Slashdot Mirror
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."
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK Beta!
Calling us the Audience is like the Bee Keeper calling the Bees the audience.
Bees make honey. You can set up bee boxes and have bees live in the boxes and make honey that you can harvest. But the bees are free to leave at any time. The only reason the bees stay is because the boxes are less trouble than building a beehive. Try making the bee box unusable and the bees will just go build a beehive elsewhere. Don't believe it? They've been building beehives for a lot longer (*cough* Usenet *cough*) than bee boxes (*cough* Slashdot *cough*) have been around.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
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.
Love sees no species.
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...
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?
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!
I don't know, can they shoot down beta?
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Does anyone know why they can't use lasers to knock down these fast missiles? http://www.defense.gov/News/Ne...
It would be great if someone launched a hypersonic missile towards Beta.
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.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
But what about the Doomsday Device Gap?!
Why do you think everyone's investing so heavily in lasers all of a sudden?
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
Do they need Dice Holdings corporate address?
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.' "
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I mean, why is this so bad? Same content, except now it looks like a 2006 website instead of one from the 1990's...
Betas? We don't need no stinkin' betas! FUCK BETA
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.
"...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.
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.
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.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Pentagon: What?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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.
This sounds like the Bomber Gap or the Missle Gap all over again.
Fry the beta server?
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.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You keep modding this stuff down and we, the USERS, of Slashdot will only grow stronger! YOU NEED US DICE.
FUCK BETA
Obviously they are trying to deflect BETA Missiles. Especially the ones made by Dice!
FUCK BETA
Throw more money we don't have at the problem and maybe it'll go away.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
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.
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.
A 6000mph missile is impressive until it's hit by a laser or particle beam moving at the speed of light...
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.
Could the Slashdot beta disrupt hypersonic missiles?
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))
soylentnews.org
You know what sucks about this? FUCKING BETA.
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.
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.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
... 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.)
Hey, at least the US can win the deterrence war against North Korea's nuclear rock throws...
It says lower altitudes, not lower speeds. There is no contradiction there.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
...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.
Loading...
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.
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))
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.
Speed of sound, even in multiples, is nothing compared to the speed of light. Light/energy based defenses just need to be more nimble.
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.
Also, the beta sucks.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
The reentry speed for an ICBM MIRV is already something like 10,000 MPH, which is well within the hypersonic range.
But they promote 'keeping America safe' just to keep the rubes sedated.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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, I like this new Slashdot look! I can actually read what is going on now.
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
"I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me
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.
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.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
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 (speed of light) are faster than Hypersonic missiles.
Eventually a Laser defense will be viable.
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.
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.
If you are driving up Pike's Peak do you still wear your seat belt?
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)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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?
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.
...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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
See above
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.
...the shitty beta!
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.
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.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also, you miserable fucktards filling comments with beta bitchings are ruining the comment section.
...plus c'est la meme chose
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
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.
Sig for hire.
Your mention is Usenet was there because you think being around longed equals smarter. Clearly it does not. For proof, Just read your posts.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
the missile defense system can't be improved to deal the hyper sonic missiles.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You can't run hypersonic at lower altitudes... they vaporise.
99.999999999% of missile threats are currently, and will be for the foreseeable future, conventional. Hence conventional defences are needed.
Fucking idiot journalists.
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.
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.
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.
We have to address all levels of technology.
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.
Thermal protection will not stop x-rays , http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-08/ded-flx082213.php and x-ray protection is heavy.
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
Quit being so jaded.