Do Hypersonic Missiles Make Defense Systems Obsolete?

An anonymous reader writes "The Diplomat's Zachary Keck wonders why the U.S. government is doubling down on missile defense systems even as hypersonic missiles threaten to render them obsolete. Keck notes that hypersonic missiles pose two distinct challenges to current missile defense systems. First, they travel far faster than the missiles the defense systems are designed to intercept. Second, they travel at lower altitudes and possess greater maneuverability than the missiles the current systems have been built to destroy. Nonetheless, the U.S. was planning on spending $2 billion a year on missile defense through 2017, and now the Pentagon is asking for an additional $4.5 billion over the next five years."

Comments

Not Obsolete At All

[KermodeBear]

Yes, there may be these incredible "Hypersonic" missiles, but only the people with the capability to build or purchase them will have those missiles. Everyone else will be using conventional sub-sonic missiles. Also consider the many, many missiles (hundreds of thousands? I don't know) that currently exist right now and will be used in the future.

Today's anti-missile systems will be useful for many years to come.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[phayes]

Add to that the targeting dilemma where missiles at that speed are practically blind. Hypervelocity missiles are good for "journalists" in order to sell paper but not so much against the US Navy.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Anonymous Coward]

We also have to remember that anti missile systems will soon be laser based, meaning that said missiles won't be able to dodge them, unless they can go faster than the speed of light..

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[SecurityGuy]

Conventional missiles have been supersonic for oh, 60 years or so now.

But yeah, I agree, the question is a stupid one. No, missile defense isn't obsolete, it'll just have to evolve to handle faster targets. Dare I say it...it's an arms race, and always will be.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[jklovanc]

They may have difficulty hitting moving ships but port facilities and moored ships are vulnerable. Also, with a large enough warhead, say a small nuke, the hyper velocity missile only has to get close to put ships out of action. Ships are not the only target They can be used to take out command and control facilities, storage depots, staging areas, etc. If you can not stop the missiles front line troops may lose all support.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Bovius]

I don't understand why we're still making kneepads. Kneepads are completely ineffective at protecting knees from hypersonic missiles, but spending on kneepads continues to rise. Kneepads are obsolete and we should be focusing our efforts on knee-mounted lasers to defend against this new hypersonic threat.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Yakasha]

Add to that the targeting dilemma where missiles at that speed are practically blind. Hypervelocity missiles are good for "journalists" in order to sell paper but not so much against the US Navy.

Wait, what?
Are you really saying blind supersonic ordinance doesn't present a threat to the US Navy?

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[jklovanc]

A missile that can handle the heat of hyper velocity can probably handle a laser hit. It is also difficult to track and lock on to an object moving that fast. A hyper velocity missile with a little software to jink around may be able to evade the laser.

Re: Not Obsolete At All

[peragrin]

Not quite true. The big problem with the ABL is maintaining target lock long enough for the laser to burn through.

Unless the lasers are firing from a handful of targeting positions. It is a bitch to track in real time.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Hatta]

Today's anti-missile systems will be useful for many years to come.

Are today's anti-missile systems useful? Or are they just meant for posturing? I remember during the first Gulf War that not a single PATRIOT missile shot down a SCUD. Is there anything better today?

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Salgak1]

That depends on the beam density. Concentrate a powerful-enough beam on a narrow-enough spot, and you get burnthrough, after which atmospheric dynamics should do the rest. I leave the problems of power and focus as things that research will eventually solve.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[WRSaunders]

Really, I'm not at all sure these "hypersonic" missiles exist. The US, China, and a team of Russia and India are working on them. There have been some tests, including a Chinese test in January that caused all the news coverage. Many of these tests, including 2003-4 US tests in the X-43 program, have led to hypersonic scramjet meltdowns and explosions. This seems like something the propeller-heads need another decade to work on. If nobody can get a test vehicle to work, and even the super-well-funded US can't get a practical missile out of the technology, it seems premature to consider this particular bit of Buck Rodgers fantasy a game changer.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Anonymous Coward]

The patriot versions used in the first gulf war were designed to shoot down jets, and were used as missile defense out of desperation since we didn't even have a theater or tactical level defense system a the time.

Which is where the author of the article would like us to return to. His opinion is it's hard so lets not do it at all.

IMO I'd rather have an interceptor that works sometimes rather than not having one at all. Of course ideally one would have one that works all the time. :)

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[viperidaenz]

How many SCUD launches were not made due to the presence of the defense systems?

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[gadget junkie]

Hypersonic missiles are mostly different from conventional, high mach number missiles for their operating height. they are the ultimate bombers or recon planes , not the ultimate missiles, since things like the SSN 22 sunburn are operational now, and can go mach3+ at low altitudes.
remember that in the last phases of the operational life of the SR 71 Blackbird, their payload was a high mach number drone.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[rossdee]

Aren't ICBMs already hypersonic?

So presumably they are refering to tactical stuff.

I remember there was a missile around a few decades ago called Helstreak or Starstreak. It was an anti air and antitank weapon, laser guided.
(it was in the game Gunship 2)
Of course like any laser guided weapon, if you can take out the vehicle thats pointing the laser at you, the missile will miss.

Speaking of missing, I will miss classic slashdot

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Anonymous Coward]

The PATRIOT batteries were a show to ease Israel's fears, so they wouldn't enter in the war. Saddam was hitting Tel Aviv quite hard in hopes of a retaliation.

Had Israel entered in (which they were perfectly justified to do, and it was proven later that some SCUDs had nerve gas as part of their payload), operation Desert Storm likely would have a much bloodier ending.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Ralph Wiggam]

Conventional missiles have been supersonic for oh, 60 years or so now.

Yeah. That's why we're talking about the new hypersonic missiles.

It would be like saying "My Nissan GT-R is faster than a Ferrari 360, so I'm sure I can win a Formula 1 race."

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[jklovanc]

I leave the problems of power and focus as things that research will eventually solve.

Therefore hyper sonic missiles will eventually become obsolete. Until that time they will be effective. At that time better shielding may be invented to defeat the laser making them effective again.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, modern antiballistic missile systems require complex radar systems placed near potential adversaries in order to detect a launch. They also require missile batteries placed in concentric rings around potential adversaries in order to create multiple potential intercept points to ensure success.

These installations mean they have to be placed in foreign countries. To protect those installations from both attack as well as guard their technology, the US military needs to place troops on the ground to babysit these sites.

This is one of the key reasons why Russia for example is highly against the anti-ballistic missile system the US is installing in Europe. Ostensibly the system is designed to protect Southern and Eastern Europe from attack by Iranian missiles. However that requires missile installations in countries in the Caucasus, Poland, Romania, etc. Countries like Poland, always under the shadow of Russian influence, want US boots on their turf because that means Russia would be less likely to threaten Poland into obediance; it's an implied direct military support by the US which gives smaller countries always in larger countries' shadows more diplomatic power than they normally have. This gives the US leverage over those countries; what are they willing to give up to the US in exchange for the US installing systems and troops there? So at the end of the day, even if the system doesn't work as intended, once installed American troops will be there, which has it's own diplomatic value for the US.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[0123456]

No, when hypersonic missiles become obsolete, they'll just be replaced with ludicrousonic missiles.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[adisakp]

A number of missile defense systems involve using a high power laser that is reflected off a highly controllable (both in speed and accuracy) aiming mirror to destroy the missile. Even flying low and at hypersonic speeds, if there is a line of sight, then the missile could be targetted by the defense system's laser. Light moves quite a bit faster than a hypersonic missile last time I checked.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because your house moves when it comes free from the chocks, doesn't mean everything moves.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[wagnerrp]

A missile that can handle the heat of hyper velocity can probably handle a laser hit.

No. You don't put thermal shielding on your whole aircraft. That's just a waste of mass, and does nothing but reduces your payload. You put thermal shielding on those areas that are likely to heat up. That means the laser merely has to target somewhere that is not likely to see much heat. Normally you want to target something structural, something carrying fuel, or something dealing with guidance. Since anything hypersonic is basically a giant fuel tank, anything that's not a leading edge would make a wonderful target.

It is also difficult to track and lock on to an object moving that fast.

It is absolutely trivial to track anything moving that fast. It lights up like a flare on infrared. It's going to be hot enough that even simply shortwave IR on a standard CCD camera would pick up the light it is emitting. As for tracking, the path is going to be nearly ballistic, and it's not like you have to lead the target when using a LASER. All that really matters is the angular rate, and the angular rate is going to be slow at any significant distance. If the angular rate is too high to track, then it's already too close in to be worth even trying anyway.

A hyper velocity missile with a little software to jink around may be able to evade the laser.

It's not the software that would allow it to jink, but the realities of physics. At the speeds it would be traveling, turning a few degrees would take a few miles. Any faster and you would have structural failure.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[wagnerrp]

Conventional missiles have been supersonic for oh, 60 years or so now.

Yeah. That's why we're talking about the new hypersonic missiles.

It would be like saying "My Nissan GT-R is faster than a Ferrari 360, so I'm sure I can win a Formula 1 race."

Major military powers have been fielding hypersonic air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles for decades too. That's why we're talking about the (relatively) new hypersonic ground attack missiles.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[bobbied]

They've gone to PLAID!

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[SecurityGuy]

Everyone else will be using conventional sub-sonic missiles.

I was replying to this. Everyone else will NOT be using conventional sub-sonic missiles, unless they're using them in the 1940s or earlier. Everyone has supersonic missiles now, and has for a long, long time.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[bobbied]

Conventional missiles have been supersonic for oh, 60 years or so now.

Yeah. That's why we're talking about the new hypersonic missiles.

It would be like saying "My Nissan GT-R is faster than a Ferrari 360, so I'm sure I can win a Formula 1 race."

Major military powers have been fielding hypersonic air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles for decades too. That's why we're talking about the (relatively) new hypersonic ground attack missiles.

Actually, what IS new is the low level nature of the hypersonic missiles and the massively increased range. Air to Air weapons are pretty limited in range, the new crop of missiles that they are discussing are just faster versions of cruse missiles that have intercontinental range.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Anonymous Coward]

A missile that can handle the heat of hyper velocity can probably handle a laser hit.

Perhaps. But a missile already dealing with the heat of hyper velocity may not have much margin to deal with the added energy from a laser hit.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? A tactical or strategic nuke will be the weapon of choice for this, then. The US also has the advantage of multi-thousand mile buffers on both of its coasts, more or less necessitating this kind of attack being from ballistic missiles, not North Korea failure demonstrators. The *ONLY* threats from this then are Russia, France and Great Britain, the only other countries with sub-launch ballistic missiles. or a deorbited asteroid. But then the whole "USS Hawaii Islands" is at risk for attack, then...

The whole "AS-4" saturation attack model is not a new thing, either. But we've definitely lost capability there with the retirement of the F-14/AIM-54 Phoenix missile platform. But, then again, the AS-4 seemed to be sized almost like an F-104, too. it's a BIG missile.

One advantage for defense against the hypersonic missile threat is they're not going to be manouverable as they're flying in because they're flying so f'ing fast (SR-71 had a 90-mile turn radius when at speed...). And it's not like they're going to be coming in by surprise, either. They do reduce the success probabilities for the defensive system layers greatly, though. and I don't think even a successful barrage of CIWS bullets will have much effect if they hit the missile, unless it causes the missile to very seriously disintegrate before it gets too close and then augur into the ocean short of the target- if that 1000 lb warhead is coming in at 2000 mph, that's still a lot of kinetic energy to displace on the hull of a ship, even if it doesn't detonate normally/at all, as it follows its ballistic path in for the last 1-2 km.

So, then unless the Carrier Battle Group is in the Arabian (Persian) Gulf, or other confined sea space, that means intercepting the aircraft launching them *before they launch*, taking out known/suspected launch platform locations, etc. So I'm sure the Iranian Air Force is working on fitting launchers for them onto Airbus A-310/320's...

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[wagnerrp]

Remember that in the last phases of the operational life of the SR 71 Blackbird, their payload was a high mach number drone.

Not quite. That was in the last phases of its development life, and the idea was scrapped because they could not get supersonic separation to work reliably, resulting in the loss of airframes and pilots during testing.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, with a large enough warhead, say a small nuke, the hyper velocity missile only has to get close to put ships out of action.

Using a nuke, even a small one, is a great big no-no. If you're the first country to break one out these days you're making a very high risk gamble with the future of your nation.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[AmiMoJo]

Lasers won't help much. First you have the problem of tracking something travelling that fast not far above the ground. Even if you can do that you then have to keep the laser on a moving target long enough to damage it. The missile will obviously be well shielded from heat since it gets plenty of that from the air, and it doesn't fly in a straight line either so your tracking and aiming system needs to be very, very fast.

Range is also a big issue. Laser have much more limited range than intercept missiles and of course are line of sight only. A conventional missile doesn't give you much time to shoot it down, and a hypersonic missile gives you even less.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[bobbied]

Aren't ICBMs already hypersonic?

Yep, they are, but they are also ballistic objects for all but the boost phase of their trip. Once the rocket runs out of fuel, an ICBM does not change the path it is on.

They are discussing hypersonic versions of low level cruise missiles which are not ballistic. Low level cruise missiles are notoriously hard to detect, track and destroy even though they are usually subsonic. Hypersonic would make the detect, track and destroy problem harder.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Probably zero. The intention was to make a show, by terrorizing Israelis. To do that they launched several every night, and kept that up as best they could.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Anonymous Coward]

These nimrods need to look up how fast ICBM warheads are traveling during reentry. Speed isn't the problem, but rather that they aren't ballistic missiles.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[phayes]

The only country currently exploring hypervelocity missiles is China. The South China Sea is a lot bigger than the gulf so again, the journalist is just playing chicken little.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[phayes]

Snort. If that's your take from what I wrote, I'd suggest remedial reding comprehension classes.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[jklovanc]

A hyper sonic cruise missile coming directly or almost direct at you would be presenting mainly leading edges and therefore shielded areas. Shielding could also be added to other critical areas to stop burn through. Right now it is dead weigh but in when lasers come into use that extra shielding will be useful. Also ballistic hyper velocity missiles do not have the fuel tank you refer to.

It is absolutely trivial to track anything moving that fast. It lights up like a flare on infrared.

Quite true but to track something accurately enough to target specific vulnerable spots is a very different story.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[phayes]

Ah, but a nuclear power lobbing ballistic missiles at US forces is a good idea? Suuuurrre...

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Rich0]

Agree that a hypersonic missile would work against a fixed target.

Nukes are great at killing things, and then getting yourself killed. Their main purpose is to exterminate the entire human race and they don't work very well if used with any other goal in mind.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Anonymous Coward]

Call it welfare for the old military hardware companies. Let's plan for the past, by spending all our money on that. For that matter, let's spend money on a javelin defense system, because there are lots of those weapons available cheap.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[im_thatoneguy]

Yep, this is the classic Cold War battle of affordability.

Sure the Russians *could* develop weapons which would destroy the US but it bankrupts the country--destroying the Soviet Union.

North Korea can't sustainably develop Nuclear Weapons let alone hypersonic delivery methods. If they did have to spend the money on hypersonic warheads... we would win by default since they would starve to death.

Sure China/Russia could replace their obsolete ICBMs with hypersonic missiles in the not too distant future but that means they would have to spend hundreds of billions on R&D and manufacturing. They can't afford it. Or if they do decide they can afford it... we win by forcing them to spend the money.

Not to mention by the time we have hypersonic missiles we'll have megawatt class lasers field ready.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[idontgno]

A hyper sonic cruise missile coming directly or almost direct at you would be presenting mainly leading edges and therefore shielded areas.

