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War Tech the US, Russia, China and India All Want: Hypersonic Weapons
An anonymous reader writes: They can hit any target in 30 minutes or less. They travel anywhere from Mach 5 to Mach 25. All the major powers want them, and many look at them as a military game changer — if only they can make them work. Are hypersonic weapons the future of military doctrine?
Hypersonic weapons — or ballistic weapons that can hit a target flying many times faster than the speed of sound — have been hyped since the 1970s. Currently almost all of the major powers are trying to build them. The U.S. and China seem to be the furthest along, and are working on various types of systems. China hopes such weapons could be a game changer and deter any U.S. actions in Asia. There is, however, one big problem (besides the insane amount of technology to make them work, considering their speed): a possible arms race that could lead to a nuclear war:
"According to some analysts, the development of hypersonic weapons creates the conditions for a new arms race, and could risk nuclear escalation. Given that the course of hypersonic research has acknowledged both of these concerns, why have several countries started testing the weapons?"
Hypersonic weapons — or ballistic weapons that can hit a target flying many times faster than the speed of sound — have been hyped since the 1970s. Currently almost all of the major powers are trying to build them. The U.S. and China seem to be the furthest along, and are working on various types of systems. China hopes such weapons could be a game changer and deter any U.S. actions in Asia. There is, however, one big problem (besides the insane amount of technology to make them work, considering their speed): a possible arms race that could lead to a nuclear war:
"According to some analysts, the development of hypersonic weapons creates the conditions for a new arms race, and could risk nuclear escalation. Given that the course of hypersonic research has acknowledged both of these concerns, why have several countries started testing the weapons?"
The process of power shifting from a set of hands to another set of hands has happened before many times throughout the course of human history.
Maybe something similar is about to happen again.
http://moneymorning.com/ext/ar...
If this is true, the mystery of why all these countries want these weapons, disappears.
I don't see how this can work.
ICBMs are already hypersonic weapons. Problem is launching one gets everyone else twichy because they might have a bunch of nuclear warheads on the end.
Whereas hypersonic missiles don't. So won't make anyone twitchy. Until someone sticks a nuclear warhead on them which is about the first thing they'll do. Then they'll make everyone just as twitchy as before except that they flight path will be a bit different.
About 3 years after the first practical hypersonic air breathing missile comes online, they'll be in *exactly* the same place as ICBMs with similar flight times, hitting capabilities and unusuableness due to everyone else thinking you're staring WWIII.
On the other hand, hypersonic arbreathing engines are cool, so whatever.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The game changer for nuclear weapons is not a faster delivery system, it's an effective shield. That was why the Soviet Union was so worried about Star Wars. If it had worked, then it would have meant that the USA could have launched a first strike without worrying about the USSR's second strike capability. Hypersonics just make it harder to develop any kind of active shield (it's hard for an interceptor to hit something travelling at Mach 5-25).
Of course, the real game changer for nuclear weapons would be someone who doesn't care about second strike. The easy and cheap way of building something that has the same military impact as a fully functional shield is to simply not care about your civilian population. This is why everyone is nervous about North Korea: if they wanted to fire a nuke at South Korea or Japan, the threat of nuclear annihilation of their cities in response wouldn't be very likely to dissuade them.
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Yeah. For the clarity to other readers, this statement is not supported by any logic nor by any argument. It is just that "some analysts" (i.e. probably some dude the author met in a pub) say that something could lead to "nuclear escalation". It is there to attract eye balls and clicks. Now that we have agreed that the whole talk about "nuclear war" or "nuclear escalation", we can focus on discussing this pretty cool sounding hypersonic weaponry stuff.
Is that supposed to mean
ballistic weapons that can hit a target which is flying many times faster than the speed of sound
or
ballistic weapons that are flying at many times faster than the speed of sound when they hit the target
Also, "many times faster than the speed of sound" sucks.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
At least get the damned words right?!!
Yes, it can lead to an arms race. The problem is that if you hold off and your enemy doesn't, you're a sitting duck. Avoiding the arms race is only possible if everybody involved holds off, and you don't/can't trust any of them to hold off so you have to proceed as if you're already involved in an arms race whether you want to be or not. Because the only thing worse than being in a Mexican standoff is being the one guy in a Mexican standoff without any guns.
War
Uh
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
(Say it again)
The us hasn't lost any wars in decades.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
"It's in your nature to destroy yourselves."
"Given that the course of hypersonic research has acknowledged both of these concerns, why have several countries started testing the weapons?"
I guess my answer would be "all of human history"?
Only the categorically naive wouldn't understand why someone wouldn't research a new, more efficacious weapon.
I guess it's a good sign of how utterly benign our world must be that people can exist with such sentiment.
-Styopa
No mention of Peace on Earth POE, OPE...
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
No, but they've lost plenty of peaces. How'd that Iraq thing turn out? And have they stamped out the Taliban yet?
Russians already solved this problem long ago with maritime high speed supersonic bombers specifically designed to rush in and kill carrier groups covered from air threats by equally fast and nearly as long range Su-27 derivatives. They're the only ones in the world with a massive fleet of supersonic (we're talking near and beyond mach 2 here - F-35C for example is much slower) bombers specifically designed for ship killing job that are armed with cruise missiles that match the launch platform.
Here's one example of such an aircraft:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The only task those aircraft are designed for is to get in launch range and fire off their Kh-15 missiles that themselves have ~300km range.
