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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.
Sounds fair...
So we can follow the ban and everyone else cheat?
You really think China would stop testing because of a treaty?
HA HA HA HA HA HA HO
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How often does a ban stop anything in its tracks?
Bans only stop the good guys in their tracks.
So this comes along just as Russia drops the word "Nuclear" to remind everyone that they have them.
Are you naive enough to believe the Russia would bother to show up to negotiate about this?
One also wonders what the people of Ukraine think about such a well timed suggestion.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
It is the kind of idiocy that makes the military industrial complex laugh and call you names.
There are good reasons to ban weapons - but not just because the weapon is good at killing people. To those in the military, effectiveness at killing people is a reason to BUILD the weapon, not ban it.
Chemical are banned not because they kill people, but because they are likely to kill civilians and your own soldiers as much as they kill the enemy. They also people and damage valuable land after you win.
A similar argument applies to biological weapons, land mines and nuclear weapons.
There is NOTHING in this article that would convince a soldier to ban the weapons. Instead, any military person, upon reading it will of course demand that we spend lots of money figuring out how to build hypersonic missiles.
If you dislike war, ban it. But you are probably not naive enough to try that. You would lose the argument because such an attempt has many many flaws. Well guess what - trying to ban weapon research because the weapon is too goo is just as naive.
WORST of all, your naive and foolish attempts make it much harder to ban the weapons we actually CAN ban - land mines, chemical and biological warfare.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
All missiles have civilian applications: governments can use them to blow up civilians, and malcontent citizens who can get their hands on the can use them to blow up governments.
And other governments are always there to provide missiles to the malcontents.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The US would stop building and researching and every other country in the world would continue. But hey, a BAN on evil horrible weapons makes good soundbites for low information voters...
These missiles will turn out to be our only defense against the alien invaders.
It was called the Kellogg-Briand Pact. "The High Contracting Parties solemly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another."
How well did that work out?
It was signed in 1928. Good thing there have been no wars since then...
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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One rule I try to remember is to never make a rule that can't be enforced. With nuclear bombs, there is seismic and radioactive evidence, so you can know if somebody is breaking the treaty. I doubt that such a thing exists for hypersonic missiles.
Nuclear weapons are mainly not used right now because they are so damn slow. When you want to nuke someone on the otherside of the planet, you want them blown up right friggen now. Then some douche tells you, "Sir, the best we can do is 8 hours." and you're all "WHY THE FUCK DO WE HAVE THESE THINGS TO BEGIN WITH???' Clearly if we make nukes fast enough everyone will use them. Seriously though, with laser missile defense systems nowadays are hypersonic missiles really that big of a deal? I mean the systems that use lasers to burn up the missiles, not the laser guided ones where you still have to shoot at a bullet flying at you.
X
Seems to me that all this would do is stop the *open* development of these weapons. Even if everyone agrees not to make them, they will all still be making them.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Who cares if it ever filters down to civilian use ( and it will anyway )? I am getting sick and tired of all the "PC" pansys out there, who have no clue what it takes to stay safe and secure. the ONLY reason you are even here complaining is due to the military. And that military *requires* technology.
Its as bad as the 60s, 'lets throw flowers at tanks' nonsense. If you cant repel attackers and destroy enemies, you are eradicated instead. If you dont keep advancing military tech, you fall behind and lose.
Develop, test then deploy the damned things, as many as we need. Now.
Mod me down if you must, but you know its the truth.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Because nothing works like wagging your finger and pretending something doesn't exist.
A "ban", eh?
Good actors would comply, bad actors would not. Then bad actors would have them, good actors wouldn't.
And that's ... better? How?
Everyone else in the fray is already simulating nuclear weapon designs on supercomputers.
The hydrodynamic calculations are similar enough the military isn't going to share code with the hyperflight guys, so this will just become another black project to be run by the same people. :)
This just gives justification for the research disappearing, and stopping any amateur work.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
I am a firm believer in the balance of power.
The MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) has kept us safe for the past 60+ years through some really rough times. It seems to be our best bet to continue keeping us safe.
Pssst, you're thinking of supersonic.
Very few enter the hypersonic regime... Re-entering spacecraft, a few no-fucking-around missiles... that's about it.
