratically elected government in 1953 to keep the oil tap open, it is hard to argue with them.
The reason cruise missiles are called cruise missiles is because they are low speed missiles....which is also why they needed wings to help keep them aloft.
Therefore, this is not a cruise missile.
Now that we have eliminated that term from the name, let's have another look at the summary: India builds maneuverable supersonic missile. Yawn!
If it is similar to the nuclear powered aircraft we considered building, but let good sense prevail, thank goodness. The nuclear powered airplane would have sprayed so much radioactive fallout during operation, that it didn't need to be armed with anything. Just flying around over a populated area would kill most of the residents within a couple days if they didn't GTH out.
After 9/11 Iran was one of the few countries where candle light vigils were held to mourn the tragedy.
http://www.time.com/time/europe/photoessays/vigil/
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Supersonic cruise missiles should be hitting the market just about the time that shipboard anti-missile lasers do.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
isnt it 'brahmins' ?
Read radical news here
Actually, they were going damn fast. The terrorists felt free to break all FAA air traffic rules. They were going hell bent for leather at very low altitude; something commercial planes never do. The speed at the time of striking the buildings has been variously estimated (by examining frames of video) from 503 to 590 mph at approximately 1000 feet altitude. It was possible to reach this speed at such a low altitude, in dense air, because they were in a shallow dive. Yes, this is subsonic, but I would hardly call it "slow." This is part of the reason for the devastating effects of the strikes. The buildings had been designed for jetliner impact, but it had been assumed that any jetliner at that altitude was in a landing or takeoff phase, and would have been going not much over 200 mph.
> The nuclear powered airplane would have sprayed so much radioactive fallout
> during operation, that it didn't need to be armed with anything. Just flying > around over a populated area would kill most of the residents within a
> couple days if they didn't GTH out.
A gross exaggeration, but the thing would have been leaky. However, as it was intended to fly over the Soviet Union dropping H-bombs, that hardly matters.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Nice missile, brah!
By "maneuverable" they mean that it can be launched from mobile land-based launchers. That makes it different from the supposed other examples being mentioned in some other threads here.
...that we know of.
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
The first?
This is incorrect. In the late 1950's the US developed the 'Hound Dog' AGM-28 (GAM-77/GAM-77A under the designation system at the time). In Service in 1960, the Hound Dog was unique in that the turbojet that it carried could be run off of the carrying B-52's fuel, practically allowing the use of the engines on Both Hound Dogs during takeoff. While not as fast as BrahMos, the Hound Dog could fly Three and a half times further, and could carry a nuclear weapon (no doubt in my mind that the Indias have a nuclear BrahMos in the works).
Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-28_Hound_Dog
Ahem, what about the cruise missiles the USA built in the 1950's?
Over a billion big fat 1950's dollars spent on those.
Just off the top of my head, the Hound Dog, the Snark, The Navaho, the BOMARC, the Boojum, the Triton, and the Mace.
THink that it can outdo a rail gun or a laser? Yeah, exactly. but that Russian supersonic cruise missile WILL be useful against China.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Cu-cu-cu-cu-cu-cu-cu-cu-CURRY BOMB!
Russia built a series of supersonic anti-ship missiles with ranges in the cruise category. They were mostly fit aboard submarines and destroyers and designed for saturation attacks, which our missile defense systems were poorly equipped to deal with.
Using modern technology (higher temperature alloys, ceramic composites, and CFD optimization) it would be easily possible to build a cruise missile in the 1000nm range. In fact, because subsonic cruisers have to combat with launcher dimensions, their form factors are ill-suited for subsonic drag reduction and supersonic missiles might have an aerodynamic advantage.
ATK is currently developing a hypersonic cruise missile for the 800km range, which is an important gap filler between what artillery, short-range missiles, and ballistic missiles can hit quickly. This range is currently filled by subsonic cruise-missiles which can take over an hour to reach the target. Time-critical-strike it's called.
The issue with a supersonic cruise missile is that it needs even more than a subsonic cruiser to fly at high altitude in order to achieve satisfactory range. Aerodynamic heating is difficult, perhaps limiting at low altitudes for more than a short terminal phase. Flying at high altitude means they are easier to detect (not that look-down-shoot-down isn't standard, but ship-based phased-array radars won't be looking down) albeit harder to intercept due to their higher velocity.
What's really scary are the Chinese developed anti-ship ballistic missiles. Stealthy re-entry vehicles that can perform course changes. This is an interception nightmare and likely driving the US Navy ballistic.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
Tom Cruise went to India. Watched gay Bollywood porn. His missile deployed at supersonic speed.