No ship would target any incoming missile targeted at itself. That's why carriers deploy with large support fleets of anti-aircraft destroyers: they target missiles attacking each other ships, because those afford an opportunity at an off-angle (rather than head-on) engagement.

Besides, high-density lasers don't just heat a target, they flash-heat the contact area and induce a vapor or plasma explosion and a contact shockwave back in the target. That should be enough to wreck the aerodynamic stability of a fast mover.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Steve Hamlin]

Useful and effective:

Patriot 3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

Israel's Iron Dome: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[phayes]

Getting hit by a laser would render the missile completely blind and thus incapable of the terminal guidance necessary to achieve a hit on a maneuvering target. Just another reason hyper velocity missiles are not the magic weapon the journalist is pretending they are.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[wagnerrp]

Also ballistic hyper velocity missiles do not have the fuel tank you refer to.

Ballistic hypersonic missiles don't stay hypersonic unless undergoing re-entry. If you're deep in the atmosphere at a shallow slope, you bleed that velocity real fast unless you've got a motor.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[wagnerrp]

But we're talking about a couple hundred miles, not the thousand or more typical of cruise missiles. Hypersonic SA and AA missiles are often capable of similar range, if perhaps not at that low altitude.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[jklovanc]

What about stationary targets like port, army installations, communication facilities, CIC centers, supply depots, etc? Missiles are not always targeted at moving objects.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[im_thatoneguy]

They might themselves be blind, but the stealth UAV or satellite overhead could be providing real-time telemetry.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[bob_super]

Senkaku, Taiwan, Phillipines.
Three reasons for the Chinese to have a nice toy that scares the shit out of US carrier groups.
Anyone closer than Okinawa will be likely to get sunk, and missiles are a lot cheaper than carriers.

The journalist isn't playing chicken little, the military complex wants funding to prepare for a significant threat to the US hegemony.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[demonbug]

Actually, what IS new is the low level nature of the hypersonic missiles and the massively increased range. Air to Air weapons are pretty limited in range, the new crop of missiles that they are discussing are just faster versions of cruse missiles that have intercontinental range.

Actually, the hypersonic missiles that are anything other than drawing-board hopes and dreams at this point are more like ICBMs than cruise missiles. They look an awful lot like ICBMs at launch, but don't go as high and basically glide in at hypersonic speeds, taking a flatter trajectory on reentry rather than the near-vertical profile of a ballistic missile. Makes it harder to figure out where they are going to hit because they don't follow a ballistic trajectory (by following the launch and mid-phase of an ICBM you can pretty much tell where it is going to hit because it follows a ballistic profile - even an ICBM with a MIRV warhead can only hit targets within a relatively small area with its reentry vehicles), but they still launch high enough for relatively easy detection compared to cruise missiles, which stay entirely within the atmosphere, and generally stay quite low.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[demonbug]

The article, at least, is talking about hypersonic re-entry vehicles launched on ICBMs (as that is what China has tested recently). They are basically just "highly" maneuverable re-entry vehicles, designed to approach their target at a flatter trajectory compared to traditional warheads, with some limited maneuvering capability. The point being to avoid the problems of a ballistic trajectory that makes your impact point obvious to anyone looking, complicating interception. Again, the article at least isn't discussing low-level hypersonic missiles, as thus far no one has really had any luck making something like that work.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[david_thornley]

A nuke is not the weapon of choice for anything short of deterrence. The first country to use one is going to lose, badly, even if not immediately. Think of the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas war: it wasn't until months afterwards that I realized I'd never heard any mention of British nukes, despite the problems they had with conventional forces.

The only real use is ultimate defense. Nobody can conquer a nuclear power except at a terrible cost that would make the WWII city-bombing campaigns look almost inconsequential.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[david_thornley]

it doesn't fly in a straight line

That would be a neat trick at hypersonic speeds. Any turning force capable of any significant maneuver under fire would tear the missile apart.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[phayes]

Regular ballistic missiles are already sufficient for that & hypervelocity brings almost nothing to the table

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[phayes]

Satellites will not survive long enough to be a problem in any scenario where China is lobbing missiles at a US carrier group. You may have a point in a few decades if China develops stealth but for the moment they don't exist

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Yakasha]

Hypervelocity missiles are good for "journalists" in order to sell paper but not so much against the US Navy.

Are you really saying blind supersonic ordinance doesn't present a threat to the US Navy?

If that's your take from what I wrote, I'd suggest remedial reding comprehension classes.

lol wow.
That is exactly what you wrote, substituting references to missiles specifically rather than ordnance in general. The only question is whether the first sentence is referring to subsonic or supersonic missiles being blind. Perhaps the 2nd sentence clears that up... but then you would have used a semicolon no doubt to join the thoughts. What would serve everybody better than being a prick would be to put your own remedial English skills to work rewording your post.

Nevermind. Just fuck off.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Antique Geekmeister]

The latest published high power lasers are roughly 30 kWatts Even if that is expanded by a factor of 10, the optical distortion and size of the shock wave surrounding a hypervelocity missile make a tight laser focus impossible.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Antique Geekmeister]

Except that turbulence is already going to create erratic, unplanned changes in flight path. _Stabliling_ the turbulence, is a major goal of design for hypersonic craft of all sorts.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Anonymous Coward]

Posturing, I'm afraid.. This sort of thing has been popping up for years, with every anti-missile system:

http://www.democraticundergrou...

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[phayes]

Yo dimwit, the discussion is about ICBM/IRBM active guidance hypersonic vehicles along the lines of the Pershing II, not your mama's pea shooter.
At the distances these are used, terminal guidance is essential which makes my comments germane and yours the sign that you have no frigging idea. Now go back to reddit you fuckwit.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[russotto]

Agree that a hypersonic missile would work against a fixed target.

Unless, of course, you made sure that you could see any hypersonic missile coming (they're not stealth) long before it got near your fixed target. Then you could throw countermeasures in its path.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Rich0]

Agree that a hypersonic missile would work against a fixed target.

Unless, of course, you made sure that you could see any hypersonic missile coming (they're not stealth) long before it got near your fixed target. Then you could throw countermeasures in its path.

I believe the new development is in low-altitude hypersonic missiles. (Otherwise ICBMs have been hypersonic since the 50s.) Detecting a low-altitude hypersonic missile is a challenge due to terrain masking, though it certainly is possible if you have networked sensors. Low-altitude supersonic missiles are hard enough to detect and hit.

Of course, if the trajectory is low you might be able to defeat the missile with a fence/net of some kind (think torpedo net). A hypersonic missile can't really do a pop-up without losing all its speed (indeed, it would need substantial airbrakes just to dump the speed in the first place).

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[AmiMoJo]

When travelling at hypersonic speeds even a turn of 0.1 degrees is going to put you a long way from where you would otherwise have been a second later. How do you think they hit their targets on the ground from level flight?

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Cochonou]

Indeed, along similar lines, it can be argued that the existence of submarine missile platforms such as the Oscar 2 has made carrier battle groups obsolete. However, just like ICBMs, such weapons are available to a very limited number countries, and are only used in an all-out war. They will not be deployed in the kind of wars that have taken place in the recent history.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[Yakasha]

Yo dimwit, the discussion is about ICBM/IRBM active guidance hypersonic vehicles along the lines of the Pershing II, not your mama's pea shooter. At the distances these are used, terminal guidance is essential which makes my comments germane and yours the sign that you have no frigging idea. Now go back to reddit you fuckwit.

Oh really, hence my surprise that you would say something like that and my attempt to get clarification to maybe start a discussion. Don't go on /. after your daddy fucks you. You're way too angry.

Re:Not Obsolete At All

[david_thornley]

How long will it take to do an 0.1 degree turn? (BTW, do that at 3600 mph and a second later you'll be about 3 feet over a second later. Methinks you're overestimating things.)

Figure out lateral acceleration in Gs, which is likely to be similar to current supersonic missiles, and calculate the course change. It's not real impressive.

And this is why...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

And this would be why the R&D types, especially Navy, have been pushing like mad to get higher output lasers without the clunkiness of the old chemical-powered ones...

Re:And this is why...

[djupedal]

Please....the push is to be allowed a front seat at the money trough, nothing else matters.

Re:And this is why...

[WormholeFiend]

And once the anti-missile lasers are well-established, there will be a push for faster-than-light missiles.

And then of course, we will have the technology we need to explore other star systems.

Re:And this is why...

[interkin3tic]

Probably silly question: wouldn't the effectiveness of that be reduced by mirror-coating the missile? I'm aware mirrors aren't perfect and won't be perfect on a missile, but you wouldn't need to completely bounce all the energy away. As I understand it, we don't have a laser that can focus on and cook a normal missile in the air yet, if reflective coating doubled the time required for a laser, wouldn't that double the requirement for the laser?

Googling didn't immediately bring up anything more than short answers to forum posts like this.

Re:And this is why...

[Yakasha]

Please....the push is to be allowed a front seat at the money trough, nothing else matters.

While I admire your pessimism, I think you're a little off. The personality traits that help one last the 20-30 years in the military necessary to be promoted to a position to make those kinds of decisions do not normally include greed.
I'm more inclined to believe their drive lies with "blowing shit up", and "America! Fuck ya!".

Re:And this is why...

[Anonymous Coward]

It would depend on the exact nature of the laser, but typically, no. Anti-missile lasers need to put a large amount of power into the target relatively quickly, which means any anti-reflective coating (even if it's 95% reflective, which would be damned impressive on a missile) is going to be vaporized very nearly instantly. You'd probably be better off with an ablative coating that would vaporize when hit, absorbing the energy of the laser. Mirrors also tend to only work very well across a narrow spectrum, which means you'd need to know the type of laser you were going to get hit with. And the problem gets worse if the mirror isn't perfectly clean (since dust will absorb the laser and melt the mirror).

Re:And this is why...

[DigiShaman]

Naw. They will just develop lasers to pop people from space. No difference than you using a magnifying glass on ants; only much faster. It would be like a hit-man sniping from orbit. Tinfoil hats may be in order.

Re:And this is why...

[Anonymous Coward]

If that were true, then investing heavily in something which will only need replacing shortly seems like a smart move.

Re:And this is why...

[viperidaenz]

What do you think keeps them there when they get old?

Re:And this is why...

[Anonymous Coward]

And then of course, we will have the technology we need to explore other star systems.

...and blow them the hell up!

Re:And this is why...

[phorm]

At near-relative speed, you don't really need a traditional missile /w payload. Just something hard enough to survive atmosphere until velocity makes a big boom. Similar concepts have been around in sci-fi for awhile, and were somewhat used in the last "GI Joe" movie as well.
Basically a similar concept to "dinosaur killer" asteroids. Speed+Mass=Energy=Big Boom

Re:And this is why...

[0123456]

Except that 95% reflective coating still means you need to put out 20x as much energy as a laser fired at a non-reflective missile. That's either a much bigger laser, or a laser hitting the target for longer.

Re:And this is why...

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, idiots will buy alumninum foil instead and think they are safe. Sheeple....

Re:And this is why...

[fishybell]

If only I hadn't spent all my mod points on the "Fuck Beta" campaign.

Re:And this is why...

[jafac]

This sounds like a good "Von Braun" strategy.

(Von Braun being WHY we have ballistic missiles in the first-place; his strategy being: con the military-industrial complex into funding the basic research to apply to civilian space exploration&settlement - which worked okay. Unless you lived in London.)

Re:And this is why...

[jafac]

They would never do that. That would violate international treaties.

And our superpowers NEVER violate international treaties.

Re:And this is why...

[Anonymous Coward]

As I understand it, we don't have a laser that can focus on and cook a normal missile in the air yet,

Your understanding is a few years out of date: "In 2000 and 2001 THEL shot down 28 Katyusha artillery rockets and 5 artillery shells."

They stopped development on that particular system a few years later (it was too bulky and too costly) but we certainly have sufficiently-capable lasers.

Re:And this is why...

[schlachter]

and to destroy them.

Re:And this is why...

[Rich0]

You wouldn't need 20x the energy delivery. You might need 20x more power in the first femtosecond or whatever until the coating is burned through, and then you'd need only the amount of energy normally needed to ablate through the rest of the armor after that.

As soon as the surface of the mirror starts to burn it isn't a mirror any longer.

Re:And this is why...

[bluefoxlucid]

The problem is more that the coating reflects 95% of the energy for 1/100 of 1 second, not for the entire duration until hull penetration is achieved. It would heat up and become non-reflective pretty much immediately, without 20x the energy input.

Re:And this is why...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Please....the push is to be allowed a front seat at the money trough, nothing else matters.

The money trough is a factor; but virtually anything sufficiently complex can become an arbitrarily expensive procurement project. The fact that lasers specifically, rather than fancy interceptor missiles, or Block Whatever autocannon fire control systems, or explosive-reactive-composite-unobtanium, or any number of other possible projects is because photons are among the few things that you might have a realistic shot of delivering to an incoming projectile.

To have no project at all would offend the spenders; but the specifics of the project(at least until part of it puts down roots in Senator Somebody's home state) are influenced at least in part by what seems useful.

Re:And this is why...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Just for the sake of clarity: We do have chemical lasers that are quite peppy indeed. Unfortunately, a deuterium fluoride laser (or pretty much any chemical laser) is a fairly nasty customer in terms of care, feeding, and exhaust gasses, so there has been a lot of interest in trying to scale up solid-state lasers, which are much better behaved; but still pretty pitiful at present.

Re:And this is why...

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you think keeps them there when they get old?

If ya can't "get it up", then go blow shit up.

Re:And this is why...

[Antique Geekmeister]

Not lasers. Crowbars: they don't suffer from the optical distortion problems of lasers. Look up the history of "Project Thor" to understand the tremendous advantage of simply de-orbiting any long, narrow, dense objects from earth orbit.

Re:And this is why...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fun, excitement, comaraderie, not wanting to find another job, love of serving one's country/defending the constitution, etc. There are many, many reasons for a long military career. Although officers do get paid a lot of money, I have yet to meet one that I'd qualify as greedy (speaking as a veteran who served for over 10 years). A lot of people in the military could make a lot more in the private sector for doing the same work or less, and really no amount of money is worth risking your life over. No, money is never really even considered for most military folks.

Re:And this is why...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you have successive reflective layers stacked, or rotating missile, or opaque fluid ejection from surface when laser radiation is detected, etc., etc.

Re:And this is why...

[Rich0]

Unless you have successive reflective layers stacked, or rotating missile, or opaque fluid ejection from surface when laser radiation is detected, etc., etc.

I'm not sure it is really possible to stack reflective layers in a way that keeps them reflective when the laser ablates through the previous layer. You'd probably have to space them apart so that the heat from the laser blasting through doesn't destroy the next layer before even reaching it, and I don't really see that being very practical in a cone that has to travel at mach 10.

Rotating missiles is a well-known defense, and no doubt a laser system would not be deployed unless it could handle this. A military laser would probably be pulsed for only a very short duration - if the laser is designed to destroy the missile in a few nanoseconds then rotation really isn't a factor. The same applies to any kind of active defense - there would be little time for a fluid to be ejected if the laser acts very quickly. A laser weapon that doesn't act quickly would probably be ineffective simply due to the inability to maintain focus on a single spot on anything at long range, let alone a hypersonic missile.

Hey, I'm not saying that shooting down missiles using lasers is easy. I'm just saying that if somebody works it out then I don't see hypersonic missiles providing much of an improved attack against them. Now, a projectile that approaches a target at relativistic velocity would be another matter, as would be another laser weapon.

hypersonic hypershmomic

[xevioso]

So maybe it's because a lot of people's jobs rest on these missile defense systems being implemented?