I'm wondering how they'll define hypersonic missile. All space launch vehicles are, in some versions of the definition, a hypersonic missile. All re-entry vehicles are, again, hypersonic missiles (some are hypersonic ballistic missiles).
We already have hypersonic missles -- really! Most of the air-to-air missles shot from 1 plane to another are hypersonic and we've had these for decades. This is public knowledge.
What the article is try to get banned is "long-range hypersonic missles", or if you prefer, the old ICBMs going a lot faster. If you could make a very small nuke and stick it in one of the existing missle cases; you could have a pretty awesome weapon if short distances are all you need (say in the 80-100 mile range from what I've read, definitely far enough the pilot wouldn't have to worry about getting caught in it). It'd be pretty easy to hit any coastal city from international air space that way.
I don't see any good reason to ban hypersonic cruise missiles. It's not enough to ban them on the grounds that they are deadly and serve no civilian purpose: war is about killing people. Previously, weapons have been banned in war on the grounds that they kill in an unusually horrific way, or aim to kill "innocent" targets, or kill indiscriminately, Hypersonic cruise missiles are none of these things.
Hypersonic cruise missiles are an undistinguished weapon of war. There's no argument for banning them that doesn't also apply to war in general. I think we's all love to ban war, but 10,000 years of history suggests that's not gonna happen.
Here's the plan. Get the planet to permanently halt a specific scientific and technological development. Brilliant.
So, if the human race never - ever develops the technology, we are all safe. Come on, who is stupid enough to buy this?
The Amish?
Who are you trying to kid? Cluster munitions and flame throwers are still in use, they just call them something else. Flame throwers today are white phosphorous munitions instead of a guy with a gas can and match (greatly extending range making it much more convenient the user, in addition to much safer), and the US in particular uses a slang term for cluster bombs of "grenadelettes" (see DPICM Munitions). DU rounds litter Afghanistan and Iraq so we are not too worried about generations of civilian casualties, let alone the damage we do immediately.
Hollow points are not really missed, because we have much worse munitions today for rifles/guns. Tumbling and AP rounds cause much more damage at much greater range and can ignore body armor.
The pretext for use of WP munitions is that you can't target a civilian, the same exact rule for high caliber weapons (.50+ caliber). So we claim to shoot at buildings and vehicles to justify WP use, and for large caliber munitions we claim to aim at their belt buckles or back packs.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Isn't one of the main arguments for the current state of madness in the states something like:
If you ban guns only the criminals would have them!
Wouldn't that imply that if you ban testing ultra-violent weaponry, only the rogue states would test them?
Just build the goddamn things. Don't trust anybody that says they're not. I'm sorry, but that's the world we live in.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
When people say 'first strike' in this context, they mean 'nuclear first strike', as in 'launch enough nuclear missiles to take out your enemy's ability to fire back'. The reason for nuclear submarines is to largely eliminate this possibility: even if you completely destroy every military installation in the USA, there is going to be at least one submarine hidden somewhere that will be able to flatten a few of your cities.
MAD only works as a deterrent if there is a very small chance of getting away with a first strike. If you can shoot down incoming ballistic missiles, then you might be tempted to launch first and just shoot down the retaliatory strike. If you can fire missiles that are fast enough that the enemy doesn't have time to order a retaliatory strike, then you might be willing to live with a couple of submarines shooting at you, especially if you have a good idea of where they are and can have aircraft ready to launch interceptors flying above them.
Aircraft carriers completely suck for launching nuclear missiles (and the USA has not confirmed that they even bother putting them on board), because they're a big obvious target. If, for example, the USA put a nuclear-armed aircraft carrier near Russia, then you can bet that the Russian second-strike capability would be on alert and ready to launch unless they got regular confirmation that the US carrier hadn't launched. Aircraft carriers also suck for second-strike, because they're too big to easily dodge a nuclear strike and so will be on the list for first-strike targets.