Besides being supersonic, they are also very hard to hit because of the 5 to 8 relatively long resonant rhythmic sonic distraction sequences (vulgarly called 'song and dance') that occur per flight. On the other hand, it buys the target that much more time to, oh, sing and dance along, maybe. It's a mixed-benefit strategy, I suppose. ;p
They've been selling AK's to anyone with cash, coffee, diamonds, etc for years and then had them used against their own troops. they also wanted to sell of their nuke boats to power Singapore a few years back until the SG gov't blocked that.
For example, in the latest budget, there was no increase in spending, w.r.t increase in the GDP etc., For an economy that grows more than 7% every year, the defense spending does not follow this curver
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
It sounds like WMD was a translation error.
This is really gonna maintain power balance in South Asia. Keep it up the good work!! http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/muscle-boost-review-does-muscle-boost-really-work-1972189.html
If you had been conversing face-to-face or over the telephone with "spun", do you think that you might have added something like "sorry to hear about your mother's death"?
BAN THAT KIND OF "NEWS" !!!
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
You missed someone in the second list :-)
I've travelled in Iran. One thing I noticed was the trucks on the road. There are lot of old US trucks 1950-70's style running still. All the new trucks seemd to be Chinese. How's the US truck industry going these days? Once the old yank trucks stop being repairable, they won't be replaced with US stuff, that's for certain.
US - gun meet foot.
It says that the missile has been developed with Russia. If that is correct then the first supersonic cruise missile was developed by India & Russia.
Credit where it is due.
Ya, the only way it can be considered the first supersonic "manueverable" (emphasis on the quotes from the article) cruise missile is if you define "maneuverable" to mean "controlled entirely by on-board systems".
The P-700 Granit is considered "probable" when it comes to "mid-course correction" which seems to imply it's not very 'maneuverable'.
The P-500 Bazalt is considered to be able to make mid-course corrections, but relies on a controlling craft in order to do so, it doesn't do it on its own.
And I have this sneaking suspicion that both the Russians as well as the US already have such capability, but neither country's military is known for publishing full technical capabilities of the advanced weapons systems which they have available.
I guess you have never heard of the term supercruise then. If it's ok for airplanes to cruise at supersonic speeds, then it's also ok for a cruise missile. And general consensus on the net does not agree with you.
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. I will fix that to you : The hard-lines in the middle east want to go nuclear because of the country they perceive as a threat, and which already have a nuclear arsenal : be it Israel or the US.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Cheneyish to English.
Huh? I spent a couple years building both kinds. I worked on the Peacekeeper (ballistic) and Tomahawk (cruise) and many others.
Ballistics are way, way easier to make. Cruise missiles are essentially airplanes, with multiple engine systems in most cases. Ballistics are glorified bottle rockets, much simpler.
Human behavior is a product of many things, genetics, parenting, history, nutrition, community, environment, and others...
As I see it, you are asking, what do we do about psychopaths, and their lesser cousins, bullies?
"[p2p-research] The psychopath as peer?"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005499.html
As Jacque Fresco suggests in the following two videos, you can change the physical and social environment, and that will change a lot of human behavior in a healthier way, which is much better than passing laws:
http://www.youtube.com/user/jacquefresco#p/a/u/2/pbtbGcKiLiM
http://www.youtube.com/user/jacquefresco#p/a/u/1/PSbKfdOTRpY
And as you suggest, today's prisons in the USA create criminals. The USA has many times more people in prison than other industrialized countries,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States
in large part because the sentences are way longer (part of that is that the prison industry is profitable to many who lobby for harsher laws or prevent removing harsh laws). For example, in New York State:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/27/AR2009032702834.html
"Then in November, Democrats captured the state Senate for the first time in years. The State Assembly in the past had proposed repealing the drug laws, but the effort was always blocked by Senate Republicans, many of whom represent largely rural, Upstate districts where most of the state's prisons are located."
And consider what was recently discovered in Pennsylvania:
"Pennsylvania rocked by 'jailing kids for cash' scandal"
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/23/pennsylvania.corrupt.judges/index.html
Where else in the USA does this happen?