Also, I am curious how hypersonic weapons will fare against a ship equipped with either a Gauss cannon, or more importantly, a laser. Wouldn't both of these be an adequate defense against a hypersonic missle, if implemented properly?

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[cold fjord]

Every defensive system takes time to operate, staring with detection, identification, classification, target selection, weapon / ammunition selection, engagement, assessment, and reengagement (if necessary). Hypersonic weapons really cut down on the amount of time you have to do that as well as make the actual engagement more difficult, and that is just based on speed. If you add any countermeasures, such a stealth technology or jamming it gets even harder. Think of the SR-71. It was never successfully intercepted. Hypersonic weapons are an even more challenging proposition since they are going to be even faster, and likely smaller, with years of advances in materials for radar shielding, and electronics for countermeasures. To successfully engage them your defensive systems have to be quick, accurate, and either have warning or be instant-on. If your defensive systems rely upon large amounts of electricity being instantly available that is going to have some implications. I have little doubt it is possible to engage them, but definitely not easy. You can look at the work being done with armored vehicle active defense systems as an example in a lower speed regime. Bottom line is that if there are a lot of hypersonic weapons in the air at once heading toward you, you're probably in big trouble unless you have deflector shields even if you have phasers.

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[jklovanc]

Gauss cannon

There is a lag between the time the shell is fired and the time the shell hits. That requires leading the missile. If the incoming missile jinks the outgoing shell will miss. To hit would require in flight tracking and guidance and even then misses would be likely.

Laser

Lasers are also non instantaneous as hey need time to burn through the missile. This requires precise tracking and fast beam manipulation. If the hyper velocity missile jinks well enough the laser energy will spread out and be ineffective. Also hyper velocity missiles are hardened against heat caused by air friction. A little more shielding may defeat lasers as well.

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[amicusNYCL]

Well, "if implemented properly", any missile defense system would be adequate against any missile. But yeah, if they aren't putting money into developing anti-projectile lasers, then they're probably wasting time and money. Lasers could even protect against artillery or tank shells. If the army could field a tank that has a laser defense system then it would pretty much rule the battlefield, until it meets an energy weapon. Something like this would make a tank pretty unstoppable if it could shoot down other tank rounds. This one looks pretty interesting too, that video reminds me of the weapons command briefings in Freespace 2.

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[Nefarious Wheel]

By their very velocity, wouldn't hypersonic missiles have limited ability to jink?

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[0123456]

The other thing is, all these 'oh, but laser!' arguments assume the other guy is going to play nice and only attack one at a time, like a bad martial arts movie. Sure, maybe you can shoot down one missile heading your way, but what happens when there are five? ten? one hundred?

You wouldn't want to fire a hundred missiles at a tank, but those hundred missiles would probably be much cheaper than replacing the aircraft carrier you just sank with them.

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[Anonymous Coward]

Lasers are also non instantaneous as hey need time to burn through the missile. This requires precise tracking and fast beam manipulation. If the hyper velocity missile jinks well enough the laser energy will spread out and be ineffective. Also hyper velocity missiles are hardened against heat caused by air friction. A little more shielding may defeat lasers as well.

Seems like those issues would be solved by more powerful lasers. So basicly it's just an arms race in laser power vs missile heat shielding. In theory the laser should have the advantage in the long term as the ability of matter to withstand heat is more limited than the ability to deliver energy via photons (or relativistic particle accelerators).

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[jklovanc]

You don't have to kink much for a small object to dodge another small object or spread laser energy so it will not burn through. A couple of degrees back and forth in a random pattern would be enough.

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[DerekLyons]

Also, I am curious how hypersonic weapons will fare against a ship equipped with either a Gauss cannon, or more importantly, a laser. Wouldn't both of these be an adequate defense against a hypersonic missle, if implemented properly?

There's more to the problem than delivering a killing amount of energy (whether kinetic or EM) to the target. You need a radar that can quickly spot the missile* and a target tracking system that can determine it's course, position, and speed. With these, you then need to predict the future position of the weapon. Then you need to slew your anti-missile weapon onto the firing bearing and launch/fire (presuming the weapon is in fact ready to fire**). Individually these functions have long been mastered, but hypersonic weapons makes the whole process more difficult because they reduce the time available for the defender to detect, evaluate, decide, and engage. (And when it comes to re-engagement if you miss... they turn the problem up to 19.)

* This is why phased array radars are becoming the gold standard, since you don't have to physically move the antenna you can scan at a much higher rate. Processing power becomes a key limitation however.

** This is reasoning behind VLS, you can ready multiple weapons in parallel, you don't need to slew the launcher back to the loading position and reload, and you don't need to slew back onto the firing bearing.

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[jklovanc]

Along those same line, defense systems have effective engagement ranges. Incoming missiles can be shot down within that range which means that one laser could down multiple missiles. If more missiles enter the engagement range that can be shot down before they hit the system is considered saturated. The faster the missile goes the less time it spends in the engagement range the fewer missiles can be shit down the easier, and less expensive, it is to saturate the defenses.

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[Anonymous Coward]

You wouldn't want to fire a hundred missiles at a tank, but those hundred missiles would probably be much cheaper than replacing the aircraft carrier you just sank with them.

Just to be pedantic, you don't sink an aircraft carrier because it's expensive, but because of its strategic importance (hurting their economy may be part of your strategy, but it's not the only part)

If a bunch of high ranking generals and important people are inside the tank, firing a hundred missiles at the tank may be very reasonable.

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[Anubis IV]

I'm rather curious as well. From what I've seen in publicly available demonstration videos, the current laser systems need to keep the beam on the target for a relatively lengthy period of time in order to inflict a kill shot, but these hypersonic missiles can apparently fly at low altitudes, making me wonder whether they'll even be visible from a land or sea-based location for long enough.

Doing some quick calculations, if we assume that a ship-mounted laser is 10m off the surface of the water, that would put the distance to the horizon about 11 km away in either direction. The article says that hypersonic missiles are between Mach 5 and Mach 10, which puts them between 6150 km/h and 12,300 km/h. If we assume we're talking about a missile at the lower end of that range (which is 1.7 km/s), that would mean that it can cover the 22 km from one horizon to the other in about 13 seconds. Of course, I've oversimplified here, since a hypersonic missile would not be flying along the ground, so it'd be visible for longer, but it does give an idea of just how fast these missiles are actually moving and just how long a system might have to make a kill shot (of course, we could probably start targeting the missile even before it enters line of sight of the laser).

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[0123456]

Sure, but, in the real world, you don't launch a trillion dollar missile at an aircraft carrier, and you don't put a dozen high-ranking generals in a tank.

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[rahvin112]

Hypersonic missiles are good for long distance precision strikes (this is the US interest in them, the ability to strike a target anywhere in the world within an hour). I doubt they will be good for much else. For one they won't be able to adjust trajectory once fired so they aren't good to hit anything that can move. Because of immense kinetic velocity it's possible that even running into a flying insect or bird could destroy the missile. In fact I perceive it possible to throw something like a net at it have the sheer kinetic energy cause the net to cut the missile into little pieces (a stationary net of small high tensile steel would act like a wire saw to the missile whereas a conventional missile might just fly right between the wires by deflecting them.

Honestly we shouldn't be worried about hypersonic. They make interesting fast strike weapons against stationary targets (hence the Russian fear of it being used as a first strike weapon to eliminate nuclear deterrent) but for just about anything else they are just not that interesting until someone can demonstrate something about them that would make them good in battle at something other than what I've listed. You can't turn at those velocities so you can't track or target moving objects. People just don't grasp what those speed are like, you are flying at miles per second at those velocities and at that speed by the time you can see it you don't even have a second before you hit it. In fact only with long distance radar or programmed flight path could you even target something.

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[wagnerrp]

You're already 10 miles down range by the time you've managed to jink a couple degrees. A hypersonic missile cannot accelerate laterally any faster than a subsonic one.

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[wagnerrp]

That's why the aircraft carrier has multiple forms of missile defense systems, and is surrounded by many different ships with more missile defense systems. You're not just attacking a carrier. You're attacking a carrier group, with upwards of a thousand anti-missile missiles of different types between them. The same would be said should they transition to LASER or kinetic defense systems.

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[Rich0]

The ability of a hypersonic weapon to jink is going to be very limited. Honestly, it will be so limited that I have no idea how it would even hit a ship in the first place unless it were stationary, or the missile had a very high trajectory and powerful sensors so that it could acquire the ship 75 miles away. Of course, in the latter case the ship could also acquire the missile even further away and it would be in line-of-sight the whole time for a laser.

A hypersonic missile fired at a ship designed to appear above the waves a second before impact will probably appear above the waves just to find no ships a second ahead of it.

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[bluefoxlucid]

The problem with first strike against nuclear silos is you don't know where all the silos are. It's impossible to know if your knowledge is complete if you can't examine all possible factors--the whole Russian terrain, all of Russian's documents, the first ten miles of the entire earth's surface, and the entire ocean for underwater bases and secret nuclear missile carrying submarines.

A concerted attack against the nuclear silos can be construed as intent to prevent nuclear counter-strike, and can thus be considered a nuclear first strike. This justifies nuclear counterstrike under the same logic as a nuclear explosion in your country justifying a nuclear counterstrike.

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[kenai_alpenglow]

If it is about to attack you, you do. Especially if, by doing so, you can effectively destroy you opponents ability to attack you in the"near term". The US has 12 carrier groups; not sure who is next, but they don't have anywhere close to that. China has, what 1, maybe 2 in the near future? (Actually, right now they have none; but they're trying to establish the capability) If you're Taiwan, and you had that capability, you bet they blow a $1T weapon to keep from being overrun. Compared to annihilation, $1T is cheap.

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[0123456]

A trillion dollars will buy you about ten thousand fighters, even at today's crazy prices, or a million missiles. That's rather more than the Chinese can fit on an aircraft carrier.

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[rahvin112]

I'm not arguing they are good at first strike, simply saying the Russian fear of that is not complete BS.

Even if you did know where every single stationary missile is you don't know where the mobile ones are and there are a LOT of mobile nukes in play. Just the ones in a single SSBN alone could decimate a nation and that's just one nuclear sub and that's doesn't even factor to Russia's mobile launchers that could be literally anywhere in Siberia.

But the Russian argument is along the lines that someone might be foolish enough to attempt nuclear war if they think they can take out 90% of someone else's ICBM's with almost no warning. Hypersonic ICBM type missiles are moving so fast that outside the boost phase you might not even see them coming until something blows up. This would be one of their advantages against terrorist type sites. When Clinton launched cruise missiles into Afghanistan the terrorists actually saw news reports about the missile launches before they arrived and were able to abandon the sites before impact.

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[david_thornley]

The SR-71 was not only fast but high. Anything that was going to engage it had to travel up from the ground.

Further, I really question how much stealth you can get on a hypersonic missile. It may be possible to hide effectively from radar, but hiding the radiation from that much heat is going to be a real trick. A jammer would be counterproductive, since it would not be necessary to have a radar lock in order to hit it. On the final approach, it effectively cannot turn without tearing itself to bits.

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[Anonymous Coward]

>You don't have to kink much for a small object to dodge another small object or spread laser energy so it will not burn through

"Kink" at hypersonic velocities and you'll miss the target entirely.

Some of these objections are just abjectly stupid.

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[Anonymous Coward]

My manager at a former employer had a Reagan-era SDI (strategic defense initiative) poster STILL hanging above his desk in 2008. I noted it, saying, "You and I both know that that was an impossible goal, engineering-wise, don't you?"

His reply: "Yeah, but it was good for business."

Re:hypersonic hypershmomic

[Antique Geekmeister]

It's impossible to _prevent_ jinking at high speed: minor changes in atmospheric density are multiplied in effect by the force needed to continue at high mach speeds, as even minute differences exert enormously differential forces in the shock wave.

Defense Gap

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Hypersonic missiles are ridiculously expensive and none of the probable combatants in near to mid term future wars are likely to have them. Even after they become viable weapons, only advanced military forces like China or Russia will be able field them for quite a while. The US is not going to war with China or Russia any time soon. We need defense platforms that deal with realistic enemies, and they will use missile tech that these defense platforms are capable of deal with.

Also, Beta sucks. Long live Classic!

Re:Defense Gap

[Anonymous Coward]

none of the probable combatants in near to mid term future wars are likely to have them

That's why we keep building multimillion dollar subs and aircraft carriers. Can't let the Al Qaeda navy beat us!

Re:Defense Gap

[Anonymous Coward]

"The US is not going to war with China or Russia any time soon." Sure..... and you base this upon? As soon as the new oilfields start to run low a war will be declared (terrorists or Weapons of mass Destruction will be found in target country that happens to have resources that the US needs) China will contend the war and bingo you have a new war, are if you think you have a technological edge think again. The worlds best equipped labs are now in China, they have a r&d department that would make any geek cry with joy.

Re:Defense Gap

[xelah]

The US is not going to war with China or Russia any time soon.

Umm, I wouldn't wish to bet on that. And definitely not on the US needing to deter their militaries, especially China's. Think of Taiwan, the Japan/China disputes and Russia's tendency to invade states it thinks it ought to still own when they don't do what they're told.

Still, it's obviously not the only threat.

Re:Defense Gap

[Anonymous Coward]

The US is not going to war with China or Russia any time soon.

Umm, I wouldn't wish to bet on that. And definitely not on the US needing to deter their militaries, especially China's. Think of Taiwan, the Japan/China disputes and Russia's tendency to invade states it thinks it ought to still own when they don't do what they're told.

Still, it's obviously not the only threat.

None of those nations are likely to fight a real war against any nuclear power. To paraphrase a favorite webcomic of mine "We don't really have wars anymore, but it's not because we're peaceful, juts that our weapons are so powerful they'd destroy anything worth fighting for so there's not really any point".

missiles

[Iamthecheese]

I don't know, can they shoot down beta?

Re:missiles

[DigiShaman]

No. Nothing can shoot down beta. Beta is the new alpha!!!

Re:missiles

[phazemstr]

We can hope.

Re:missiles

[Anonymous Coward]

and the omega!

Lasers

[hunter44102]

Does anyone know why they can't use lasers to knock down these fast missiles? http://www.defense.gov/News/Ne...

Re:Lasers

[FuegoFuerte]

They can... but the tech may not be quite there yet. Or it might be, but we don't know. High enough intensity lasers that can be aimed and focused on an incoming hypersonic missile and stay aimed/focused long enough to take it out are sort of challenging to build, I'd wager. Also, if fired from an aerial platform, one would have to be a bit careful about any miss taking things out on the ground. People might react badly to being scorched by lasers from the sky, after all. Not to mention burning flesh is an awful smell.

So right, as I was saying... technically complex.

Re:Lasers

[Yaur]

Probably what at least part of that $4.5B is for.

Re:Lasers

[jimbolauski]

When the Navy reaches its laser goal of a 1MW laser it will be cut through 2,000 feet of steal per second. Even with aluminum, which is more reflective to light and better at dissipating heat the dwell time needed to cut through the skin is probably less then a 1/100 of a second. At mach 5 that's only tracking for 60 feet. The 1MW laser if far off but by the time seedier countries have hypersonic missiles the navy will have their Mega-Watt laser.

Re:Lasers

[wagnerrp]

People might react badly to being scorched by lasers from the sky, after all.

During time of war, when you're dealing with an inbound missile and multiple millions, if not billions, of dollars worth of equipment, there's a bit of "better you than me" attitude.