It's pretty well known that if a real war was ever to break out, there would be two kinds of aircraft carrier ships. Those in ports and those beneath the sea. The real purpose of modern aircraft carrier is long range power projection over small weak states with no MAD deterrent or significant air/submarine force. That is why as long as Soviet threat persisted, the main air defense aircraft on aircraft carriers was extremely expensive long range F-14. It was the only aircraft US had that had the radar range and missile range to have even a remote hope of success in counter strike against such bombers going in for the kill before its mothership is killed.
The only significant strategic advantage that supersonic weapons offer is better first strike capability. Everything else is just tactical, like having better air defense penetration, and is generally not cost effective as you could likely make a much larger swarm of modern ~mach 3-5 rockets that have only marginally lesser kill ratio to compensate for this advantage for the same cost.
cruise missiles aren't hypersonic, either. The Brahmos is the fastest at the moment and that barely does Mach 2.8 in perfect conditions - just 30 feet above terrain. There are a couple others that do better than M1.75. Harpoon (submarine launched) and Tomahawk (MK. I land-based) are both subsonic, there are others that are barely supersonic. Most of these are launched using solid rockets and switch to airbreathing jets for the cruise phase (there are some that are entirely jet powered).
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
That arms race has a downside of enabling remote killing of people with no significant recourse of defense. Reference: current situation in Pakistan and Yemen.
...and China continues to excel at stealing all the IP they can get their hands on. I guess in the long run it ends up being the same thing.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
The man has a point. We're just not good at that stuff, peace and "nation building" (whatever that's supposed to be)
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
You have to read the policy paper that came back a couple of years ago. The idea is to increase the power projection capabilities of the US Armed Forces so that in a case of substantial shutting down of US military bases around the world they can strike more or less anywhere they want in the world in a short amount of time. There were moves to use modified Minutemen missiles for this but the Russians were kind of skeptic about it since they claimed you couldn't tell the payload of the missile and they would consider it as if it was a nuclear launch. Even if they have short range missiles that are kind of iffy in themselves like Iskander.
The Russians have quite a few Mach 3.0 missiles of which they sold a couple to India and to a lesser degree China. As a mainly continental nation they always had this power projection problem to begin with. The article is mistaken as the idea of hypersonic weapons has been around since at least WWII. Read the Wikipedia pages for the Nazi Silbervogel and the US Aerospaceplane. The projects failed at the time as the technological problems were too large to tackle and the materials were not good enough. In fact they may still not be there yet.
If you want to read about Russian and Indian Mach 3.0 weapons go to the Wikipedia pages for the Moskit and the BrahMos. During the Soviet Union the Russians also had the Spiral spaceplane prototype which was akin to the US Dyna-Soar effort although it progressed a bit further than that one. The Chinese supposedly are drop testing a mini-shuttle similar to the X-37 which people have been calling the Shenlong.
Vietnam (remember Tet? Of course, you do. It's at the front of your memory along with the Fall of Saigon)
Korea (or: how the fuck do you think the Kims have been in charge for the past few decades?)
Panama (see Columbia)
Cuba (see Columbia, also see: communism, Bay of Pigs, Castro, the Missile Crisis, Gitmo)
Iraq (what's the death rate among civilians since Hussein was deposed? Up, you say? I wonder why that is?)
Afghanistan (you really believe the rhetoric that the Taliban are gone, beaten, extinct? Take a look at Pakistan, they moved is all. Afghanistan is now left with no leadership, never mind centralised, democratically elected Government and the opium industry is doing a record roaring international trade protected not by the US military now, but by private contractors trained and equipped by the CIA)
Columbia (and the others marked as Axis in the "war on drugs", which was lost the second it was announced since it funds the CIA)
Red Cloud (Treaty of Fort Laramie)
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
So in other words the carriers had a more than adequate defense in the F-14 and the Phoenix missile. Those Tu-22s would have fallen like leaves.
Anyway, everybody knows the real carrier killer is the submarine, and there is not the slightest semblance of a credible defense against it.
US. Trident warhead enter the atmosphere in hypersonic speed.
Russia. RS-26 rubezh warhead enter atmosphere at mach 12 speed, with S-curve flight profile. SS-18 satan warhead enter atmosphere at mach 20 speed. Enough speed for you?
China DF-31D anti ship ballistic warheas enter atmosphere at hypersonic speed. And it also have terminal maneuvering rockets. And china just successfully tested their mach 12 hypersonic S-curve maneuvering cruise missile.
India. Brahmos is a mach 5-6 anti ship weapon (with a goal of sustain 8-12 mach speed). R&D combined together with russia. And the missile based on the already proofen russian P-800 oniks hypersonic missile.
So, who thinks those countries doesn't have hypersonic weapons??
Credibility of the source article is harmed by being dated "December 30, 2015." I realize it must be a typo, but if they can't get that right it makes me wonder.
The world is going to hell in a hand-basket and everyone is focused on trying to make a bigger gun than the next guy.
Penis envy is so counterproductive.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
The skill was there before. Look at Germany.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No, but they've lost plenty of peaces. How'd that Iraq thing turn out? And have they stamped out the Taliban yet?
Meh, I don't think the US lost in Iraq any more than France did. Sure, it cost a boatload of money, but not a crippling amount. Sure, the US didn't get anything out of it, but neither did anybody else. Maybe you could say that Iran won, but I'm not sure how well they get along with ISIS.
Maybe from a nationalism/pride standpoint you could say that the US lost. I just don't see how in the big picture anything changed one way or another. The Iraqi people were losers before and after.
