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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."
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
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.
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.
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. ;-)
Who needs expensive hypersonic missiles when you got religion and fanatics.
The side without the religious fanatics.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The Bee's will join another colony or make their own and the beekeeprs can go fuck themselves
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
...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.
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.
Sig for hire.