Hypersonic missiles

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be great if someone launched a hypersonic missile towards Beta.

Re:Hypersonic missiles

[runeghost]

It would be great if someone launched a hypersonic missile towards Beta.

Ok, I know the whole Beta thing is pissing some people off, but that one was pretty funny.

Here's an idea

[DickBreath]

First, maybe it would be good to have foreign policies such that there aren't a lot of people who want to shoot missiles at you.

Second, Just because a certain missile defense system might not work against the most advanced missiles, doesn't mean it is ineffective against less advanced missiles. Maybe the investment should be considered in light of which countries' missiles you are concerned about shooting down.

Third, while an insane country will shoot missiles at you even as they are starving, you should make sure that they, and their neighbors to their immediate North understand what might happen if they shoot missiles at you. The country to their North might not like what could land right off their Southern border.

Re:Here's an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

If we blew the annoying countries to bits in the first place they wouldn't be there to shoot missiles at us.

ALSO DOWN WITH BETA

Re:Here's an idea

[FuegoFuerte]

If we blew the annoying countries to bits in the first place we wouldn't be here to have missiles shot at us.

FTFY.

Re:Here's an idea

[ISoldat53]

Or you could just buy off the foreign leaders. It's worked in the past and is cheaper.

Re:Here's an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

>First, maybe it would be good to have foreign policies such that there aren't a lot of people who want to shoot missiles at you.

Neville Chamberlain, is that you? We all thought you died ages ago. So, how did that policy work out for you?

Re:Here's an idea

[david_thornley]

Foreign policies that don't tick off third-world nations are theoretically possible, although the US doesn't seem to have developed the technology yet.

Foreign policies that don't tick off other Great Powers are a lot more difficult.

Re:Here's an idea

[Luckyo]

Indeed. It's a good thing that there's a lot of people like you in all those annoying countries who are annoyed by countries like yours.

It's people like you, the close adherents of core principle of Stalinism "no people, no problem" that are the reason why MAD exists to this day.

But What about...

[Anonymous Coward]

But what about the Doomsday Device Gap?!

Re:But What about...

[fiannaFailMan]

But what about the Doomsday Device Gap?!

I see you and I raise you. What about a mineshaft gap?

You can't beat the speed of light

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think everyone's investing so heavily in lasers all of a sudden?

Re:You can't beat the speed of light

[Nethemas the Great]

Have you never heard of Tachyons?

beta Missile attack

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they could use the beta server as a target for their new hypersonic missiles? no one would give a flying fcuk if the defense failed - slashdot would remain useful on the old brilliant wide text based comments network

Hypersonic beta fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they need Dice Holdings corporate address?

Exactly what I was thinking

[SuperKendall]

You are in a pretty good place if the only missiles that can successfully attack you are hypersonic, since they would be very expensive to build and take a lot of engineering prowess to work reliably.

Also how much of a payload can one missile really carry? Not much, good only for targeted strikes. But the more recent missile attacks we have seen have been more blanket attacks, like the Palestinian missiles constantly bombarding Israeli cities. Anything that can protect civilian populations from that kind of madness absolutely has a place.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[Jaysyn]

Also how much of a payload can one missile really carry? Not much, good only for targeted strikes.

Yeah? I'm not sure exactly what kinds of missiles they are trying to protect against, but a MIRV ICBM is a missile too you know.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[benjfowler]

The key word here is "reliably". Because the demonstrators (civilian AND military) I've read about have been as flaky as hell. Even from the Americans, who are incredibly good at building complex, reliable stuff.

The hardware is operating so close to the limit that the materials and the physics will allow, that it takes something special to make anything even fly in the first place.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[bhcompy]

Not just that, but the most common thing overlooked in complaining about specific defense projects is that the science and lessons learned are applied to many more things in the future, military and civilian

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[amicusNYCL]

Also how much of a payload can one missile really carry? Not much, good only for targeted strikes.

I think a targeted strike would be the specific purpose of a hypersonic missile, or really any missile for that matter. It's probably also fair to assume that any nation with the capability of developing and fielding a hypersonic missile can also stick a nuclear warhead on it.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[srmalloy]

Also how much of a payload can one missile really carry? Not much, good only for targeted strikes.

That depends on what your warhead/payload is. With a hypersonic missile to disperse it, how much territory could you effectively cover while dispersing, say, a hundred kilos of weaponized anthrax spores?

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

None.
The air friction would kill the spores.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[icebike]

Also the claim of maneuverability simply can't be justified.

Hypersonic missiles would tear themselves to shreds trying to maneuver at those speeds. Its not particularly hard to intercept a very fast object that you know can't make sharp turns.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[SuperKendall]

I think a targeted strike would be the specific purpose of a hypersonic missile, or really any missile for that matter.

It's not though. As stated, many modern uses of missiles have been non-targeted blanket strikes to just randomly destroy buildings or people. That goes for Palestinian strikes, for Al-Qaeda in Iraq just trying to blow up a few things in U.S. bases (well OK mostly they were using mortars and not rockets, but the point is the same and mortars get closer to being rockets all the time).

  If you take that cheap but effective tool away it reduces a lot of possibility for poorer nations to attack you, or even each other (if you give missile defense systems to allies).

It's probably also fair to assume that any nation with the capability of developing and fielding a hypersonic missile can also stick a nuclear warhead on it.

Of course but a nation with the technical prowess to do so is also at a level where they are probably not going to launch a first strike. And just because a burglar can use a helicopter to drill a hole in your roof through which he can enter your house, does not mean you should not lock the front door...

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[SuperKendall]

Yeah? I'm not sure exactly what kinds of missiles they are trying to protect against

An ICBM would be one of them because you have such a long lead time between continents (even at hypersonic speeds) you can work an intercept of some kind.

The "hypersonic missiles" being talked about are launched from relatively close range, and then hug the terrain to reach the target at hypersonic velocity.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[amicusNYCL]

It's not though. As stated, many modern uses of missiles have been non-targeted blanket strikes to just randomly destroy buildings or people. That goes for Palestinian strikes, for Al-Qaeda in Iraq just trying to blow up a few things in U.S. bases (well OK mostly they were using mortars and not rockets, but the point is the same and mortars get closer to being rockets all the time).

You're confusing your terms, rockets and missiles are not the same thing, particularly in military terms. The difference is guidance, rockets are not guided. Palestinians are firing rockets (essentially rocket-propelled mortars), not missiles. Therefore, all missiles by definition are for targeted strikes. Rockets are just point and shoot weapons. The Palestinians are trying to field a low-tech version of rocket artillery.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[0123456]

Its not particularly hard to intercept a very fast object that you know can't make sharp turns.

It's pretty hard to intercept one when it's flying at low level so you only have a second or two to track it, target it, and hit it. It's very hard to hit a hundred of them all coming in at the same time.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[arisvega]

Also how much of a payload can one missile really carry? Not much, good only for targeted strikes.

For your edification: a hypersonic missile DOES NOT NEED to carry ANY payload. The missile itself IS the payload, which is part of the whole 'hypersonic' point (the other part being to be able to hit globally in under 60 minutes).

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[icebike]

When exactly, have hundreds of incoming missiles been a problem for the US? Saddam Hussein may have a different view.
But nobody is going to launch hundreds of hypersonic missiles at the US (or any other country for that matter).

There are two types of defenders against massive missile attacks, those who have no viable defense, (in which case conventional cruise missiles are good enough) and those who could mount a serious defense and/or retaliation, (in which case such an attack would be suicide).

Hypersonic missiles will never be a mass attack weapon, unless the cost comes way way down, and the accuracy becomes kitchen window accurate. Those two things don't tend to happen together. They will always tend to be an expensive solution.

Also, against incoming munitions is improving all the time.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[icebike]

Oops, messed up last sentence.

Meant to say that point defense against hypersonic missiles should not be discounted because laser defense against incoming munitions is improving all the time.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[0123456]

When exactly, have hundreds of incoming missiles been a problem for the US?

That's like asking in late 1941 'when have light bombers and torpedo planes ever been a problem for the US'?

Obviously you don't have to worry about hypersonic missiles if you stick to attacking nations that can't shoot back. But, if you actually try attacking a competent nation again, they can probably afford hundreds of times as many missiles as you have aircraft carriers.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[stevew]

First there are really two types of missile defense systems. Those that worry about ICBMs, and those that are "theater" defense.

The US Missile defense system that is costing so much money worries about the first class, i.e. missiles coming from thousands of miles away that are ballistic in nature. We have a limited number of shots for such a defense - and really we're worrying about bad actors like North Korea or perhaps Iran. These guys are going to have a limited capability to throw things at us. So a small number of shots is about right.

These systems can NOT defend against Russia - who can throw several hundred missiles our way.

The theater defense systems are things like the Patriot or the SM3 (I think) that the Navy carries. These have some ballistic defense roll - but their main job is to worry about shorter distance ballistic missiles or air-breathers like the Exocet that was used in the Falklands war. A Hypersonic missile is going to fall into this class and indeed I believe such systems would be out-classed by a Hypersonic weapon today.

Perhaps with the next generation Laser weapons there might be a chance to defend against multiple salvos - but those aren't fielded yet.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[AmiMoJo]

India has hypersonic missiles. Iran has extremely fast torpedoes which, similarly, are also pretty difficult to defend against.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[icebike]

Perhaps in your rush to reply, you didn't read all the way to my second paragraph.

No country is going to pick a fight with any country that can produce hundreds of hypersonic missiles. Anyone using them in massive numbers would be looking at the same number back, or a nuclear response.

Also because hypersonics don't have that much maneuverability they would make a poor anti-ship missile. (These are designed as long range weapons, it takes them a hundred miles just to get up to speed). They would have to change course much quicker than is practical at that speed, (because ships move) or they would have to come on a straight line attack. Current, or upgraded CIWS would be able to handle small numbers.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[lgw]

Sure, we could imagine such a threat one day, an it would be awesome to have a defense against it. But given our current foreign policy, it seems much more likely we'll be attacked by some minor dictator who simply isn't deterred by threat of retaliation, for lack of any concern for the citizens of his nation. That's certainly the fights we've been picking in the last decade or so, anyhow. So yes, defense against symmetric threats is great, but defense against weaker opponents is still good.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[lgw]

The "scud" is certainly a missile, but its targeting is poor enough in practice that it might as well be a rocket. There are a lot of early cold war missiles like that - designed to target a city, not a building.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[lgw]

Anthrax is always less damaging than the same amount of traditional explosive, just so you know. Most chemical attacks are the same way. If your goal is to damage instead of merely frighten, those sorts of weapons are poor (which is why we've dropped them from our arsenals - heck, almost every weapon banned by treaty is there because it's not very effective).

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[Rich0]

Agree on the anti-ship bit. In order to fire a conventional missile at a ship you only need to know its location within a few miles, and if you know its direction of travel you can have even less certainty. The missile is programmed to fly to a particular point and turn on its radar, then to travel along a course looking for something to destroy. If the missile spots a ship within a few miles to either side of its flight path then it turns towards it and attacks it. A conventional missile has no trouble turning because it is traveling at a somewhat slow speed (granted, faster than most aircraft).

A hypersonic missile couldn't change course very quickly due to its high speed and likely small control surfaces (if they were big they'd rip right off when used). It might be hard to shoot down the missile if you spot it only seconds away, but that problem works just as well in reverse - if the missile spots you only a second or two away it will have a hard time steering towards you. Now, you could put a huge radar on the front and fly at high altitude to spot a ship 50 miles away and have more time to turn towards it, but that also means that the ship has more time to fire back.

Against a fixed land target a hypersonic missile would be very effective - it would have no radio emissions, though it would no doubt be quite bright in IR. You'd need to spot them a long way off using power radar, which of course is vulnerable to attack.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying that once the directed energy missile defense systems come on-line, we'll be able to buy our hypersonic missiles on discount at Best Buy?

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[tmosley]

And yes, they (at least the Chinese ones) are made to carry both conventional and nuclear warheads, though they don't actually need a warhead, since they have so much kinetic energy.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[0123456]

No country is going to pick a fight with any country that can produce hundreds of hypersonic missiles.

And no country is going to pick a fight with any country that can produce tens of thousands of fighters and bombers, so WWII didn't happen, right?

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[Bengie]

Someone is working on hyper-sonic(relative to water) torpedoes. That's going to suck since your "eyes" under water is sonar.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[icebike]

Maybe you want to re-read some history about World War II, especially in the Pacific.

The attack on the US caught us totally flat footed, and our production lines were no where near at the capacity they needed to be, even though we had been sending ships and planes to the British for some time

The War in the Pacific was a pretty close-run thing, there was almost a year where we were running on four beat up carriers, and could have easily lost that fight, and the whole pacific, if just a few battles went just slightly differently.

Further, the Japanese knew they couldn't beat us in the long run. Yamamoto warned them not to attack. But Japan decided to commit suicide.

Now you have to ask yourself if there would ever be a country capable enough and dumb enough to launch hundreds of hypersonic Missiles at the US with anything short of nuclear payloads. Because anything less than nuclear payloads isn't going to cut it. Not if ALL you have is a couple hundred single use hypersonic missiles.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[AmiMoJo]

Hypersonic missiles are designed to destroy targets within minutes of detecting their position. Detection can be via satellite or done or submarine etc. You need to get a good fix but then you can get the missile there so quickly that the target doesn't have time to move very far.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[khallow]

heck, almost every weapon banned by treaty is there because it's not very effective

Unless your goal is random killing of unprotected civilians. When I read of Iraq's dabbling with various chemical weapons during the Iraq-Iran war, it just didn't work that well, even on an initially unprepared opponent. It's most effective use appeared to be as a temporary obstruction to a enemy attack. For example, mustard gas is apparently persistent to a degree and lingers on a battlefield for a couple of days. So it could be used to interfere with a foe's logistics.

And in the wars afterward, the enemy was technologically advanced with plenty of gear for dealing with chemical weapons and far superior WMD (tactical nuclear weapons). Use of chemical weapons just wouldn't have gone well for Iraq.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah those poor trod upon Israelis only stealing the land that we never theirs to begin with from those terribly oppressive Palestinians. Fuck, you are stupid beyond belief.

Whose land is it, then? The Ottoman Empire's? Care to answer the question of what happened to them. Instead, let's start raining down rockets on the Israeli women and children because that will show them how serious and mad we are at those mean people! Oh, that's right: you see no innocent Jews through your bigotry.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

> An ICBM would be one of them because you have such a long lead time between continents (even at hypersonic speeds) you can work an intercept of some kind.
Right. And I can stop heatseeking missiles from with my bare hands, because I can hear the missile being launched.

An intercept at mach speeds requires very high precision targeting, or very large payloads of explosive to get past the hypersonic shock wave in *front* of the missile.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[shutdown -p now]

What if you wrap it in a thick bubble of some material + layer of insulation, such that the outer material burns up braking the pod, and the contents inside gets exposed only when it is safe?

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

It gets better: The Palestinians are actually the descendants of the other ten or so tribes of Israel.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[icebike]

Hypersonic missiles are designed to destroy targets within minutes of detecting their position. Detection can be via satellite or done or submarine etc. You need to get a good fix but then you can get the missile there so quickly that the target doesn't have time to move very far.

To be considered hypersonic, a missile must travel at speeds of between Mach 5 and Mach 10, or 3,840–7,680 miles per hour.

From Diego Garcia to Terhan is 3,269 miles, or about an hour of flight time.
(Plus, these things are all air-launched from planes so far, so you have to allow time for the carrier plane to take off.)