A basic income could remove much petty theft and physical crimes of mugging and armed robbery:
http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.html
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
Being non-violent does not mean being passive. We can actively work to create a better society that works for most everybody as an active process, especially in a democracy:
"Social Movements and Strategic Nonviolence"
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_nonviolence.html
The same as with terrorists, you may not be able to prevent individuals from planning to do harmful things, but what you can do is take away their social support network that enables them and provides cover for them to plan large scale harm. That goes for whether the terrorists are alienated fundamentalist extremists pursuing some radical cause, or ostensibly mainstream elected government officials invading other countries to remain in power and to create business opportunities for their friends.
Again, Voyage from Yesteryear is one picture of such an alternative society (even if it is not the only possible one).
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary
Because we live in such a schooled society, where most people have been broken and trained
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Awesome post.
These semantic/linguistic differences are very important to understanding a culture. For example, most Americans wouldn't say they want to kill Iraqis, or that the Iraq war was about religion. But they might call it a Crusade. Most Americans think that word means "very important thing worth dying for" but historically, and especially in the Middle East, it means a war of the holy Christian cross. I wonder how it is translated in the Iraqi media.
To echo your point on religion, here is another thing Albert Einstein wrote:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
"""
For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.
But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments. When someone realizes that for the achievement of an end certain means would be useful, the means itself becomes thereby an end. Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence. They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly.
"""
You might like the rest there too.
As I mention here:
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1937-unnatural-acts-breaking-the-fever-of-militarism.html#comment-2450
We the People, based on deeply held humanistic and spiritual values, need to redefine security in a sustainable and resilient way. Much current US military doctrine is based around unilateral security ("I'm safe because you are nervous") and extrinsic security ("I'm safe despite long supply lines because I have a bunch of soldiers to defend them"), which both lead to expensive arms races. In order to end arms races, promote world peace, and also save money we can direct to civilian needs, we need as a society to move to other paradigms like Morton Deutsch's mutual security ("We're all looking out for each other's safety")
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430
and Amory Lovin's intrinsic security ("Our redundant decentralized local systems can take a lot of pounding whether from storm, earthquake, or bombs and would still would keep working").
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The US Truck industry is fine, it's the cars that aren't selling. Ford, Chevy and Dodge both keep putting out extremely capable trucks. Possibly because the margins on trucks are so much higher, possibly because the US' geography lends itself to Trucks (Large areas of sparse population and rugged terrain), but development on Trucks has tended to be the priority at the Big 3.
And the lack of modern US Trucks in Iran probably has more to do with the fact that they've been under embargo for ~35 years, so yes, when they break down, I'm sure they won't be replaced with modern US trucks.
Maybe you should think a few minutes before trying to make some point that, to be honest, I can't even figure out what you're arguing.
But subsonics are cheaper, smaller, more reliable, better in every way except they are slower.
The speed is of no account for surprise attacks because you just do ToT Time on Target calculations to stagger the launches.
Greater speed is always an advantage. If very fast missiles are detected incoming it gives defender much less time to react and intercept. No time to disperse units, lauch intended amount of interceptors and missiles, hurry leaders to sheters and so on....
In what alternate reality is my perfectly correct explanation of what "Ballistic" means "Flamebait"?
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
..of the well moderated posts here a few do actually get it.
This is about China first and secondly America, and yes, it's for naval targets.
Why China?
It is projected that China will have the ability to build Aircraft Carriers within the next 5 years.. so this(very public) counter to that lets them know that they shouldn't get too cocky once they get their shiny new toys(similar to how China sent a big FU to the US when it blew up the satellite in orbit).
Why America?
Since America and India are now friends it would appear that this is not a big deal but, it really is. America is knee deep in Pakistan and has been over the last 4 decades in one form or another, and this has not been a good thing. There is a school of thought that says Pakistan would not even exist currently were it not for American meddling, how did America meddle? Does 1971 ring any bells? The USS Enterprise should really stay away unless invited.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/dec/26claude.htm
I've previously explained why a handful of nuclear weapons in the hands of some nation is almost useless against a nuclear superpower. Iran's leadership is smart enough to know this - their goal is most likely to become the dominating regional power.
Some might respond with "Then why hasn't the US invaded Iran and/or N. Korea?" Well, the short answers are pretty obvious:
- We're awfully busy with Afghanistan and our Iraq folly
- N. Korea isn't threatening continuity/stability of world energy supplies (meaning oil), nor is Iran (yet)
- Patience, diplomacy, and a sharp eye toward monitoring proliferation risks are currently better options for dealing with Iran and N. Korea
And if anyone responds to that with "But the US invaded Iraq because of WMDs", well, I have a bridge to sell you...
- T