They're good for a conventional (non-nuclear) first strike, because they give you a staging post that you can put right next to someone else's country, but that's less of a problem for global stability. A non-nuclear first strike commits you to an expensive war. Aircraft carriers aren't also specifically first-strike weapons. They have support roles and are even occasionally used for disaster relief (a big portable nuclear reactor turns out to be quite handy sometimes).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Mutually Assured Destruction is more of a pro than a con when considering certain element of society which are willing to, say, strap explosives to their chest and detonate them in a public venue. Projecting your morality onto others in order to predict behaviors is a dangerous game.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The debate on banning hypersonic weapons is essentially mirroring the debate on MIRVs... except that MIRVs are benign in comparison.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
It's not patronizing to point out that both Russia and China are much poorer countries that the US. All you need to do is look at their GDP/capita figures to see the wide gap. As for scholastic achievements, cross-country comparisons are always difficult especially when dealing with non-democratic countries that need to look good for propaganda purposes. Examining the latest PISA figures, it doesn't look like Russian students fare better than Americans. Russia and the US have similar scores for math, but Americans are better at reading and science. Unfortunately, no data is available for China as a whole. Students in Shanghai perform much better than Americans but this is comparing apples and oranges and I doubt that students in poorer, rural areas of China would score as high.
If you ban [ insert weapon here ] testing then only the countries that don't sign up for or completely disregard the ban will have [ insert weapon here ].
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
MIRVs are a better second-strike weapon. In a first-strike context, your missile bases are all working fine and you can just launch everything that you've got at the enemy. MIRV in a first strike requires fewer missiles to get through, but that just means you need to build fewer missiles, which doesn't reduce the cost by a huge amount compared to the cost of maintaining a first-strike capability at all. In a second-strike situation, however, you're much more likely to have limited launch resources (a few submarines if you're late, the missile silos that you can contact in time if you're not). Being able to have a devastating second-strike capability with just one submarine surviving is a strong deterrent.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It doesn't matter if it's better as a first or second strike weapon because at the time that MIRV bans were being discussed it was under the guise of them unbalancing the first strike capabilities of the nuclear powers. That is what I was alluding to and as far as nuclear weapon technology goes, hypersonic is far worse than MIRV, hence why I called it benign in comparison. In the late 1960s and early 1970s we stupidly gave up the opportunity to ban MIRVs over maintaining useless ABM sites. These are sites, which I may add, that America hadn't yet built and never did build. START II hasn't even succeeded in banning MIRVs because Russia never ratified it.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
The whole point of supercaviataing torpedoes is speed. A fast and/or maneuverable ship might be able to evade a slow torpedo. While this is less likely with a very fast one. However a Carrier, let alone a "super" carrier, are A) slow, and B) not maneuverable. Their strength are the aircraft on it, and the flotilla around it. Even a very fast torpedo would be detected from a long ways away, and counter measures deployed, though there may be slightly less time to do so. It is the jobs of the anti-torp helos, and Destroyers etc... in the flotilla to take care of those things.
Really the only thing dangerous to carriers are MASS torpedoes, more so than the counter measures can compensate for... However you would have to have a lot of subs, and sacrifice many of them getting close enough and retaliation. The real worry was about these super fast missiles, which are MUCH faster than even very fast torpedoes. The trouble is, that air counter measures could probably take care of it, however could become overwhelmed more easily because of the reduced time between detection and response.
Anyway it is really only dangerous in an all out war, as the BIGGEST defense is that a super carrier is such a massive ship, that any attack would be seen as a clear act of war and generate a very nasty response.
All IRBM's & ICBM's have been hypersonic weapons since 1957.
How fast is a re-entry vehicle from a modern ICBM?
Here's what an attack looks like from the ground: hey, a moving bright white dot! (one one thousand two one thousand three one thousand) BOOM
It takes O(10) seconds to go from the top of the atmosphere to target level, three or four from stratosphere.
This is why missile defense is almost impossible.
Even in the video game (Missile Command) you always lose.
called a IRBM. The dynamically optimal solution is obviously to go up out of the atmosphere as soon as you can to reduce drag, and then come down over the target. And since you're coming down, you don't need any thrust in that phase. So you just re-invented the ballistic missile. Von Braun figured this all out quite some time ago.
All the "hypersonic weapons" are ballistic missiles with slightly maneuverable (nonballistic) warheads.
Fact: In America there are millions of citizens who go hungry every nights
Patronizing for the sake of patronizing will only earn you distrust and disgust
Patronizing for the sake of patronizing will only earn you distrust and disgust
Sorry, I didn't mean to say that the US is perfect in anyways... Just that I don't think the US going to do anything for its poor citizens. :)
The US is messed up, and surely ought spend it money smarter than doing an arms race, but US public, politicians and press, probably aren't smart enough to do that... at least I'm not holding my breath