The development of non-ballistic hypersonic weapons is one of the reasons that the U.S. is heavy into making the laser weapons functional, affordable and usable. Something like the one on the USS Ponce, maybe not that one but the next generation of the weapon. Now, defense against something like Pournelle and Nivien's project Thor is another story.
Passionately Indifferent
We dismantled iraq's existing government, helped iraq create a NEW govt, built a new army there and got out. Now the iraqis need help getting rid of a bunch of terrorists again (go figure).
The taliban are a bunch of hicks who have been on the run for years.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
ISIS are sensible enough to stop their campaigns at the border of Iran, and Turkey. Taking over some half-collapsed government in Syria and the inept appointed authority of Iraq is hard enough - they aren't dumb enough to start a war they can't win.
Winning wars usually isn't predicated on murdering the entire opposing population.
You sick fuck.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
The basic concept of a rocket goes back to 400BC and Archytas, who built a wooden bird propelled along wires by steam.
The basic concept of the modern jet engine was patented as a stationary turbine in 1791 working versions were built in the 1800s. Turning it into an aircraft engine was just a matter of making it smaller and lighter.
Charles Babbage came up with the concept of the Analytical Engine in 1800s, even though he couldn't build it at the time.
The idea of sending messages through a network of wiring comes from the telegraph, which showed up in the 1750s.
GPS navigation is a combination of a lot of technologies; rocketry (already mentioned), radio (Marconi in the late 1800s), navigation by triangulation (celestial navigation, the whole of written history), atomic clocks (Lord Kelvin, 1800s) and so on.
Modern day technology didn't suddenly pop into being during WWI. but rather is an evolution of older, pre-1914 technology and most of those older technologies weren't actually developed as tools of war. The human race just happens to be very good at taking any technology available and using it to kill one another.
tl;dr - don't dis pre-1914 tech. Without it, we'd all be sitting in caves drawing crappy pictures on the walls for entertainment.
It's called active sonar, All the hype about silent diesel subs sneaking up on or letting a carrier fleet move over them relies on the fact that during wartime the US navy doesn't use active sonar. They shut down, became perfectly silent, and there was nothing for passive sonar to pick up. As soon as we go to war against a nation with a credible sub fleet, the active sonar gets turned on. No, there is no such thing as a stealth hull that doesn't reflect sound waves.
My guess is that such weapons would change the ballance by undoing mutually assured destruction. The missiles and their interceptors are in a red queen race and if you can move faster than your opponent you may be able to strike them while intercepting their attacks.
The Chinese supposedly are drop testing a mini-shuttle similar to the X-37 which people have been calling the Shenlong.
...as opposed to the new Schlong program, which most foreign officials consider a real dick move by the Chinese.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
that was the entire point of Bush's "War on Terror". He wanted the Taliban "Dead". Not "beaten", "DEAD".
Who's the "sick fuck"?
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
"According to some analysts, the development of hypersonic weapons creates the conditions for a new arms race, and could risk nuclear escalation. Given that the course of hypersonic research has acknowledged both of these concerns, why have several countries started testing the weapons?" The answer lies in the short game. Quickest move to checkmate to get to GAME OVER. Long wars have been a problem with the cost of deployment, supply routes, tracking assets etc. Getting a destructive payload on a target has so many advantages. Taking out an operative before he can end his call. Knocking out a battalion just as it makes it's first move. Stopping a terror cell when it is still locking and loading before they reach civilian areas. Even sinking a pirate operation approaching a merchant ship. They could all be reasons for the fast and now deployment and taking control.
Not entirely correct.
You have two very successful cases for nation (re)building. Japan and Germany, post WWII.
But that involves:
- Time (on a scale that people aren't willing to think nowadays).
- Money (lots of it). To repair infra-structure, and lots and lots of education.
- Be willing to accept that you can't transplant one's political system to very different sociological and psychological conditions.
- Be willing to occupy and fully control the geography (which imply there will be casualties)
The rewards are immense, as can be witnessed by the stability of Japan and W. Europe since WWII, which allowed the US to reap significant economic and political gains
In contrast you have the disaster of post-soviet invasion Afghanistan (where a lot of money was invested on defeating the
USSR, but almost none in helping the resulting "free" country),
and the missed opportunity of "war on terror" Afghanistan (where the US got distracted by "OMG Sadam Hussein has WMDs" ,
and the resources to fully pacify Afghanistan got diverted).
If they are really that important: there ought to be an interlock that means that they will only fly if there is a 5 star general strapped on board.
Or Slim Pickens.
That's a good argument for R&D investment, not for war. Defence spending happens to be a traditionally easy way to get lots of R&D money, but it isn't the only way. It was WWII defence money that built the first computers, but it was almost all civilian commercial R&D that took us from there to pocket computers that are orders of magnitude more powerful.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"I do not know what weapons we will fight World War Three with, but World War Four will be fought with sticks and stones."
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The only thing worse than getting involved in an arms race is losing one.
Even the Navy commanders themselves openly admitted that F-14 and AIM-54 was an product borne out of desperation and didn't have much of a chance against threat scenarios presented before it. AIM-54 was a vastly flawed attempt to make a long range air to air missile which was largely a failure - hence its retirement after the only platform ever made capable of launching and guiding it was retired. Suggesting that a bomber with significant jamming and chaff dispensing capability would "fall like a leaf" from such a missile is like suggesting that "Mike Tyson at his best would have been knocked out by the impact of that little girl's slap".
As in it is in the realm of possibility, just not a very realistic scenario. But if was a scenario where there was at least an ability to detected and fire something at the bomber that would have a chance of connecting with it. Which is a whole lot more than current situation with F/A-18Es and the upcoming F-35Cs, which will never be able to even engage the bomber.