Even 500 miles at 3840mph is 8.5 minutes. Your typical military ship target would be 3.5 miles away by then. Better hope your hypersonic missile has a nuclear payload.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[Rich0]

Hypersonic missiles are designed to destroy targets within minutes of detecting their position. Detection can be via satellite or done or submarine etc. You need to get a good fix but then you can get the missile there so quickly that the target doesn't have time to move very far.

The problem with this is that you need to be relatively close to accomplish this. Few nations can field submarines at all, and the Navy is unlikely to allow either drones or subs to get close enough to a carrier/etc to get an accurate fix.

Satellites are a bigger problem, but only because by convention we allow them a lot of freedom of navigation. In an actual war any satellite belonging to an enemy nation would be shot down.

With conventional missiles you can at least fire somewhat blindly on inferred positions (you see fighters attacking from some direction, you can guess there is a carrier somewhere out there).

Don't get me wrong - I think hypersonic missiles are real threat. It just don't think they're the ultimate weapon some think they are.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[sumdumass]

Part of the missile defense research is lasers that will either ignite the fuel propelling the missiles or melt portions of the body making it uncontrollable and therefore failing to reach it's target.

I'm not entirely sure how a hypersonic shock would impact the results of a high intensity laser beam targeted at the missile. But given enough time in flight and the strength of today computing processors, high precision targeting shouldn't be too much of a problem to eventually overcome. The big issue there might be if the missile changes course in the last 30% or so of flight to hit a target not initially expected.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[hairyfeet]

Not meaning to Godwin but look at what Stalin's Organs did to the Nazis on the eastern front to see why it very much IS a problem.

You should really look up the Chinese "sea skimmer" missile to see what we are talking about here, but I'll try to give a rough overview...picture a missile about the length of a telephone pole and a couple of times wider going at Mach 2+ a couple feet off the water....now picture 50 of those coming from multiple directions (because the launcher can be put in a shipping crate and mounted on any old boat) and you have...ohh I'd say if you are REALLY lucky about 6 seconds to get all 50!

What makes these dangerous is the handful of countries that have the skills to make these have the funds to fire them by the dozen and it really wouldn't be hard to have a sub loaded with these so you could fire them off from pretty much anywhere.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[AmiMoJo]

You underestimate your opponents. Iran and China both have subs and stealth drones. China has military satellites and Iran probably will too in the next decade. Total war where all enemy satellites are shot down is an unlikely scenario, and beside which by the time you start firing missiles at the satellites you will already have them coming at your ships.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[Rich0]

You underestimate your opponents. Iran and China both have subs and stealth drones.

War with China is extremely unlikely. Of course you need the weaponry to deter such a war on both sides, but neither the US nor China have any desire to get into a shooting war with each other.

Iranian subs are very limited in capability, though in the confined waters of the gulf itself they could be dangerous. They have low endurance so I imagine that destroying them in port would be a priority, and it seems likely that the US would try to tail any as they leave port during peacetime. If I were planning a war with Iran I'd probably avoid placing any hard-to-replace assets in the Gulf at the start of the war as they would be too vulnerable. Once the coast is reasonably under control they could be moved in.

Stealth drones aren't stealthy if they are using radar, and if they aren't it is very hard to find ships with them (they could detect radar emitters, but these probably won't be ships of value). Nobody really knows what the US ability to detect them is, either.

China has military satellites and Iran probably will too in the next decade. Total war where all enemy satellites are shot down is an unlikely scenario, and beside which by the time you start firing missiles at the satellites you will already have them coming at your ships.

Again, war with China is very unlikely - the real purpose of most US armaments is to fight the wars the US usually fights, which is against small dictators who managed to buy some toys. If one of those toys is a fancy anti-ship missile the current state of the art in missile defenses would probably be helpful.

The kind of scenario you're talking about is a surprise war - a situation where the US did not expect to end up in a war and thus its forces start out vulnerable to attack. In the first volley of such a war I would expect many US ships to be lost. However, you're now talking about a Pearl Harbor like situation and that didn't really work out too well for the Japanese. Unless the attacker can actually neutralize the US ability to resupply (which probably requires strikes deep into US territory and likely occupation as well) the US is going to use whatever assets it has left to hold the enemy at bay and then resupply under wartime mobilization.

Psychologically I doubt the US population (which isn't accustomed to losing wars) is likely to concede defeat until the war duration hits a decade and the cost is measured in trillions of dollars and millions of lives. That really isn't a great scenario for whoever attacked the US win-or-lose.

Satellites really only have their privileged status of being allowed to spy without repercussions because the world has been at peace for the last 50 years. If Germany launched Sputnik in 1945 I doubt anybody would have just sat and watched it circle the Earth. After any serious war between any of the major powers I doubt any orbit would be commercially usable for a century due to debris. For military use I could see suborbital reconnaissance missions, or placing relatively cheap satellites into orbit knowing that they'll only last a few weeks.

But this is again all the fantasy scenario where either the US or China decides that it makes sense to commit economic suicide and start a war that results in trillions of dollars in losses and probably kills 10-20% of their population, or which further escalates into nuclear war and kills off just about everybody everywhere.

Re: Exactly what I was thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

"I doubt any orbit would be commercially usable for a century due to debris."

Hey that already happened, I saw the whole thing at my local theater news reel...a long news piece mind you...but the girl ends up looking for Tom Hanks.

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

I would imagine if you made your "telephone pole" shaped missile out of something like depleted uranium, the very elemental properties of uranium as a metal. mostly its weight and hardness, would make an extremely effective kinetic weapon, even if its payload was nothing more than a mess-maker.

It would be heavy as hell, but it would pack one helluva punch on impact. Besides what else can one one much do with depleted uranium - its not of much use to build anything people are going to be around anyway. Too hot.

( I have moderated this forum, so I will have to AC here. )

Re:Exactly what I was thinking

[mjwx]

You are in a pretty good place if the only missiles that can successfully attack you are hypersonic, since they would be very expensive to build and take a lot of engineering prowess to work reliably.

Also how much of a payload can one missile really carry? Not much, good only for targeted strikes.

Considering where anti missile defences are usually located (warships, military bases) you don't really need that much of a payload. In fact an anti ship hypersonic missile wouldn't need to be explosive at all to cause significant damage a solid warhead would punch through both sides of a warship (although punching through amour and then detonating inside the ship is quite effective).

here's the thing

[jollyreaper]

If the enemy doesn't have good targets, these missiles don't accomplish much.

According to Richard Clarke:

As early as Sept. 12, 2001, Clarke says, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld urged bombing Iraq despite repeated assurances from intelligence officials that the threat emanated from Afghanistan.

"Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq," Clarke said on Sunday's 60 Minutes. "I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.' "

Re:here's the thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks from bringing this up. This is a pure gold nugget.

Do Hypersonic Styles Make Slashdot Obsolete?

[FUCK BETA, FUCK DICE]

Betas? We don't need no stinkin' betas! FUCK BETA

No, Because Not Everyone Can Afford Them

[zbobet2012]

The simple answer is no, because not everyone can afford them. Even more importantly, those who can generally already had the ability to overwhelm any missile defense system via sheer numbers of warheads. The US really isn't as concerned about people like Russia and China attacking us, they have a very vested interest in stability.What the US is concerned about is a country like North Korea nuking Japan or the US West Coast. Or really even having the ability to do so, as it stop almost all US influence in the area. That is what missile defense systems are designed and deployed for.

Re:No, Because Not Everyone Can Afford Them

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Yours is a strong argument. BMD may or may not be a wise use of our tax dollars, but it is not a bad idea because Russia or China can overwhelm our BMD -- the system we have was never intended to accomplish that.

Re:No, Because Not Everyone Can Afford Them

[Anonymous Coward]

The simple answer is no, because not everyone can afford them.

And the other side of that statement: because it forces people to need to use hypersonic missiles rather than the giant stockpile of conventional stuff they've already got. The idea isn't to be 100% impervious to every attack, it's to make it as painful and expensive as possible for any attackers. It's much the same reason that we still put armor on tanks despite the large variety of weapons that are capable of penetrating a tanks armor.

Re:No, Because Not Everyone Can Afford Them

[RockDoctor]

What the US is concerned about is a country like North Korea nuking Japan or the US West Coast.

That is a pretty strong argument that the first DPRK strike will happen using a weapon arriving on the East coast, probably on a boat.

I bet, I just bet, that their Ground Zero would be pretty close to the World Trade Centre site. I mean, if you were choosing an enemy site to nuke, wouldn't you choose something so culturally symbolic?

The artical has at least one conficting statement:

[Anonymous Coward]

"...hypersonic missiles fired from intercontinental ballistic missiles travel at lower altitudes..."

I believe "intercontinental ballistic missiles" travel at well over Mach 5. More like 10-15,000 miles per hour than 3,000-7,000. So anything fired from them will also be traveling faster, at least at the start.

Second, the term "missile defense systems" includes things like the new laser weapons. And those can be fired at "lower altitudes and possess greater maneuverability than the missiles" targets. And a directed energy beam weapon is faster than ANY missile OR cruse missile.

Procurement inertia

[benjfowler]

This happens a lot. Note that the US loves supercarriers too and keep building them, even while more rational people know that they'll be sent to the bottom within minutes of an high-intensity, high-tech war breaking out. The Chinese allegedly have ballistic missiles with reentry vehicles which can find and hit moving ships.

Every major war has started with equipment, tactics, strategy inherited from the last war. The start of WWI, with light horsemen charging into, and getting cut up by, machine gun fire. The officers had their ideas -- and that was _it_.

The reasons for all this are complex, but in a nutshell, it's got to do with inertia, hubris, egos, and defence pork.

The US is lucky in a sense -- despite all this, their technology development pipeline is very deep, their resources are huge, and they are culturally adapted to change in a way that most other cultures are not.

Re:Procurement inertia

[phantomfive]

Note that the US loves supercarriers too and keep building them, even while more rational people know that they'll be sent to the bottom within minutes of an high-intensity, high-tech war breaking out.

This is harder than you think........

Re:Procurement inertia

[Barbarian]

Carriers are not for fighting a major power, they are for keeping the provinces in line.

Re:Procurement inertia

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention they are surrounded by a huge ocean instead of borders that are easily breached. This shapes a mindset of invulnerability, which, at the moment and in the recent history, is justified.

Re:Procurement inertia

[DerekLyons]

Note that the US loves supercarriers too and keep building them, even while more rational people know that they'll be sent to the bottom within minutes of an high-intensity, high-tech war breaking out.

Only if the 'rational people' are wearing their tinfoil hats or are otherwise... less than clued in. Actual rational people with the background to grasp the issues aren't nearly so certain.
 

Every major war has started with equipment, tactics, strategy inherited from the last war. The start of WWI, with light horsemen charging into, and getting cut up by, machine gun fire. The officers had their ideas -- and that was _it_.

The reasons for all this are complex, but in a nutshell, it's got to do with inertia, hubris, egos, and defence pork.

The reasons for this are simple, at least to people who understand the problem (as opposed to, oh, I don't know.... clueless gits) - nobody has a crystal ball. Nobody. You do the best you can with the budget and time available and hope. Until someone invents a crystal ball, that's all you can do.

Re:Procurement inertia

[Anonymous Coward]

This happens a lot. Note that the US loves supercarriers too and keep building them, even while more rational people know that they'll be sent to the bottom within minutes of an high-intensity, high-tech war breaking out.

The US isn't building super carriers to win a hypothetical future war with a naval power, it's building them to replace the aging classes currently in service which are used extensively in support of land operations.

The US is also building subs, destroyers, cruisers, etc. which would most likely take the brunt of the fighting in a modern naval war.

Basicly the same way that ground attack aircraft rely on fighters to maintain air superiority so they can do their job super carriers expect naval superiority, and rely of other fleet elements to ensure it.

Re:Procurement inertia

[cold fjord]

Note that the US loves supercarriers too and keep building them, even while more rational people know that they'll be sent to the bottom within minutes of an high-intensity, high-tech war breaking out. The Chinese allegedly have ballistic missiles with reentry vehicles which can find and hit moving ships.

They haven't quite gone out of style yet. The Chinese are building aircraft carriers as well, and are on their way to having four of them. The first Chinese aircraft carrier battle group did a demonstration cruise not long ago. The Indians are building up their carrier fleet as well. The British navy is building two new large carriers.

The Chinese allegedly have ballistic missiles with reentry vehicles which can find and hit moving ships.

The US Aegis air defense system typically found on destroyers has a well proven anti-ballistic missile capability.

The start of WWI, with light horsemen charging into, and getting cut up by, machine gun fire. The officers had their ideas -- and that was _it_.

On the Western front in WW 1 cavalry and mounted infantry were stymied. On the Eastern front and Middle East especially they continued to pay an active role that at times was highly successful.

WWI in the Middle East

Re:Procurement inertia

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW, at the beginning of WWI light horsemen were widely acknowledged to be extremely vulnerable to all ground forces (the main problem being rifles, although of course machine guns and barbed wire didn't help), and were used mostly for scouting and small raids, in poor terrain.

Re:Procurement inertia

[jafac]

The US is lucky in a sense -- despite all this, their technology development pipeline is very deep, their resources are huge, and they are culturally adapted to change in a way that most other cultures are not.

Yes - but I pose this question to today's generals:
What are you going to do if China shoots down enough critical communications, surveillance, and positioning satellites, and at the same time, takes out all the carrier groups in a region with these missiles, as a prelude to some major action? What's the plan? We got nothing. Our best-effort will restore those services in years, probably decades. The Chinese have demonstrated antisatellite warfare capabilites. And a willingness to test them.

Re:Procurement inertia

[ripvlan]

Well - I'm not sure I agree with the inertia position. Granted old ideas take a long time to die - until a disrupting technology comes along. I was touring a Navy museum once and the guide (retired Navy veteran) said, sometimes its about having the big guns and parking it in the harbor. Simple intimidation. You won't use it - it just looks big.

The US strength - we can build a ship larger than yours and sail it into your backyard.

Back on topic - as others have pointed out already, the defense system is designed to repel realistic attacks. Some group that is starting out will unlikely get their hands on a hypersonic missile. First they start out with a battering ram, then a Yugo, move up to a Pinto, some rockets, old SCUDs, and finally ICBMs. Sure - the smart ones are building disruptors, but another branch is thinking of ways to protect against them.

It's MAD I tell you, MAD. It's a MAD MAD world. What, me worry?

Re:Procurement inertia

[david_thornley]

The situation is far more complicated than that.

China cannot do a simultaneous strike on everything, simply because US assets are so widely dispersed. China can start shooting down US satellites, but it would take time to get them all. The hypersonic missiles will be largely ineffective against ships at sea; they'd be better off using nuclear subs (although I don't know how effective that will be.)

The US has capabilities that we can only speculate about, because nobody's talking. (It's a lot easier to maintain and use secret weapons than in, say, 1870, when the French issued the mitrailleuse (sp?), a primitive machine gun, to gunners who'd never seen anything like it before and didn't know what to do with it.) You're not talking about present-day Chinese capabilities either, so the US will have even better tricks up its sleeve.

Besides, there are people who sit around the Pentagon and likely other places coming up with plans for various scenarios. There's got to be plans on the assumption that Chinese death rays destroy all US satellites and carrier groups, and there are people prepared to respond.

Finally, the Chinese are aware they can push us only so far, and that line is not clearly defined. At some point, the US launches the nukes, and it's war over, too bad about the US and China.

