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US Army Completes First Test Flight of Mach 6 Weapon
Stirling Newberry writes "In a terse press release, the U.S. Department of Defense announced the first test of the the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon, which launches on a staged rocket and then glides to its target, in a manner similar to the Space Shuttle's re-entry. Earlier, ABC News posted a story with a video animation of the concept. Over at DefenseTech, they argue that the trajectory being different from an ICBM is meant to show that it is not a first strike device, but even the commenters don't think that explanation flies. The speed of deployment and the ability to strike targets without going high enough to be seen by many advance warning radars makes it a precision surprise attack weapon, a kind of super-cruise-missile for surprise, asymmetric attacks."
It is clear that this is not a "first" strike weapon. The summation is correct, it is simply a "surprise" strike weapon. Which is OK, because, hey, who does not like surprises!?
Amazing the USA still has the funds allocated to develop such things
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
I don't see how my side having the capability to make "surprise, asymmetric attacks" could be considered a bad thing on its own. Whats the price tag?
"His name was James Damore."
We can spend billions of dollars for useless weapons, but can't bother to spend the necessary money to keep our infrastructure from crumbling. What a fine use of our tax dollars!
I don't get it. Element of surprise is is a war tactician's wet dream.... Sun Tzu and all that jazz.
Besides, a sniper on the rooftop could be a first strike too, you know.
Saab tests hypersonic missile news (http://www.domain-b.com/defence/def_prod/20071228_saab.html)
28 December 2007
In an advanced test, Swedish conglomerate Saab, launched three hypersonic missiles to demonstrate controlled flight at extreme speeds. The missile, of which three were built, was test fired at maximum velocity, exceeding Mach 5.5, corresponding to 6500 km/h. Saab Bofors Dynamics, a subsidiary, developed the experimental missile, in a technology programme financed by the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV). The successful test makes Saab the first company to demonstrate that it is possible to manoeuvre missiles at hypersonic speed.
Don't worry. This is not part of what was sold to China...
Another big Wack a Mole hammer. I can never win at Wack a Mole why does the Defense Department think they will be able to?
This was a different design with an easier test objective. It's explained here: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/11/2400-miles-in-minutes-hypersonic-weapon-passes-easy-test/
I read about this sort of thing before only it wasn't testing hyper velocity it was the JRV Nagoya, which is testing top-secret weapons and stealth systems that use the latest developments in quantum physics.
I hope the timeline doesn't shift today, I've just gotten the last hold-outs in my family to install Linux! -- Wait, could this be the shift in the timeline? Why else would non-technical consumers migrate willingly to Linux Mint? Uh-oh!
In truth, there are civilian applications that can use the knowledge gleaned from these sorts of tests. While the weapon is potentially a significant balance shift, I don't think that this is remotely ready to deploy. In many cases, this sort of thing never makes it into the field. Yet the science is neutral, once discovered, it can be used for non-military applications as well.
You just know that nations such as China, Russia, India, Iran...etc so want to get their hands on this technology! Now would be a perfect time to setup honeypots to find and track suspected moles within the defense industry. Round up the H1B fuckers caught and kick them out of the country if on US soil.
Actually a lot of leaks come from Good o'l boys
I did a google search for the mph and a lot of results came back. News sites being the most inaccurate I expect. I've seen results between 4,000 & 5000 mph posted. I would take the average at 4,500 mph; but instead I've decided Mach 6 is very fast. Not as fast as light; but still really fast. I've given up until the neutrino faster than light thing gets fixed. It's Friday and two hours until beer o'clock?
Now we can kill people faster than ever!
Once we get it working FTL, we can kill them yesterday!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If it came to war with China, they need not fire a shot. Just stop buying our debt. US would collapse. Yes, of course it would hurt China, but a lot less than they would suffer in a war.
So, if the booster is big enough, can they use this thing with a MOP as a payload?
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/11/17/1445237/boeing-delivers-massive-ordnance-penetrator
A big 30,000 warhead designed to blow up things DEEP underground might even do a better job if delivered at hypersonic speeds, think "rods from god". (It'll have to be redisgned to take the much higher impact speed but that's what engineers are for!) The fact that it is delivered on a (much) more expensive booster is mitigated by the fact that you don't need to use a B-2 to deliver it. This gives you two advantages: 1) the (admittedly low) risk of human crew loss (and loss of a $2B bomber) goes to zero and 2) you can now attack IN DAYLIGHT (B-2s lose their stealth advantage because they are not invisible to visible light, just radar and have low infrared profiles. So I figure any Iranian fighter pilot could easily shoot down the subsonic aircraft during the day).