The US doesn't have territorial ambitions on any other country. When was the last time you heard of them annexing anybody, since the Spanish American war?
China, OTOH, has ambitions of re-annexing Taiwan and making it a part of the PRC, as opposed to ROC. Besides that, they have territorial disputes with Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and India. If they got these, that would only encourage them to do what others have been fearing - overrun Taiwan, the disputed South China Sea Islands and Arunachal Pradesh. There's a good reason not to want China to have these.
The other 2? Russia, by its acts in the Donbass, has reverted to what it used to be under both the Tsars and the Soviet Commissars. India - while their adversaries - Pakistan, Bangladesh & China - are bad, India did use its military might in annexing Sikkim in the 70s. That said, it is better that India have them both to offset China, and to prevent a Jihadi takeover of India by Pakistan.
Bottom line: the US ain't the problem. China and Russia are.
Which is why you have a screening force of expendable ships and the carrier sits dark.
Given that the course of hypersonic research has acknowledged both of these concerns, why have several countries started testing the weapons?"
Because every country has a Military Industrial Complex that needs to be fed, and every country has people that... well in the words of General "Buck" Turgidson: "Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!"
So asking questions like "Why?" is silly, it's obvious why.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
If the delivery system is now hypersonic why attach a nuclear warhead to it? Why not use kinetic energy to destroy the target? Mach 5 - 25 an object hitting a target has to have immense force.
Instead of waiting 100 or more years for radiation to dissipate the area can be re-inhabited immediately.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Great book. I'm glad they changed the title though.
The Russians have quite a few Mach 3.0 missiles of which they sold a couple to India and to a lesser degree China
So does that mean they sold China one or zero? That doesn't make any sense. Now you're going to have to cite your sources or I call BS.
Hypersonic weapons — or ballistic weapons that can hit a target flying many times faster than the speed of sound...
The summary is flat wrong in its terminology. A key point about hypersonic weapons, from a tactical and strategic standpoint, is that they aren't ballistic. They're potentially faster and sneakier.
Aside from acceleration during boost and (generally limited) manoeuvering during descent, ballistic weapons are - by definition - coasting unpowered for most of their flight time. Ballistic missiles put their warheads into an elliptical orbit that happens to intersect the surface of the earth (typically somewhere around Moscow) and let gravity do most of the work.
Hypersonic weapons, in stark contrast, are in powered flight for most or all of their journey. Instead of being lobbed up and coming back down, they can go straight to their target (modulo the curvature of the earth). They can travel a path and a velocity that is limited by their own engineering rather than by orbital mechanics. From a strategic standpoint, they would allow delivery of warheads (particularly nuclear warheads) in shorter times by less-detectable and less-interceptable courses, with all the attendant consequences for the calculus of nuclear war, first strikes, and mutually assured destruction.
~Idarubicin
Our development of these are for stopping just this situation.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I guess setting up puppet governments in places like Iran and Chile doesn't count, as far as you're concerned? Or failing to do so, such as in the Bay of Pigs fiasco?
I always have to chuckle when I see comments like yours, made by Americans who are so blindingly ignorant of their own history.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
We were out to stop AQ not Taliban. Has AQ attacked the west in awhile? Nope.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
There is a reason for railguns and lasers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Looks like Hawaii just squeaks in since it was annexed the same year as the war, even though unrelated to it.
And, yeah, these days the US prefers to work through proxy governments.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Well, the on ship lasers just being on board should be able to help the US fleet then.
I would imagine that the development of Hypersonic weapons would also necessitate increased development and deployment of laser defense weapons since they might be the ONLY way you can target and destroy them before they reach their targets.
Designer Barnes Wallis talked about how difficult it was for him to convince the General Staff to review, just review, his water skipping/skimming bomb that could attack a dam jumping over the anti-torpedo nets. He could succeed only because was already a well known bomber designer (Wellington bomber, R100 blimps). The General Staff is very averse to really unconventional weapons, and are preoccupied by what they already know. But it was easy for some German gun maker to get funding for a humongous artillery weapon. It was so huge and the logistics to support it was so enormous, it was commanded by a full Colonel. Imagine a Colonel commanding one stupid gun. I think it was fired just once.
They could not believe aircraft could destroy ships before WW-II. French could not believe armour could penetrate Ardennes forest. They were using tactics developed during Napoleanic wars where the rate of fire of mustets was something like 1 or 2 shots per minute during 100-rounds-per-minute Civil war. Never learnt from that carnage. Happily throwing cannon fodder in trench warfare in WW-I in 500 rounds per minute machine guns.
Yes, the generals may be dreaming about hypersonic weapons, but their tails are going to be chewed by something they never imagined.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Some people say missiles are phallic symbols. But If that's true why is the NK one called "No dong"?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Don't forget the recent deployment of low cost laser defense weapons. That could be a game changer as it's easy to quickly destroy targets and has virtually limitless ammo.
By using active sonar you tell the enemy where you are. A dumb decision. Necessary maybe but incredibly dumb.
That depends. The P-3 Orion, P-8 Poseidon use active sonar buoys. And when the MQ-4C Triton goes into service, the P-8 will focus more on sub hunting.
we could be spending all that money, time, and brainpower on helping people, not killing them.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Those are CIWS weapons. CIWS weapons are last line of defense. To an ordinary person, that is the "kitchen sink" in "throw everything at it" scenario. Even if they are working, they are simply going to get saturated with targets as Russian doctrine is to launch multiple missiles from multiple directions at once. And Kh-15s have terminal velocity of about mach 5. That means your laser, even if it actually gets to work (right now, it doesn't for a number of reasons and no ship currently in service can actually support laser based CIWS weapon in combat configuration due to power supply and cooling constraints) will simply not have time to do the work. That is why CIWS are the "kitchen sink".