Re:Procurement inertia

[kaatochacha]

The US is lucky in a sense -- despite all this, their technology development pipeline is very deep, their resources are huge, and they are culturally adapted to change in a way that most other cultures are not.

Yes - but I pose this question to today's generals:
What are you going to do if China shoots down enough critical communications, surveillance, and positioning satellites, and at the same time, takes out all the carrier groups in a region with these missiles, as a prelude to some major action? What's the plan? We got nothing. Our best-effort will restore those services in years, probably decades. The Chinese have demonstrated antisatellite warfare capabilites. And a willingness to test them.

I believe the answer is obvious: ICBM.
Which is why China would be silly to do that.

Re:Procurement inertia

[kaatochacha]

PS: I'm not a general, I'm just pulling this stuff out of my..um...head?

Re:Procurement inertia

[shutdown -p now]

Note that the US loves supercarriers too and keep building them, even while more rational people know that they'll be sent to the bottom within minutes of an high-intensity, high-tech war breaking out.

It's not like US is fighting high-intensity, high-tech wars lately. Those carriers actually proved to be quite useful as mobile first strike platforms.

Re:Procurement inertia

[Type44Q]

The start of WWI, with light horsemen charging into, and getting cut up by, machine gun fire.

IANAHM (I am not a history major) but I'm pretty sure WWII started pretty much the same way...

Yes and no.... its an arms race.

[Karmashock]

Its an arms race. Yes, hypersonic missiles will render obsolete different types of interceptors. However, hypersonic missiles tend to have shorter ranges as they burn their fuel less efficiently. As as result, missile interceptors at longer range will probably be effective. Closer in... Lasers... or something else fast enough to deal with such a missile.

Its all a tug of war.

First thing's first... we need to render all legacy systems obsolete. The current missile defense system should be able to protect us from any of the older threats pretty much with impunity.

Good.

Then we only have to worry about the newer ones and most countries don't have access to that tech. The Russians... the Chinese... who else? So that means the only systems capable of getting through are modern russian and chinese tech. Which neither power has in great supply and neither power is likely to use unless they want to go for WW3.

Which doesn't mean we develop no counter to such weapons. Merely that we invest our resources in an efficient manner to counter threats.

Re:Yes and no.... its an arms race.

[FuegoFuerte]

And which both countries are likely willing to sell to just about any other country for the right price. "You no let us build oil pipeline through your country? What if we give you whiz-bang, now you will? Da? Good. We set."

You really think China won't supply some of these NK for a beta test against any one of the proxy nations of their most hated trading partner?

And if those countries won't supply them, the French will surely buy a few from somewhere and then sell them to whoever can pony up the cash (or diamonds, or whatever else the French may want these days).

Re:Yes and no.... its an arms race.

[Karmashock]

Unlikely.

They sell things they're not afraid of other people having.

They don't sell their top of the line kit unless they're not afraid of it. And if they're not... then neither should we.

Seriously... do you know how many russian tanks we popped in Iraq? It was funny.

*FLU$$$H!*

[Chas]

Pentagon: What?

I think they don't understand missile defense

[erroneus]

Experience in the US Navy here, specifically the targeting and tracking systems. But you don't have to know what I know to know what R2D2 with a hard-on does. It is missile defense and quite effective. It works by sending projectiles at the incoming missile to disrupt it.

Anti-aircraft is a similar notion -- send up fireworks which spread particles into the air in front of aircraft and hope it interferes with the planes. A missile defense system doesn't "chase" missiles, it is launched in front of them. They then explode in front of them in hopes of disrupting them in some way. Advanced systems, in my mind, would be a CWIS at the end of a missile system. It's not hard to imagine.

Re:I think they don't understand missile defense

[Anonymous Coward]

CIWS at the end of a missile? You have the RAM-on-a-missile that is Starstreak, the first step towards the Macross Missile Massacre (AKA Itano Circus).

Re:I think they don't understand missile defense

[swb]

What's the tracking distance of Phalanx?

My only concern with CIWS is how far out it can track a ground-hugging hypersonic missile. You don't have a lot of time to engage it when you can't see it over the horizon. Even at 60 ft elevation on a ship, the horizon is only 8-9 miles away.

That gives you, what, maybe 5-6 seconds from detection at the horizon to impact. You'd have to have your Vulcan firing 2 seconds after detection to hit it.

Re:I think they don't understand missile defense

[Rich0]

What's the tracking distance of Phalanx?

My only concern with CIWS is how far out it can track a ground-hugging hypersonic missile. You don't have a lot of time to engage it when you can't see it over the horizon. Even at 60 ft elevation on a ship, the horizon is only 8-9 miles away.

That gives you, what, maybe 5-6 seconds from detection at the horizon to impact. You'd have to have your Vulcan firing 2 seconds after detection to hit it.

If you only have two seconds to fire in order to score a hit, the missile only has two seconds to maneuver towards you in order to score a hit. I can't see how a sea-skimming hypersonic missile could hit a ship unless its position at time of impact were known with high accuracy.

Re:I think they don't understand missile defense

[0123456]

If you only have two seconds to fire in order to score a hit, the missile only has two seconds to maneuver towards you in order to score a hit. I can't see how a sea-skimming hypersonic missile could hit a ship unless its position at time of impact were known with high accuracy.

An aircraft carrier is a rather larger target than a missile.

Re:I think they don't understand missile defense

[Anonymous Coward]

>ground hugging
>hypersonic

these things don't go together.

Re:I think they don't understand missile defense

[Anonymous Coward]

>R2D2 with a hard-on does

Yeah, "Christ, It Won't Shoot!"

Isn't that exactly what hypersonic missiles render ineffective by reducing the engagement time to near nothing?

Re:I think they don't understand missile defense

[Rich0]

If you only have two seconds to fire in order to score a hit, the missile only has two seconds to maneuver towards you in order to score a hit. I can't see how a sea-skimming hypersonic missile could hit a ship unless its position at time of impact were known with high accuracy.

An aircraft carrier is a rather larger target than a missile.

Sure, but its position might only be known within a few miles, so if the missile is blasting along at 10 feet up at Mach 10 it can only hit the carrier if it is within a few hundred yards of its path most likely.

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[TheloniousToady]

Just like you would on Usenet. ;-)

The "Gap" Debate All Over Again

[cyocum]

This sounds like the Bomber Gap or the Missle Gap all over again.

Re:The "Gap" Debate All Over Again

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget about the Mine Shaft Gap!

Re:The "Gap" Debate All Over Again

[phantomfive]

It is the missile gap in a very literal way........

Re:The "Gap" Debate All Over Again

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what you're talking about. I've been down here mining all week, while there have been plenty of cave spiders and zombies, there is no gaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa........
*Anonymous Coward fell from a high place*

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[TheloniousToady]

When you stir up a colony of bees, they buzz around angrily and try to sting you. On the surface, they appear mad, but I think some of them secretly enjoy it. Otherwise, they'd probably go back to the business of making honey as soon as they could.

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[DickBreath]

Heh, heh. :-)

My mention of Usenet was only to point out that smart people have been around longer.

Will the EMP from a hypersonic missle blast

[Anonymous Coward]

Fry the beta server?

No such thing

[Dunbal]

There is no such thing as an obsolete defensive system (or weapon, for that matter). A knife or a fist or even a wooden stick at the right time in the right place is worth more than billions of dollars of expensive hardware.

Re:No such thing

[Required Snark]

Absolutely correct. That's why we need to drop a few hundred million on reviving the horse cavalry and wood sailing ships.

Just ignore the pork and campaign contributions. It's DEFENSE, so we need it.

Re:No such thing

[Anonymous Coward]

While your post is funny and has an element of truth about defense spending, it still doesn't detract from his point.

Following the other line of logic, we might as well not wear body armor because some calibers of rifle can penetrate it like a hot knife through butter. Why bother building bomb shelters when the other side has bunker busters? Why put reactive armor on tanks when it's ineffective vs two hits to the same location?

The entire point of defensive technology is to limit the other guys options. If only hypersonic missiles are effective vs your defenses, then it becomes a lot easier to develop a defensive strategy compared to if you're vulnerable to everything from an angry mob armed with rocks to an orbital death ray strikes.

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[DickBreath]

I would prefer things to go back to normal. But yesterday I realized I was not alone in my dislike of Beta. I even gave feedback. It is beyond clear at this point that nobody has heard nor is listening.

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you siding with Dice? Why do you hate /.?

Goverment solution to everything.

[JustAnotherIdiot]

Throw more money we don't have at the problem and maybe it'll go away.

Re:Goverment solution to everything.

[Anonymous Coward]

Like foodstamps for hungry 300 lbs amurikens.

Why use missiles?

[Anonymous Coward]

In today's World, all one needs is to brainwash some folks and they'll go walk the bomb over for you with the hope of making it in Heaven or some other such fantasy.

Who needs expensive hypersonic missiles when you got religion and fanatics.

Re:Why use missiles?

[camperdave]

Who needs expensive hypersonic missiles when you got religion and fanatics.

The side without the religious fanatics.

Re:Why use missiles?

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Heh, worthy of Sun Tzu.

Re:Why use missiles?

[AmiMoJo]

Which one is that? As far as I can see all the major wars in recent years were started by religious fanatics on both sides. Yeah, I could Bush and Blair. They thought the imaginary man in the sky was on their side too.

Re:Why use missiles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither bush nor blair started wars because the man in the sky told them to. The reason was politics and money, not religion. Grow up.

Re:Why use missiles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, that was the cause.

Not the oil, not the jerk-off war hero fantasy, jeebus all the way.

Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

So missile defense works against ballistic missiles? That's funny, because I've lived through decades of claims that missile defense is a pointless boondoggle that would never be effective.

Today, of course, we're shooting down artillery shells. Our BMD systems regularly succeed in taking out ballistic missiles. All of this was supposed to be impossible.

After having been so wrong about missile defense, I'm now supposed to accept the new argument; hypersonics can't be stopped, therefore weapons development is, again, pointless.

Yeah. Right.

Fuck you and your bullshit peacenik lies.

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[s.petry]

I submitted my first post yesterday, but have not yet received the votes to make the front page. Feel free to get this up on the main page.

No contest...

[TimOBrien8837]

A 6000mph missile is impressive until it's hit by a laser or particle beam moving at the speed of light...

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[runeghost]

When you stir up a colony of bees, they buzz around angrily and try to sting you. On the surface, they appear mad, but I think some of them secretly enjoy it. Otherwise, they'd probably go back to the business of making honey as soon as they could.

And then when you replace their hive with a plastic beach ball in a week, both they and you will be surprised and astonished when honey production drops to zero and stays there.

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[Jane Q. Public]

" On the surface, they appear mad, but I think some of them secretly enjoy it. "

I think it's pretty safe to say that if they are stinging, they are genuinely angry. After all... it kills them.

I could be wrong, but I don't think /. contributors are any more masochistic than bees are.

In year 2000 we will all have flying cars.

[Moskit]

The same kind of overexcited journalists makes such assumptions. "Oh, the new shiny will be everywhere now!"

By the way - take your time to read comments while they last - many good commenters (called "audience" by /. owners) will go away when Beta is forcefully rammed down our eyes.

Alternative missile defense

[pellik]

Could the Slashdot beta disrupt hypersonic missiles?

Re:Am I the only one who actually likes the beta?

[Flozzin]

The text is larger, there is tons of wasted 'white space'. You can't fit as much on your screen as you can in classic. So why do I want to spend more time scrolling? Why do I want less content per screen? Why do I want to go to a website that now looks like its designed for old people who can't read small font? I didn't buy monitors with high resolution just so the massive text would be nice and crisp.

Slashcott and Beta

[umafuckit]

Please post this to new articles if it hasn't been posted yet. (Copy-paste the html from here so links don't get mangled!)

On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design. Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.

If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this in a new tab. After seeing that, click here to return to classic Slashdot.

We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott

Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors - only discuss Beta
http://slashdot.org/recent - Vote up the Fuck Beta stories

Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.

-----=====##### LINKS #####=====-----

Discussion of Beta: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=56395415
Discussion of where to go if Beta goes live: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=submission&id=3321441
Alternative Slashdot: http://altslashdot.org (thanks Okian Warrior (537106))

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[seven of five]

Best post I've seen all day.

Re:Am I the only one who actually likes the beta?

[akinliat]

Well, yes, you are the only one who likes the beta. And let me tell you why ...

The problems with the beta aren't about how it looks, but about how it works. Even the complaints about narrow text columns and excessive whitespace are based on how difficult those features make it to use the site for it's intended purpose (reading and posting comments).

In addition, the beta removes critical elements of the comment functionality, and it's largely based on Javascript. That functionality is the core of the site, and many in the Slashdot community (the people that actually post all these nice comments that everyone comes here to read) would rather pour battery acid in their shorts than allow Javascript to run on their browser.

Creating a Slashdot that looks like Beta, and functions like the current site would take any competent web designer no more than a few minutes (just some CSS tweaks), and it would be easy to maintain both looks, because switching stylesheets is easy. Unfortunately, that's not the approach they've taken, and so now they face the choice of either throwing away all the work they've done on the Javascript-based Beta (essentially they may as well start over if they do this) or having the bulk of their contributors leave, which would basically kill the site.

Man, you know what

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what sucks about this? FUCKING BETA.

Super cavitating torpedos

[Anonymous Coward]

Hypersonic missiles sound cool, but super cavitation torpedo tech is more likely to be deadly to the future navy. Lasers and kinetic impactors shot into the water are going to lose effectiveness very rapidly with increasing depth of water.

Which do you think is more likely...

[gurps_npc]

The offense part of missile technology is mostly based on the science of rocketry and the mechanics of flight - air flows, material sciences etc.

The defensive part of anti-missile technology is mostly based on IT - detecting what is a threat and what is not a threat and targeting the threats. It also needs the same speed you developed above.

So, which do you think develops quicker - the missile technology or the IT technology? My bet is on IT. It's a newer science with an established higher rate of discovery than rocketry.

Yes, it is possible that the hypersonic missiles are truly better at avoiding our anti-missiles. But that assumes we have ignored the problem, as opposed to secretly creating anti-hypersonic missiles missiles.

So anyway...

[Anonymous Coward]

... it's really funny to see all the anti-Beta comments getting modded down to minus-infinity now.

Attention Dice: there are a couple things you should know.

1) Talking about a forum within the forum is ALWAYS on topic. You do not need to have a special sub-forum for "meta" discussion. So we are all going to carry on here in public like we don't care because frankly, we don't. If you don't want us airing your dirty laundry in public, do what we're all begging you to do and UN-FUCK THE SITE!

2) WE ARE WHAT MAKES THIS SITE. Do you not see that yet? If you continue on this path and we all leave, you'll think "whew! now all the troublemakers are gone!" --- but all you'll have left is a third-rate low-traffic clone of Engadget or Gawker or Verge or whatever*, and that's if you're lucky. You're actually more likely to TOTALLY disintegrate the site. Remeber Digg? Don't think it can't happen to you.

Look, I love it here, but I can just as easily kill an hour or two a day at reddit. Or maybe I'll spend the time to actually get some of my own projects done.

Good luck!

And go ahead, mod me down all you want. If you do, maybe I'll get lucky and all my companions here will come to my aid and give me the "+5, Troll" or "+5, Offtopic" I've always dreamed of getting. Seriously, if that happens, I'll print it and put it up on my wall at work.

In fact, just to prove I'm not karma-whoring, I'll post as AC. But just know, this insightful/informative/trollish/offtopic/underrated comment was brought to you by sootman.