Paradoxically they may NOT be as good a first strike weapon as a B-2 bomber against a great power because presumably Russia (and China?) can detect missile launches anywhere in the world more easily than a stealthy B-2. Against some country like Iran or North Korea however, they give the commander in Chief the ability to hit a target very quickly, with almost zero chance of interception, with the power of redirection (or abort) and during daylight (which would be very useful if you want to KILL all THE high value PEOPLE working there). Combined with a MOP you can go after even the deep ultra-high value targets although in order to do so you'd probably need to develop a new heavily solid fuel launcher (the old minuteman and MX don't have the throw weight and liquid fueled rockets aren't exactly things you can launch on a moment's notice).
Oh, I forgot. This, by the way reminds me of what the Nazi's tried to do with the Sanger(?) "skip bomber" which when launched by a sub-orbital V-2 would send a manned (one pilot) space-craft skipping across the upper atmosphere to bomb targets on the other side of the planet.
Of course since they didn't have guidance technology good enough, it had to be manned, and because thy didn't have big enough boosters it had to be sub-orbital, and because they didn't have THE BOMB it was hardly worth it just to drop a few tons of explosive. But hey, if they had these things they could've won!
I was reading an article at some point in the past few months about a hyper-sonic missile type device. Except this one went up and above the atmosphere. It skimmed across the top layer of the atmosphere like a stone skipping on a lake, then it re-entered when it neared its target.
It was so fast, that the military who launched it couldn't even track it.
If the USA military builds and lunches a missile that is so fast that they cannot even track it, I wonder how one defends against it.
My guess is we'll see more tech going into tracking systems.
by example in america, and after our example faltered we lead by decree. it seems we're just leading by military engagement these days.
the biggest threat to america is not from an attacking foreign power, but that it as a superpower will become irrelevant in the twenty first century.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Finally a slashdot article that doesn’t go *WHOOSH* over my head.
"Place me in the company of those who seek Truth, but deliver me from those who believe to have found it."
No, it's around 27% -- including all levels of government -- not 50%.
Also, if you're including state and local taxes, then the taxing organization is not "the US government".
You didn't learn about precision in school? A mach 5.5+ weapon or a mach 6.4 weapon is a mach 6 weapon.
Ahh, thanks! Article answers my question precisely. :)
I remember reading several months ago that this was being developed in response to the Al-Qaeda leadership hunting that was going on in Afghanistan. Apparently there were cases where the U.S. had intel (via satellite) about targets, and the only option that would have been fast enough to be useful was nuclear (and therefore was not an option). This weapon allows the U.S. to deploy the equivalent of a conventional aerial strike without the time required for a plane / drone to fly there.
I agree with you completely, and it could get much, much worse for the people who have to defend against these weapons if they are deployed from the launch tubes of attack submarines. Then defenders will be faced with a hypersonic weapon that suddenly pops up thousands of miles closer to an intended target than expected than if they were land based. The warning window will be much smaller, and the direction of attack may be completely unexpected.
Interestingly, the political value of this weapon system may far outweigh its military utility. Just knowing that the US has these weapons, especially sub-launched versions, will force potential adversaries to rethink their entire defensive strategy, possibly futilely. They'd have to extend their radar coverage and air defenses to all possible avenues of approach to lucrative targets, or relocate those high-value assets, or both, along with the necessary extensions of command and control infrastructure, and swallow the concomitant expense associated with any of those decisions. The very existence of such a system could force an adversary to the realization that a viable defense against it is neither militarily nor economically feasible.
Big difference between becoming a nuclear power and having ICBM capability. Even the USA back in the day had nukes long before being able to create the ICBM delivery system.
Just look at North Korea and their failures. Making an ICBM isn't easy by any stretch. Actually it was only a few years ago that Iran got caught trying to fake its failed rocket experiments with bad photoshoping... If they are 10 years from nuclear, they are an additional 20 for ICBM technology. It is after all, rocket science... :)
FICA isn't a tax? Right, your going to get it back, it's being saved under uncle Sam's mattress.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Who is the target.
As perhaps the last decade has taught anything, having a bunch of high tech tanks and planes mean fsck all when you are fighting a gorilla against a non-state. It likes those new expensive F35 fighter jets. The jets we have beat the pants off everyone, are we going to sell them our old ones so we can beat those too?
The current technology employed would pretty much level any normal sized state easily enough.
That leaves the big guys (Russia and China basically), and the gimp (North Korea). If NK could even detect it, there isn't much they could do about it (apart from leveling Soul, which would happen immediately after anyway).
If this is about Iran, they are no more advanced than Iraq was (at least in conventional warfare).
FICA is included in that.
So not true. For one thing, the Fed already has more debt than China does. They can just pick up the slack and nobody would know the difference. China has been reducing its purchase of US debt for years - I wouldn't be surprised if they've already stopped buying treasuries altogether.
In a trade war, China loses. The big disadvantage of artificially pegging your currency too low is you need other countries much more than they need you. It becomes a buyer-seller relationship instead of a mutual trading relationship. And the buyer can always buy from someone else.