P.S. The current "deployment" of laser based weaponry AFAIK is about re-rigging FEL test bed lasers from CIWS weaponry to anti surface low power weapons to combat the two aforementioned problems as they run at much lower power and have much more time to aim and fire the weapon.
Combine the technology hypersonic deployment with drone capabilities at the destination, could be pretty powerful,
I was just thinking if we had a hypersonic drone to quickly go on-site and do searches in emergencies like that recent asian air disaster, that could possibly save lives a lot faster than current methods.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Second, it's not about the conflicts we are already involved in, it's about the balance of power and offensive/defensive advantage. If China is first to get it, then as you pointed out, they neutralize our carrier fleet. Our navy is the only thing restraining their aggression in the Sea of China (they've claimed all of it, up to the beaches of their neighbors). If they can neutralize our fleet, they will roll over Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan in no time flat. That is when things will get real bad. If we can put the tech into service first, the balance remains and our allies can relax. China plays the old-school game of "realist" international politics. According to which an offensive advantage must be pressed before your opponents can match it. The US plays a more Liberal/Institutional game (as all democracies do) so we tend to avoid outright aggression regardless of offensive advantage.
Additionally, China's official justification for most of these territorial claims is that they belong to various forms of Chinese empires in the past such as the Qing dynasty. By that logic, most of the far east, Mongolia, and other countries will be claimed by China at some point. Don't forget Tibet, too.
He wanted Al-Qaida dead and the Taliban were hiding them (supposedly). When the train comes, get the fuck out of the way.
Which is exactly what the Taliban did, ran like the primitives they are.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Hmm, if that's a good justification, can we have the reset of the British Empire back please? Although I guess we'll have to give most of the UK back to Italy eventually, as it was part of the Roman Empire.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Not just that, the GP's numbers are disputed, and usually bandied about by the MoveOn or OCCUPY crowds
Right, and China is therefore a threat to its neighbors. But if others were to use their reasoning, Mongolia would be justified in claiming Iran, all the stans, China (at least the northern part, and including Beijing), Korea and a good part of Siberia. Tibet is already a part of China, unless China's 1991 comes someday, when Tibet and other regions occupied by China claim independence.
If you're a submarine, then telling everyone where you are is a problem. If you're an aircraft carrier with escort fleet, there's a good bet everyone knows where you are already. Those things aren't exactly silent. Or invisible to satellite.
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Keep guessing then. ICBM's are by definition hypersonic weapons so nothing other than better targeting has changed since the 50s.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Iraq is currently a client state of Iran, never mind the process by which its current regime got there. Had Iraq been pro-US, there would have been no persecution of Iraqi Christians. Nor would Iraq have cozied up to Iran, who the US has been trying to isolate: they'd have happily joined the US and tried to become the major power in the Arab empire. Afghanistan too - Hamid Karzai started mending relations w/ the Taliban even when the US still had a presence there. Some puppets - these 2!!!
Half the world? I imagine you're talking about the #countries, right? About 50 of them are members of the OIC, and therefore rather hostile to the US. East Asia - the only friends that the US has are Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia. Sub Saharan Africa - not a single country is pro-US. Latin America - Venezuela, Brazil, Nicaragua, Bolivia, all have leftist regimes - I think Colombia is the only pro-US country there, and maybe some central American countries, like Costa Rica.
Hardly half the world, as you put it. And if you were thinking in terms of populations, India and China are both allied to Russia, and have been supporting them both re: sanctions. That's half the world's population right there, b/w these 3 countries. And if you were thinking area wise, then too these 3 take the bulk of it, plus countries like Brazil and much of North Africa.
Active sonar works fine as long as you're in deep water, far away from land, where you're suppose to be if you're an aircraft carrier.
Diesel subs are designed to wait in ambush near the bottom in shallow waters, where active sonar operator could easily mistake them for natural formations.
It does not seem likely that carriers and diesel subs would ever face one another, unless a sub managed to sneak across the Atlantic and into shallow US waters, near an aircraft carrier port... But then we're talking Hollywood/Clancy scenarios.
You remind me of Elaine's interview in Seinfeld, when discussing Tolstoy
You can make the same argument about the ASMs the Russians would have been firing from the Tu-22s. The ships all had chaff and jamming capabilities, and many had SAMs and CIWS. That is irrelevant. The missiles all worked - not as well as the manufacturers suggested, but they did. The AIM-54 was quite sufficient to hit a target as large and unmaneuverable as the Backfire or Badger. The AS-4 and AS-6 were perfectly capable of killing NATO shipping, naval or otherwise.
The AIM-54 was retired because it was felt it wasn't needed anymore. I think it was a bad decision, but there you go. Also, it was a heavy missile and the other platforms in use now aren't capable of firing it anyway. Moreover, the AIM-120 is a far better AAM anyway, though much shorter ranged.
A good game of Harpoon should cure you of these illusions that the crap didn't work. It did.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
The Su-27 had no capability to reach the ranges required to kill carrier groups. The Backfires and Badgers would have had to go in alone. Same as now.
A cursory reading of Red Storm Rising or a game of Harpoon would cure most people of these illusions.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Are you conscious of passive sonobuoys? You should get familiar with them.