* And if that's what you wanted in the first place, you could have built your own site from scratch for a lot less. All you're doing is building a ton of bad-will among ~3.5 million registered geeks (and who knows how many ACs) that are going to spend a generation saying "Fuck Dice. They brought something perfectly good and wrecked it for no good reason." And we'll be rightfully pissed, because even though you paid for the site, slashdot is ours.

1,000 years from now, "Fuck beta" will be the geek religion's equivalent of "amen." (Ooh, I like that. I think I'll make it my new sig. Feel free to copy that -- I'd be flattered, honored, and delighted if you did.)

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[ZorinLynx]

Old-school Slashdot user from the 90s here.

I think what everyone is trying to say is that Slashdot should be left alone. No big makeovers, no big changes. We like it the way it is, and want it to be immune from the pile of suck that has taken over the rest of the web.

Slashdot has remained one of the few sites that has changed little over the years. It is already perfect the way it is, and any change is just going to make it worse. Leave it the hell alone. There is nothing wrong with its usability, readability, etc. the way it is.

Not only that, but... if you are trying to attract a different type of user to the site, you need to keep in mind that the people who are here LIKE the current company. If you attract scores of new users, it will be like an awesome small club opening its membership to all the drunk hobos in the city. The atmosphere and feel of the site are just not going to be the same, and us core, loyal, long time users will LEAVE.

Do what you must, I hope my advice is at least read.

Safe from North Korea

[cloud.pt]

Hey, at least the US can win the deterrence war against North Korea's nuclear rock throws...

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[TheloniousToady]

That's actually been my concern: Slashdot becomes so polluted with "f* beta" that nobody wants to read or contribute to it anymore. We keep hearing that the main value of the site is its interesting/insightful/funny comments (true enough), yet most of the comments from yesterday were none of the above.

Yes, the bees are angry. You know it, I know it, the beekeepers know it. So let's all go back to making honey and see how they sort out the hive problem. Otherwise, without honey, the colony won't make it through the winter.

(Sorry for carrying the beehive metaphor a bit too far. ;-)

Re:The artical has at least one conficting stateme

[thaylin]

It says lower altitudes, not lower speeds. There is no contradiction there.

Funny, missile defense has been augmented to...

[Assmasher]

...counter ballistic missiles over the past two decades and it wasn't designed for this either (and, by the way, they're REALLY hypersonic...)

They will continue to be upgraded for ABM capabilities as well.

Is there some reason why hyper sonic low level missiles couldn't be adapted to either? BTW, the Navy is spending a lot of time and money on lasers for this very reason.

Hyper-sonic missiles aren't the concern

[Anonymous Coward]

The nation states the missile defense shield is designed for (North Korea, Iran) won't be capable of hyper-sonic missile attacks for quite a few more decades. That is who the defense is for specifically. If it covered any additional threats from larger more technical savvy states, then it was just bonus.

Let's see them outrun LIGHT!

[Kevoco]

Speed of sound, even in multiples, is nothing compared to the speed of light. Light/energy based defenses just need to be more nimble.

IBM will become a VC fund soon

[gelfling]

It's pretty much stopped making 'stuff' and sells intangible services while snapping up other people's software companies and rebranding them. But services require too much linear labor input even at firesale prices in China so it's probably just as well that half the employees now are lawyers and accountants. Soon IBM will be a holding company for buying and selling intellectual property and that's pretty much it.

You can't outrun a beam of light

[Nefarious Wheel]

Also, the beta sucks.

ICBMs are already hypersonic

[Anonymous Coward]

The reentry speed for an ICBM MIRV is already something like 10,000 MPH, which is well within the hypersonic range.

Systems are all about pork

[Anonymous Coward]

But they promote 'keeping America safe' just to keep the rubes sedated.

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh and BTW, FUCK BETA
--

Senior System Engineer/Architect

Notice: If you post anonymously do not expect a reply.

Economic sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps with a proper IP license the spending might be feasible. But why not go interstellar while we're at it? The VASIMR could get a more American name, like SHIVA. It's much faster than normal rockets.

No

[AbrasiveCat]

As I have learned on others on /. the answer to a yes/no question on /. will be no. Others are bring up the reasons no for this question, cost, limited use, politics, but the answer will be NO.

What am I missing

[Anonymous Coward]

The Patriot missle operatest at Mach 7 and is capable to hitting an ICMB re-entering the atmosphere at Mach 31. How fast are the new missiles?

Re:What am I missing

[bobbied]

Max is Mach 10, but the problem is they are low level cruise missiles which the Patriot radar would never see until it was too late to fire.

This is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

What threat? We had the SPRINT ABM system (a rocket that hit Mach 10 after 5 seconds of flight) that was designed to intercept incoming ICBM by detonating a small nuke "close enough" to the ICBM.

This is from the '60s. No 3D printers. No billion transistor CPUs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

That's your friday afternoon treat courtesy of QA.

I'd tell ya but then I'd have to...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cause the hypersonics aren't for knock downs but for ballistic surface delivery, standard missile is for defence, and what makes the nuclear thing obsolete is secondarily what the hypersonic is for which are waveguides for particle wave systems. Course that hasn't been leaked much yet but look at Tesla and particle accelerators and you will soon see that trillion dollar research paradigms without a commercial out put are likely funded by defense / offense.

No, its not obsolete, not by a long shot

[hAckz0r]

Keep in mind that the same organizations that invented the Missile Defence System also invented the hypersonic missile. What makes anybody so sure that hypersonic interceptors are not already in the works?

Also, hypersonic technology is hard. Do the math. Its a lot harder than either politicians or reporters might think. Just because somebody can test a vehicle for a short distance (ie tens of seconds) does not mean it is a viable solution to anything. Making one that actually flies for any duration and can maneuver and evade is not yet a reality. At those speeds you don't need much to go wrong, to get going really really wrong. Its very unforgiving above Mach 7.

There are very few countries that can pull it off right now and they are not even the ones we particularly need to worry about. Those that we do need to worry about are still trying to figure out simple ICBM's, which is a full magnitude easier than even the simplest short duration hypersonic flight, and a whole lot cheaper to make.

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[BitZtream]

Theres no reason to pay timothy, kdawson and the other morons that 'run' slashdot if they don't change anything.

This has nothing to do with usefulness or upgrades. Its just like almost all software upgrades to established well working products, its an 'upgrade' done so the designers and engineers have work today, not because it needs to be done. And worse still, because the engineering and design as exactly what we wanted, all they can do is make it less of what we wanted.

I.E. The site can not be saved without replacing its staff and management, both of which are so concerned with themselves that they're ruining their own source of income.

Dude!

[Anonymous Coward]

They will develop double-hyper-interceptors, thats why the budget has to be quadrupled too :D

Seriously, if there is a nuclear war it doesn't matter a rat's ass whether you intercept 10% or 80% of all the warheads, it's still going to be FUBAR. So better not waste money, space travel is way cooler.

Maneuverable?

[Anonymous Coward]

radius of turn = velocity ^ 2 / g.

Missiles, by there nature have small aerodynamic surfaces so you can't get a lot of turning force (g). Even with vectored thrust, it takes time. Very high speed == low turning radius != maneuverable.

The speed is greater than the defensive system? So what? It's not as if you are trying to shoot it down from behind.

Sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet, I like this new Slashdot look! I can actually read what is going on now.

REGARDING ---

[JohnVanVliet]

you have to be kidding

the comments are NOT even the same on the old and the beta
they are NOT even sharing the same DB

also
the text area

I use a black theme !!!!!!!!!!!
And having black text on a black background
-- DOSE NOT WORK !!!!!!!!!!!!

I will have to change my theme just to use this site -- NOT GOOD

This right there will drive me to BOING BOING

Re:REGARDING ---

[karmawarrior]

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Nukes

[DarthVain]

Everything I have read about hyper sonic missiles is that they really have one intended purpose. Sink navel carriers. The only powers that have the resources to create these things are the super powers. All the super powers have nukes. Likely any engagement serious enough to warrant the sinking of a carrier, would result in a nuclear response (seen as a precursor to degrade nuclear response and possible first strike) . Which likely no one will want, hence no one will use them anyway.

Piss pot crazytown countries may not be able to build them, but might steal them (I doubt buy, as mostly only the super powers have carriers as well, why sell a weapon that can be used against you). However they likely lack either A) nuclear deterrent, or B) an effective delivery system (ICBM's) making it even less attractive.

Also while they might be faster and fly lower, I somehow really doubt the maneuverability claims. Generally speaking, the faster something goes the harder it is to turn it. Called inertia or something like that. Which means it would likely be even easier to hit. The tricky part would be detection, target acquisition, and the fact if you miss at range, likely not a second chance.

A more likely strategy would be to overwhelm defenses with many multiple targets, overloading the ships capability to react all at the same time allowing for one to slip through. However from the sounds of the technology, these things won't be easy to make or cheap to produce... That said a super carrier costs a lot too.

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[slartibartfastatp]

I don't care about beta anymore. Deleting posts and modding down stuff that they don't care is MUCH WORSE - THAT'S whats really killing slashdot.
So farewell. See ya at reddit.

Military-Industrial Complex

[mspohr]

This is not about defense or missiles. This is about keeping our defense contractors fat and happy. Missile defenses have never worked very well... mostly failures... but that doesn't stop our government from throwing billions at the "problem" when the money could be of some actual use building bridges and roads or trains.
It's just like the war on terror. Lots of fear generated leading to lots of wasted spending which is mostly ineffective.
It does keep the contractors happy and profitable and that it the primary purpose.
Your job as a taxpayer is to:
1. Be afraid... very afraid
2. Work hard at your crappy job and pay lots of taxes
3. Don't complain because then you are a communist, socialist, liberal crybaby who only wants to destroy Amerika.

Also, the Beta site sucks.

Re:Military-Industrial Complex

[WillAffleckUW]

I agree, it's mostly about keeping overpaid defense contractors happy.

And the slashdot beta sucks.

Re:Military-Industrial Complex

[NoImNotNineVolt]

I've worked for a defense contractor for about five years now. I took the job because it seemed more interesting (in a nerdy way) than other software development opportunities (mind-numbing back-end "business" shit) I saw. Of course, I could've (maybe) gotten a gig at a NASA or NSF lab, which would in theory have just as interesting of work.

However, when I interned at NASA years and years ago, the one thing that I remembered was the parking lots. They were filled exclusively with ancient, shitty, cheap cars. Either not a single person at GSFC appreciated the amazing engineering of the world's finer automobiles (I found this unlikely), or NASA doesn't pay for shit. I like nice cars (currently driving my second consecutive Honda Accord, as my priorities have changed, but I've had some fun cars before these), and it didn't look like federal science funding was going to enable a lifestyle that I could enjoy.

So here I am now, part of the machine. Part of the problem Eisenhower warned us about. How does that make me feel? Well, not too bad, honestly. Not because I'm some heartless bastard, happy to have my greed satisfied at the expense of the taxpayer and the brownskin. Not because I achieved membership in some cabal of murderous bastards. Mostly because I get to do interesting work (well, not nearly as interesting as I had hoped) and get paid a fair wage (virtually all the developers I know that work on the commercial side of the world make considerably more than me).

To be honest, I've seen some waste in my years here. However, it's not any more waste than is common in any industry. Nobody's perfect, and sometimes money goes towards something that ends up being a bit of a boondoggle. At a mom n pop restaurant, you may see a foolhardy investment in interior decor that eventually turns out to have been a waste of money. Due to issues of scale, when the DOD makes a mistake like that, it's an aircraft nobody wants that costs insane amounts of money. Fundamentally, it's the same problem. Nobody's perfect, and people make mistakes. I understand that it's frustrating to see someone making costly mistakes with your tax dollars, but that's just the nature of the beast. Do not attribute to malice that which can be sufficiently explained by incompetence.

Anyway, I've seen no evidence of any systemic problems with the military-industrial complex. Probably because I'm just a code monkey, not some head honcho cozying up to generals to land contracts. I wouldn't be surprised that this type of shit happens. But you really have to step back sometimes and realize that defense contractors are no different than any other contractors. Sure, they're looking for someone to pay them to do work. Aren't virtually all other industries as well? Is there something wrong with contractors offering various products and services to the DOD? Is there something wrong with the DOD buying into products and services that they find appealing? What benefit is it to the DOD to keep contractors fat and happy? I mean, it's a compelling narrative, for sure. I just haven't seen any evidence that it corresponds to reality.

Also, fuck beta.

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[illestov]

The Bee's will join another colony or make their own and the beekeeprs can go fuck themselves

posturing IS the primary usefulness of military

[raymorris]

Useful vs posturing? I'd say that posturing is the primary and best use of military equipment. A strong military posture encourages other countries to be your ally. That's very useful.

Lasers

[Danathar]

Lasers (speed of light) are faster than Hypersonic missiles.

Eventually a Laser defense will be viable.

Hu no that's stupid missile see at light speed

[Anonymous Coward]

Look most missile which use guidance I know of fall in 3 categories : 1) IR guidance 2) radar guidance 3) visual guidance. None of those system care about the speed of the missile for one simple reason : they "see" at the speed of frigging light, so the speed of the missile be it below or above the sound speed does not matter. No the problem from guidance are not that the missile are blind, but rather that they have not much maneuvrability out of various reason (big turn distance). So for a quick moving , maneuvering target like a plane, they suck. But for a target like a navy ship, they are perfect. Ship do not dodge that easily so missiles lack of easy turning is fine. Same for ground target really.

I have to quetion why people even moderated you up.

Re:Hu no that's stupid missile see at light speed

[techno-vampire]

Ship do not dodge that easily so missiles lack of easy turning is fine.

You'd be surprised at how well a ship can dodge if the conditions are right. I remember a case during one of the carrier battles of WW II (Not sure which one, but it may be the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands.) where an American carrier was being attacked by a number of Betty bombers (much faster than it was) with torpedoes, and it managed to dodge all of them. It took a lot of luck and skill, but it can be done.

Re:Hu no that's stupid missile see at light speed

[phayes]

I have a new concept for you, Coward, it's called "field of view". To properly understand it's effects I suggest trying to play a game like football while only looking through paper tubes 10 inches long. Your missiles may see at the speed of light but they can only see in a very restricted cone (practically blind) and can barely maneuver.

Re:Hu no that's stupid missile see at light speed

[Anonymous Coward]

Look most missile which use guidance I know of fall in 3 categories : 1) IR guidance 2) radar guidance 3) visual guidance. None of those system care about the speed of the missile for one simple reason : they "see" at the speed of frigging light, so the speed of the missile be it below or above the sound speed does not matter. No the problem from guidance are not that the missile are blind, but rather that they have not much maneuvrability out of various reason (big turn distance). So for a quick moving , maneuvering target like a plane, they suck. But for a target like a navy ship, they are perfect. Ship do not dodge that easily so missiles lack of easy turning is fine. Same for ground target really.

I have to quetion why people even moderated you up.

As someone who has actually helped build radar based hypersonic missile guidance systems I can tell you that they very much do care about the speed of the missile. Making a missile radome that 1) the radar can see through 2) can withstand the thermal stresses of hypersonic flight 3) doesn't instantly abrade away the first time it encounters something like fog : is actually really hard. It is A LOT easier to engineer something that works at subsonic speeds then it is to make something that will work at supersonic speeds.

Self Generating Business

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to love the defense business. It creates weapons then gets you to pay to try to find a defense for the things you just bought, then repeat.

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[Anonymous Coward]

What about a colony of yellowjackets, Nepal hornets or Africanized bees? They seem to live for the fight...