Said video is an animation of the Falcon HTV-2 which was tested several weeks ago.
While this thing might be very good for evading a country's terminal defenses (like Patriot missile batteries), there isn't any indication whatsoever that this weapon would be any more stealthy; it still uses staged launch vehicles.
A country doesn't know it is being attacked when warheads start appearing in the skies above it, it (or at least the great powers) know it is being attacked when it sees the missiles coming out of their silos (or out of the ocean from subs). Then in the 5-30 minutes it's got, it decides whether it is a false alarm. I guess if tensions are really bad and it is SURE that this is an actual attack, it will "launch on warning" that is launch before the attacking missiles start exploding. Otherwise it'll just ride things out (that's why ground missiles are in hardened silos, bombers are aloft in time of crisis and subs are at sea) and wait to see what the "fallout" is (groan) before counter-attacking.
What does this hypersonic warhead do to a great power other than (as I said) possibly evading terminal defenses? Nothing except get to the target slower than a ballistic missile. The launch had already been detected by infra-red sensors in orbiting satellites and the coarse trajectory already tracked by long-range radar (remember NORAD?). Since no country has a good ABM system (even the U.S. only has one capable of knocking down a few primitive missiles from rogue nations), a hypervelocity MANEUVERABLE warhead would provide no additional benefit. It would get there slower, cost more and carry less.
For possible REAL applications think of it as a conventional weapons system of uncommon speed. (You can look at my post about marrying it with MOPs).
(I should've added this to the above)
So, if the booster is big enough, can they use this thing with a MOP as a payload?
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/11/17/1445237/boeing-delivers-massive-ordnance-penetrator [slashdot.org]
A big 30,000 warhead designed to blow up things DEEP underground might even do a better job if delivered at hypersonic speeds, think "rods from god". (It'll have to be redisgned to take the much higher impact speed but that's what engineers are for!) The fact that it is delivered on a (much) more expensive booster is mitigated by the fact that you don't need to use a B-2 to deliver it. This gives you two advantages: 1) the (admittedly low) risk of human crew loss (and loss of a $2B bomber) goes to zero and 2) you can now attack IN DAYLIGHT (B-2s lose their stealth advantage because they are not invisible to visible light, just radar and have low infrared profiles. So I figure any Iranian fighter pilot could easily shoot down the subsonic aircraft during the day).
Paradoxically they may NOT be as good a first strike weapon as a B-2 bomber against a great power because presumably Russia (and China?) can detect missile launches anywhere in the world more easily than a stealthy B-2. Against some country like Iran or North Korea however, they give the commander in Chief the ability to hit a target very quickly, with almost zero chance of interception, with the power of redirection (or abort) and during daylight (which would be very useful if you want to KILL all THE high value PEOPLE working there). Combined with a MOP you can go after even the deep ultra-high value targets although in order to do so you'd probably need to develop a new heavily solid fuel launcher (the old minuteman and MX don't have the throw weight and liquid fueled rockets aren't exactly things you can launch on a moment's notice).
I have to agree with blueg3 there, it is around 30% for all taxes.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
and people have died.
if federal agents have the responsibility of frisking babies at the entrace to a sporting event, im wondering how it is not their responsibility, in some level, to make sure the interstate-highway system, which was a federal project, and funded with federal money, is safe.
How our bomb is heading to you on a different flightpath, don't panic you'll die from a conventional explosion not a nuclear one. First off who's saying the warhead has to be conventional. Second: if you start bombing me and I have nukes why wouldn't I retaliate with nukes especially if they are the only devices I own that have enough range to hit the cowards that shot at me first?
1) Inflate their way out of debt.
2) Have to borrow at higher and higher amounts a la Greece.
Higher risk -> higher interest rates-> hire borrowing costs -> more risk -> higher interest needed to justify investment etc until someone bails you out. But the problem is no ones big enough to bail out the US, europe would be the best bet but they got their own crap to deal with.
Inflating out is a perfectly rational strategy. That's exactly what Greece would have done if they hadn't foolishly joined the euro. Of course it will make everyone in the US a bit poorer, but that's certain to follow such a large trade deficit one way or the other. In fact, it doesn't really matter if China stops buying US debt or not. It will happen unless the US actually balances the national checkbook, and the odds of that happening are exactly zero.
Probably 'cos the real one was too fast to film.
Yep I agree. The chinese might not be buying debt directly because they probably are buying some derivative equivalent since they too have to offset the affect of all the US dollars floating around buying products from them. That said I realize they muck with the exchange rate but still I bet they do a little to a lot to get in the ballpark of their artificial exchange rate with normal means (buying debt, buying another nations debt + options on the currency you want to want, eg buy a euro bond options on US dollar so that your hedged against the US dollar and your investments will move opposite of the US chinese exchange rate (at least are likely to).