Also, familiar with towed arrays. Active sonar is almost never used.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
People who target and murder children simply for going to school are intolerably evil. Their mere existence is a threat to all humanity.
Well, in a word, one could argue: defense.
Unless the USSR and Europe should've just laid down and let the nazis steam roll right over them. And the US should've just written a mean, nasty letter to Hirohito for blowing up Pearl Harbor. But there'd be no war, right? Note: this doesn't invoke Godwin's law since the topic is actually war related.
I'm not saying all war is justified of course; but sometimes, just sometimes they are, such as the above example.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
That would make an awesome signature.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Very true. But I would guess that if the US gets into a shooting war with Russia P-8's will be dropping active sonobuoys all over the place.
Unless the Sea Wolf and Virginia class attack subs manage to take out every Russian sub right away. Or happen to be in the area and are already tracking them.
ISIS are sensible enough to stop their campaigns at the border of Iran, and Turkey. Taking over some half-collapsed government in Syria and the inept appointed authority of Iraq is hard enough - they aren't dumb enough to start a war they can't win.
True. To be fair they can only win against the US because people really are tired of caring about Iraq and just want to leave. If Mexican cartels were taking over towns in Texas you can bet that the gloves would come off. Invading Iran is as likely to be successful, except in that case there will be fewer smart bombs and more mosque bombs (likely where your higher-ups attend services).
China has disputed territory with japan as well.
Are you freshly arriving from the 1960s?
A bit of change has happened in any place where the asshole CIA spent their time toppling regimes in order to stand up a puppet state. They also don't really do that anymore, as it turns out to just piss people off and cause bigger issues down the road.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
They can hit any target in 30 minutes or less.
How about drone pizza delivery world wide!
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
I suspect that we'll be using limited numbers of active buoys to corral and guide sub traffic to the wolves.
There is zero chance that we'll take out even a significant fraction of the enemy boats right away. I have more respect for the Russians than that.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I'm curious: did anyone ever notice how Chile is a modern, safe country while the rest of South America is stereotypical? What happened in Chile that was different?
More importantly, what do Chileans think? Would they rather have followed the tide into far-left government and shared the fate of the rest of the continent? Or is the attitude, "Well, Pinochet was bad, but the alternative was much, much worse." Hmmm....food for thought. On second thought don't think - let's just uncritically parrot what we read somewhere, because it MUST be right.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
There is zero chance that we'll take out even a significant fraction of the enemy boats right away. I have more respect for the Russians than that.
Agreed. Though I still reminisce about the times prior to John Walker when we had an attack sub trailing almost every Soviet sub.
We've long touted M.A.D. (and nuclear weapons as a result) as the invention of peace-ensuring weapons. Can't launch a nuke without being guaranteed that someone else will nuke you a few moments later, so you never launch yours.
But thirty minutes is shorter than the administrative effort for a launch-back. That's a big huge problem.
Ready the dead-man switches.
Bay of Pigs was a badly planned operation. It should have been placed in the DoD's hands. They underestimate or ignored the popular support Castro held while hinging the success on an uprising by Cubans on the island. Another significant factor in the failure of Bay of Pigs was the state department's insistence that no American personnel or ships be used in the operation so as to avoid linking the US to it, which was hilariously shortsighted as anyone with a brain would have known it was instigated by the US. Thus why it should have been in DoD hands.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
not at launch. the idea is to knock them out at pad or during initial launch.
>> Because we're all bastards.
Fixed that for you.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
US ASW capability is pretty damn awesome.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
What are the things that you were thinking of? No popular modern ISA, OS, or programming language that I can think of originates with defence R&D.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Submarines solved that problem a long time ago.
And Russia.
Sure, the US doesn't annex new territory. It just fucks up sovereign governments (democratic or otherwise, by subterfuge or invasion) and sets up puppets. Or bails entirely if the whole thing goes south. Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, half of South and Central America, a good part of Africa.
Unless you're British, you've got that backwards. You guys were the colony.
>
tl;dr - don't dis pre-1914 tech. Without it, we'd all be sitting in caves drawing crappy pictures on the walls for entertainment.
Hey! I'll admit using my hand for a stencil was kinda lame, but that mammoth hunt painting was a lot of hard work!
Hypersonic weapons, rail guns, tanks, naval vessels, drones ... all are expensive relics of another century. If the goal is to kill, there are better, cheaper ways for which there is no current defence.
Chemicals and bio weapons are so cheap, so easy to develop and distribute to large and small populations that any money spent on stupid hardware is a ridiculous waste. Any college student (much less an angry mob or small nation) with some talent could wipe out a large population right now in 2015.
Those with the tech, money and talent should be thinking seriously about how to defend against these weapons. This is a new century- wake up!
...omphaloskepsis often...
The cat is already out of the bag. Satellite imagery of a whole ocean pretty much says where a carrier battle group is.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Hmmm.... Whirlwind, EDSAC, ENIAC, early Zuse machines, Colossus..... and various other defense-funded computing projects that are responsible for the evolution into the technologies you describe were defense projects.
And most of IBM's R&D budget came from military contracts.
Without the defense R&D you wouldn't have an ISA, OS or programming language. BTW, COBOL, the first high level language was a defense project.
There's another reason they can win against the US: The US is obliged to avoid civilian casualties. This means they are fighting with one hand tied behind their back.
Hmm, if that's a good justification, can we have the reset of the British Empire back please? Although I guess we'll have to give most of the UK back to Italy eventually, as it was part of the Roman Empire.