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[PGC]

Problem however is, the beekeepers do not know it. They say they know it, but they will not know it until the honey-production has dropped to zero. Ps. Fuck Beta

Seat belts

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are driving up Pike's Peak do you still wear your seat belt?

Re: FUCK BETA

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this beta? I dont see it on m.slashdot.org

Not really

[WillAffleckUW]

Look, to be quite frank, local short to medium range intercepts really only work when you have good intel and good signals.

Hypersonic cross-Atlantic or cross-Pacific missiles are something you take out using other technology we're not supposed to talk about. And that tech still works. It would only not work if it rapidly corkscrewed in flight in a varying pattern, which no missiles actually do.

Relax.

(caveat: I can neither confirm nor deny working on or near such systems)

Re: FUCK BETA

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh i see now. It displays text one word per line. That is not very efficient!

Re:NO BETA

[Anonymous Coward]

When the Navy reaches its laser goal of a 1MW laser it will be cut through 2,000 feet of steal per second. Even with aluminum, which is more reflective to light and better at dissipating heat the dwell time needed to cut through the skin is probably less then a 1/100 of a second. At mach 5 that's only tracking for 60 feet. The 1MW laser if far off but by the time seedier countries have hypersonic missiles the navy will have their Mega-Watt laser.

That's all nice in terms of peak performance specs. But what about a situation where the ship isn't on some kind of Alert status already? What's the power-up time from sitting around idle? If someone launches a dozen missiles, and you aren't already expecting an attack, can you power-up and get online in time to reasonably take them all out?

They are obsolete

[phorm]

Obsolete: Yes (in terms of being outdated and outclasses)
Useless: No

The thing to keep in mind is that while there are weapons systems more advanced than the current missile defence, most of the potential aggressors are still using missile systems which are still pretty old.
The old stuff comes at quantity (which, as said, has a quality of its own), so you still want to defend against that.

So a good missile defence stops most of these, and you can still add other defences against more advanced weaponry, which - while more advanced - is hopefully less numerous.

My laptop is obsolete too, but it's still useful.

When a military becomes too invulnerable....

[sugarmatic]

...and asymmetric, then the only legitimate targets for an adversary become the public citizens that fund the efforts.

If no military response can ever be effective, it is the only thing left. We call it terrorism now, but it will be business as usual in the near future. Drones bombing your weddings?

Bomb their weddings. And schools and anything else.

The only limits to empire are consequences. When an empire can inflict with no fear of retribution to overtly military assets, other targets of retribution will be placed at risk.

laser the air

[Anonymous Coward]

A hypersonic missile is most likely a ramjet type design where the air has to perfectly enter the combustion chamber, be compressed, and burn the fuel. The leading edge will also be basically a plasma due to friction and compression.
My guess is that if you can focus the laser on the leading edge where the air is compressing and already red hot you could easily disrupt the missile either by causing a 'flame out' or by causing such instability in the envelope of air it is moving in that it would spin out of control and destroy itself.

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[PingXao]

I used to hate FaceBook and Twitter, but I don't anymore. Now don't get me wrong, I still don't use either one but now I perceive them to have great value. As online "destinations" they serve as flypaper for all the AOL-types who pollute the internet. By giving the functionally retarded a place they can call home, it leaves the rest of the 'net to be used for better purposes: intelligent commentary being one such use.

Now they want to throw the doors open to every drooling shortbus rider because they can make Mo Money off it that way. The number of eyeballs attracts advertisers, not the quality of discourse.

Fighting the last war?

[walterbyrd]

Wars are not fought like that anymore.

Today's war are fought by insurgents, terrorists, and the like. Uniformed armies, and missiles, and the like are obsolete for fighting today's war.

That is how it seems to me anyway.

hypersoni hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

All missile defense systems are layered and make use of tracking radar of various kind.

The intercept system, itself, while of obvious importance, is really of less improtance over time than the target acquisition and tracjectory plotting system.

Significant advances in space based, airborn and ground lbased lasers make hypersonic manuverability a slow waltz; not even a two step. I am aware that spaced based sytems are forbidden by treaty but I stand by my statement.

Mating an effective laser based intercept system, when developed, to an effective target acquisition and terminal guidance system, is many times easier than developing a kinetic energy device to intercept existing threats. Still there has been much progress on even this front.

Develop nothing and even existing misiles from the past will prove extremely effective against undefended cities.

It is the anticipation of response from dense pack, SLBMs and highly manuverable land based systems that should give any sane adversary pause - not hypersonic hyperbole.

Not really...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so maybe the Russians and Chinese get hypersonic missiles. Were we really worried about them in the first place? We have always specified that the point of missile defense was against "Rogue States" like North Korea and Iran that might actually be stupid enough to use an ICBM, not Russia and China, two of our biggest trading partners.

Re: Bee Keepers and the Audience

[Anonymous Coward]

Its February, winter is almost over. This is prime time for new websites to emerge.

OT posts

[Anonymous Coward]

I have seen way more OT posts since this failed beta experience the owners are married to.

This tells me the natives are restless, because the OT posts were not so bad to begin with. You know, the natives being your constituency. Make a mirror site for the "masses". Have polls, raffles, contests, word games and online gaming. Just seed the selected content from /. and leave alpha-dog alone.

JJ

SCREW BETA

[DickMoohan]

See above

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[Anonymous Coward]

there seems to be some sort of law that any software package reaches a natural point of maturity, where major changes are not needed, or not needed very often, yet the developers continue to work
This results in two things: simple usable features become ornate baroque and hard to use, and new features that are not wanted are added
natural human thing: it is a lot easier for a person to keep working on their project then find some thing new

It's not about defense

[kick6]

It's about spending. Nobody in our government cares whether the systems work so long as defense contractors get paid, and then turn around and support politician's re-elections.

Re:Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot moderators have never been comprised of particularly smart people, so exceeding that low barrier is not overly difficult.

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[Anonymous Coward]

Please post this to new articles if it hasn't been posted yet. (Copy-paste the html from here so links don't get mangled!)

On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design. Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.

If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this in a new tab. After seeing that, click here to return to classic Slashdot.

We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott

Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors - only discuss Beta
http://slashdot.org/recent - Vote up the Fuck Beta stories

Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.

-----=====##### LINKS #####=====-----

Discussion of Beta: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=56395415
Discussion of where to go if Beta goes live: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=submission&id=3321441
Alternative Slashdot: http://altslashdot.org (thanks Okian Warrior (537106))

Bee Keepers and the Audience

[LaminatorX]

I've certainly had some interesting discussions on irc today with other bees looking to swarm elsewhere.

I'm thinking I can't trust these bee keepers anymore.

POINT FUCKING DEFENSE BITCHES!!!

[mrmeval]

There is NO magic panacea you have to meet EVERY credible threat. If you're thinking that you can sit in your bunker and throw missiles and drones out you're a fool.

Brian Too

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeezus, is someone off their meds? We don't want you in foreign policy or the military. Ever.

War is rarely inevitable. For a superpower war is usually a choice. If you wanted to say that war is always a possibility, then you failed.

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[TheloniousToady]

If Slashdot ultimately implodes, maybe somebody could start an open-source alternative. For example, how about a moderation module for one of the popular CMS's that acts like Slashdot's system? The skills are certainly here.

OTOH, my experience in trying to build a "community" is that it's much easier said than done. I think it would be pretty hard to get this gaggle of geese to flock together anywhere else. And anyone who subsequently irritated them would wish they were at least getting paid for the privilege.

Nope to artillery

[Anonymous Coward]

There has never, to my knowledge, been an interception of an artillery shell. Not on the battlefield. Not on a test range. Not in the lab. Not even in the Pentagon's wet dreams. There isn't even a proposal for such a system.

So your rant blew up like a grenade down your pants. Do try to keep up.

Supercarriers

[Anonymous Coward]

The carriers you dismiss actually happen to be very practical.

Oh right, you said "high-intensity, high-tech war...", like that covers all the use cases. In fact there are only a tiny number of countries that can even initiate such a war. Most of those countries have pretty good relations with the U.S.

The nuclear missile era was touted as obsoleting all previous weapons systems and conflict modes. Stop building bombers, fighters, tanks, artillery, oh and aircraft carriers too. Obsolete! Only nuclear missiles matter! Except that advice was simplistic and wrong.

The U.S. regularly sends a carrier or two to the vicinity of a country they disagree with. Even in the absence of any military conflict, this action sends an unmistakable message. And in so doing, military conflict is usually avoided. For that alone carriers are a terrific asset. Now add in the fact that, you know, a carrier can be used to carry on a military dust-up.

It's been this way since the end of WW2. The fact that you seem not to have noticed that this dynamic works to the advantage of the U.S. earns you no points.

Faster warheads mean war ahead soon

[Anonymous Coward]

The calculation of 666 produces two dates: one in the past, other some decades in the future. The start and the end of a significant period, the "time of the end". I aligned this period with the events in the book of Apocalypse, using several chronological clues, which resulted in certain dates in the near future. The first date is August 6, 2014 +/- 4 days. The start of the 3rd World War. There are two methods of calculation, one produces August 2, the other August 6. If my calculations are correct, the war lasts just 18 months, 21 months tops. I'm an engineer -- I don't believe in "young earth" and other religious nonsense. I'm just solving the Bible like I would solve a complex puzzle, to see if it's at least self-consistent. I found out inconsistencies are key to solve the puzzle. Inconsistencies are used by atheists to discredit the Bible. Inconsistencies cause discomfort to believers, so they don't look at them close enough. They explain them out somehow, or just forget about them. This is how the Bible's supernatural author has hidden an amazing amount of information right under the nose of humanity. Follow @ricardokal on twitter to get links for more info when it's available.

Five words: Hypersonic Counter Missles.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, you miserable fucktards filling comments with beta bitchings are ruining the comment section.

Re:Bee Keepers and Audience: Plus ca change...

[Anonymous Coward]

...plus c'est la meme chose

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

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[RubberDogBone]

The core, loyal, long time users need to be generating some revenue, because that's all that matters to sites like this. Sure, they may have core, loyal, long time users. But companies would cash in all of them for some knitting forums if that would bring in revenue somehow.

Or to use a more relevant example, the news site Newsvine once had many core, loyal, long time users who contributed stories to the site much as we have editors here submitting stories (several times over in most cases). The community at Newsvine thrived on the discussion model and generally had a good time even when there was disagreement.

Then MSNBC bought Newsvine, let it become a festering cesspool of political attacks -imagine if EVERY story on /. became red state versus blue, and insightful posts were reduced to the commentary version of apes flinging poo. Sure Slashdot has some of that. But imagine it ALL like that. That's what Newsvine became. And then, they used it to develop what is now the current NBC news website. You need to see it. Oh golly you should see it.

All of that crap was done in the name of generating revenue. That's what happens when dollar signs become the most important thing. Dice is already heading that way with Slashdot. Eventually they will push the button and flush Slashdot. Cash is king. And we don't generate enough. I don't think we ever could either because no matter WHAT we do, there will always be this thought in their heads that they can get more money, if only... if only they do THIS or sell THAT.

DIY missiles will always be around

[RubberDogBone]

The big, bad armed forces can drool over sci fi toys and drop billions on hypersonic (and I might add, unproven) missiles, but the average ground pounding militia (aren't they always militia?) will still manage to make a lot of cheap and effective missiles out of stuff they can buy at the local Mosque Depot or Al Lowes.

I'd like to think Americans would be as resourceful if there was a war on our soil.

No.

[geekoid]

Your mention is Usenet was there because you think being around longed equals smarter. Clearly it does not. For proof, Just read your posts.

They also assume

[geekoid]

the missile defense system can't be improved to deal the hyper sonic missiles.

This isn't about paltry super sonic

[geekoid]

it's about hyper sonic. To be considered hypersonic, a missile must travel at speeds of between Mach 5 and Mach 10, or 3,840–7,680 miles per hour.

Super sonic means exceeding the speed of sound, mach 1.

Re:The artical has at least one conficting stateme

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't run hypersonic at lower altitudes... they vaporise.

Re:Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[JWSmythe]

Well, if you ever actually logged in and gave useful participation, you'd know that mod points are given to anyone who logs in and gives useful participation.

If you don't like the way things are moderated, it's up to you to do a better job.

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[JWSmythe]

Ya, they'll keep polluting the comments with this crap for a few days. Then Slashdot will or won't go with the new format. They done a couple pushes to go to new formats. There was less bitching, but they still never went with them.

At least this one never stuck. :)

http://www.metlin.org/content/blog/omgponies.jpg

idiotic article, idiotic journalists

[Anonymous Coward]

99.999999999% of missile threats are currently, and will be for the foreseeable future, conventional. Hence conventional defences are needed.

Fucking idiot journalists.

Hm! Hypersonic Missiles "possess greater maneuvera

[Anonymous Coward]

The maneuverability thing seems a little hard to believe. Marry that with the lower altitude then its hard for me to believe this will maneuver at hypersonic speed and not hit a mountain.

Most gun based close in weapon systems, the bullet travels far slower than the missile they are intended to shoot down. This argument alone kind of defeats the obsolete question posed by the author.

Ditto

[Sebo]

Andover didn't fsck with it. VA Linux/Sourceforge didn't fsck with it. Don't fsck with /.! It's a community driven site, don't treat it like it's a "property". We know that there's a commercial interest behind the scenes but, if you treat it like a property rather than a community site, chasing eyeballs with design and content changes, that will affect the COMMUNITY upon which it is built. Leave well alone. Make your ad revenue and pander to the InfoWorld crowd with something else. Geeks are fickle beasts.

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[Type44Q]

I hope my advice is at least read.

Read? Perhaps. Understood? These are marketing and advertising people we're talking about.

You can't outrun radar.

[jennatalia]

Subsonic missiles or not, there's still as way to detect them. We need to develop a "laser" system and attach it to different objects to destroy the incoming missiles.

Re: Bee Keepers and the Audience

[EQ]

With that uid you have been around long enough to remember the AOL invasion of Usenet and the massive chaos that imposed on users. However, unlike Usenet back then, we now have plenty of alternatives, and this place will become quickly abandoned if a similar impact happens. I wonder if those pushing this have read Santayana...

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

levels

[Anonymous Coward]

We have to address all levels of technology.

Re:Bee Keepers and the Audience

[umafuckit]

I agree they should change the site little. The commenting should stay as is. The threaded discussions should stay. The lack of smilies and other bullshit should stay. Modernising the skin isn't a bad thing, though. If they want to stick an image next to each story, so what? I disagree that bringing in new faces is a bad thing. New blood is always good, you just have to make sure that it's the right sort. That should be possible to do. TBH, I imagine the powers that be probably want to do something about this: http://www.google.com/trends/e...

Hypersonic Missiles vs ICBMs

[NonSenseAgency]

In regards to Keck's first postulate, that hypersonic missiles travel faster than current missiles (read ICBMs) it is simply untrue. Even the long obsolete Minuteman II missiles were capable of achieving escape velocity, something that a hypersonic missile has yet to demonstrate. Regarding his second postulate that they possess greater maneuverability than what the current defense systems are designed to destroy, that is also suspect. Even ICBMs were capable of mid-course maneuvering, and as above, no hypersonic missile has demonstrated any capacity for "evasive maneuvering"...yet.

Re:Not Obsolete.. until X-ray lasers are available

[Anonymous Coward]

Thermal protection will not stop x-rays , http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-08/ded-flx082213.php and x-ray protection is heavy.

The answer is simple

[jbee02]

Most threat will be from third world countries and terrorist organizations that don't have hypersonic missiles and wont have them for a long time if ever at all

Love the Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit being so jaded.