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The Argument For a Hypersonic Missile Testing Ban
Lasrick writes Mark Gubrud has a fascinating piece arguing for the U.S. to lead the way in calling for a ban on the testing of hypersonic missiles, a technology that the U.S. has been developing for decades. China has also started testing these weapons, which proponents optimistically claim would not be used to deliver nuclear weapons. Russia, India, and a few other countries are also joining in the fray, so a ban on testing would stop an arms race in its tracks. The article discusses the two types of hypersonic technology, and whether that technology has civilian applications.
The argument is at heart "Don't develop these weapons because they will be good at killing people and I personally am not smart enough to come up with a civilan use that doesn't kill people".
It is the kind of idiocy that makes the military industrial complex laugh and call you names.
I think the big issue with these weapons is that they *will* become nuclear payload delivery systems, and as first-strike weapons they would be very hard if not impossible to stop (not that good defense industry $$ won't be spent trying). First-strike weaponry generally enables the crazy/unstable countries and their leaders to exert their will over the rest of the world, while not exactly providing much in terms of benefits to larger, more well nuclear established countries.
Banning this kind of testing isn't new - we did have a nuclear test ban for several decades [1]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
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That was PRECISELY what happened when Eisenhower signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union.
There's a real sense in which hypersonic missiles are an alternative to nukes: bunker busting. To bust a deep bunker (think 10+ meters of concrete, itself deep underground) is no easy task. A nuke works, but nuke ground bursts are particularly nasty (airbursts have limited and contained fallout, ground bursts toss fallout high up into the atmosphere to spread with the wind). Get a kinetic weapon up to Mach 10 and that works too.
There were plans at one point to drop heavy penetrators (old 5" gun barrels from decommissioned battleships IIRC, very hard steel) from orbit if needed, but that was barely doable and quite expensive. Still, it shows the magnitude of the problem.
All the big players have signed "no nukes in space" treaties, of course, but you may be right that they have them anyhow, much to your point about secret testing.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Incorrect. There are plenty of ways to take out an aircraft carrier. The most obvious and least defensible way is to torpedo it from a submarine. Other ways clearly exist. You can overwhelm it with a mass attack using aircraft, conventional cruise missiles, torpedo boats, etc. Once a carrier and its very limited escort screen use up their antiaircraft and antimissile ammunition, it is a sitting duck. You can strew mines in front of it. You want to give it a severe nightmare? Just consider what you could do moored in its pathetically poorly defended home base or forward base.
The X-15 was a manned rocket-propelled aircraft that hit mach 6.7 in 1964. If you ever see it in the National Air and Space Museum it's not nearly as big as you'd think - smaller than most fighter aircraft. Comparing it to a Saturn V is a huge exaggeration. If they're using RAM jets in missiles it's all about range and not about speed.