Wouldn't the Anglo-Saxon aspect of England make it separate from the Roman Empire? Or did that come later? As for the British empire, that would include beauties like the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. I'm guessing you wouldn't want India this time ;->
Also, if we go back to history, who claims good old Iran? Macedonia (Alexander)? Saudi Arabia/Iraq (Caliphs Umar/Ali)? Afghanistan (the Ghaznavids)? Turkmenistan (the Khwarezmids)? Iraq/Turkey (the Seljuks)? Mongolia (the Ilkhanate)? Tajikistan (the Samanids/Timurides)? That poor country, ever since Islam, has been ruled by just about everybody around them, despite being a distinct nation.
Of course, Russia would have a real fun time. Its entire Black Sea coast, not just Crimea, would go to Turkey, courtesy the Crimean Taters. Much of Siberia would go to the Mongols, and areas like Tatarstan could either be independent, or go to Kazakhstan. Wonder how Vlad Putin would like it, if the argument of his Chinese comrades is carried on to its logical conclusions?
It BOOMS since WWII but that's all it does... It just booms the air with lots of hype. This thing is like the Philosophical Rock of the good Middle Ages. The difference is that, from the early start, someone tries to tell you how hard, heavy and look-alike the rock is.
Which means all these quests are a total failure. For one simple reason - Speed vs. Maneuverability. You can't have both in one basket. Either you sacrifice one for the sake of the other or you get nothing (eeeee, not so straight. You may get something you believe it works but usually it becomes bloody expensive).
Hypersonics are very peculiar on this cost. It's mega-speed, so it means you have near-zero maneuverability. Worse, even miserable deviations to a planned trajectory may be deadly to your mega-cannonball. X-15 and the Shuttle have magnificent examples of such cases, down from the drawing board and up to, somehow, Columbia's tragedy. They all show that hypersonics is not a place to play with fire. Because it's fire all over. Everything burns, even the best alloys and composites we created for this task. And a small deviation of parameters/environment and you are dealling with Sun temperatures in a place you may have not taken into account. In such cases, the result can be nothing but catastrophic.
This does not mean there is nothing to do in hypersonics. Well, nuclear heads and space systems fly on it! So there is something to do there. Maybe even a hypersonic rocket could have a role, if we count all caveats of the field. However, most hypersonic research is linked to the idea of creating a "TOP GUN" system, with Buck Rogers at the helm and even less brainy politicians and generals feeding the whole thing with mega-budgets and napoleonic dreams on World Peace.
To end, let me note that this whole story has a historical scent of sinister. The first idea of an hypersonic mega-weapon was first studied in The Third Reich! Its name - Silbervogel. It was a madness like many things nazis did then but it is not just a crazy idea "floating in the air". In fact, the nazis tried some follow-ups and one of those was pushed by von Braun's boss - general Walter Dornberger. Later, after getting a solid feet in the US, Dornberger will lobby several times for hypersonic mega-weapons. In the end he became the father, forefather and grandfather of the BOMI, X-15, X-20 Dyna-Soar and Space Shuttle.
If you are in a surface ship, chances are the sub probably already knows where YOU are. All Active Sonar would do is let him know that you know where HE is.
Active sonar is really rough on marine life and such though.
Last I checked, guns and cannons were still devastatingly effective when air-to-air missiles aren't an option. And those bombers would be significantly less maneuverable than an F18 or F14. Especially with a full bomb load. And while Mach 1.8 is REALLY fast..... Mach 2.5 is faster.
There's a reason planes are still equipped with them besides strafing soft targets. We found out pretty quick in 'nam that relying solely on Air-to-Air missiles is suicidal.
You give tactical nukes too much credit. A hydrogen bomb maybe but a suitcase nuke would probably take out 1 carrier and give folks on a couple others radiation poisoning. And then the homeland of whoever delivered the suitcase would be a glass parking lot with glowing wildlife.
Disrupt, yes. Piss off, definitely. Kill quite a few people, yeah. Destroy..... no.
If you're a submarine, then telling everyone where you are is a problem. If you're an aircraft carrier with escort fleet, there's a good bet everyone knows where you are already. Those things aren't exactly silent. Or invisible to satellite.
In a war where carriers are likely to actually be attacked, there won't be any satellites, likely on any side.
The cat is already out of the bag. Satellite imagery of a whole ocean pretty much says where a carrier battle group is.
If you're at the point where carriers are actually at risk of getting shot at, the enemy won't have any satellites. They barely maneuver at all and are extremely vulnerable to missiles. Maybe if you have some stealth satellites they might escape the carnage, but they'll be limited to passive detection, and I'm not sure how effective that is at locating a surface fleet (as opposed to radar).
Last I checked, guns and cannons were still devastatingly effective when air-to-air missiles aren't an option. And those bombers would be significantly less maneuverable than an F18 or F14. Especially with a full bomb load. And while Mach 1.8 is REALLY fast..... Mach 2.5 is faster.
There's a reason planes are still equipped with them besides strafing soft targets. We found out pretty quick in 'nam that relying solely on Air-to-Air missiles is suicidal.
By the time you'd get close enough to shoot down a Tu22 with guns it would have already fired its missiles and turned around. By the time you detect them they're not that far off from being able to locate the fleet and fire, so you need an interceptor that can fire from 100 miles away.
Also, when the bombers come in they'll be scattered. Even if you close to range on one before it fires its missiles you're now miles away from the next closest bomber. When you're firing active radar missiles from 100 miles away you can have many targets illuminated with your radar at once, and engage them simultaneously.
I'll be surprised if there ever is another gun kill with a modern air superiority fighter. As always we keep fighting the last war - in this case Vietnam. There is no question that the missiles of the 60s weren't up to the job of replacing guns entirely (though to some extent this was also the result of RoE).
I think the next step will be drones carrying missiles - they will themselves be expendable to some degree but they'll basically be aerial SAM sites. Heck, part of me wonders if the next-gen air superiority aircraft is a 747 with a really great radar and a boatload of long-range missiles (think 150 miles). Either that or lasers and such. When the weapons travel at the speed of light and are on turrets with 360deg coverage, you don't need to play turning games.
Our fleet is far from defenseless against long range threats. The US Navy has some absolutely BADASS surface-to-air and surface-to-surface long range capabilities.
Obvious flaw in the argument is the:
1. Size of the target.
2. Mobility of the target.
It's much easier to jam and/or dodge a missile off a medium sized supersonic aircraft it's attempting to intercept from above and front than a huge aircraft carrier that has no maneuverability to speak of.
It had the single largest internal fuel capacity of all fighters in its generation and capability to carry external drop tanks. It was designed to cover them within range where interception had a noticeable chance of success as it was passing potential NATO held landmass with land based interceptor aircraft.
Strike group's own interceptors have no real chance of fighting them in the first place because of aforementioned constraints.
The problem is that even the undisputed kings of surface to air interception, soviets, pretty much admitted that it was hopeless. NATO speciality was air to air interception, and they pretty much admitted the same thing when they retired AIM-54. Anti ship missile interception against a credible enemy is a futile task.
Navy isn't naive here either, and most Navy specialists readily concede the point. Their counter argument is that if US ever gets in a shooting war against a credible enemy, this will be irrelevant because any such enemy is a MAD club member.
Yeah, they would like to remind you how they were killed by some tribal faction trying to make the U.S. look bad.
Seriously, that whole region is a mess of different factions who all want to fuck each other up and take over. The U.S. just upset the current top dog when they went in in 2001, and now are copping the blame for what's been happening since the Jews ran away from Pharaoh.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
I'm curious: did anyone ever notice how Iran is a modern, safe country? Or did anyone ever give Chileans credit for ousting the American puppet, who was still facing war crimes charges at the time of his death...a man who looted the Chilean treasury in the time-honoured tradition of dictators everywhere?
Hmmm....food for thought. On second thought, don't think - let's just uncritically parrot what we read somewhere, because it MUST be right.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Even better: http://slashdot.org/~HughPicke...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Our fleet is far from defenseless against long range threats. The US Navy has some absolutely BADASS surface-to-air and surface-to-surface long range capabilities.
Maybe, but your original statement was "Last I checked, guns and cannons were still devastatingly effective when air-to-air missiles aren't an option." The fact that the US has great SAM systems doesn't make guns more effective for A2A. My only point was that guns weren't really effective for intercepting a large number of bombers - shooting down a bomber after it has already fired its missiles is not terribly useful (sure, better than not shooting it down, but you're still down a carrier).
What I'm saying is a combination of:
- long range SAM
- extremely long range detection through drones, radar and satellites
- interceptors with half decent air-to-air missiles and cannons with a pretty hefty range
- anti-aircraft/missile defense on ships
- Absolutely unreal target tracking capabilities
They all still provide pretty damn good defensive capabilities. Far from obsolete. Some of the tech could use some modernizing but most of it is good gear. Other than bombing already backward people into the stone age we haven't had much use for it as of late.
At the end of the day, if we were to go to war with Russia (or China)..... both countries would be fighting with sopwith camels and whatever rifles could be scraped up by the time the conflict was over with as economic resources evaporated and both countries' production capabilities are bombed out of existence.
Since the Jews ran away from the Pharaoh? Make that 'since the Islamized Arabs overran the entire region after Mohammed's death
But the democratically elected Chilean government, while bringing Pinochet to justice, didn't make it a point to reverse his economic policies, no matter what they did to overhaul his human rights regime. So there were things that Pinochet did right economically that were so good for Chile that his replacement regime decided to continue them. Had it been Allende's regime, $DEITY knows whether Chile would have been another Cuba today.
And Iran is safe & modern? Safe only if one is a supporter of Iran remaining an Islamic republic. In fact, Iran is one of the few countries where gays are dropped from tall buildings if exposed - that's why Ahmadinejad could boldly claim that there are no gays in Iran. We have Slashdotters demanding gay marriage in the US, calling for a boycott of Russia over their treatment of gays, while being totally oblivious of what is done to gays in places like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Gaza, Lebanon (in Hizbullah controlled places) and other Islamic paradises.
Last 1000 years? That would be going back to appx 1000AD. At that time, China was hardly an empire, and in between then & now, it had been part of various Mongol empires. Would hardly have had territorial disputes with countries like Philippines, Malaysia & Japan.
China vs India - that dispute only started after the Chinese conquest of Tibet - itself something that's a violation of international law. Had Tibet been independent, the areas that China disputes w/ India would be a matter of debate b/w governments in Delhi and Lhasa, not Delhi and Beijing.
Why shouldn't the current Chinese government consider reintegration of a lost part of its country to be in it's national interests?
As Raven64 pointed out above, why would other countries, say Britain, be unjustified in claiming territories that were once part of their empire? Using the Chinese logic, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and a whole bunch of other countries ought to wind up their governments and proclaim Queen Elizabeth the empress of all their territories. Russia is trying to devour Ukraine, and would no doubt love to reclaim everything that was in the ex Soviet Union, if not the Warsaw Pact: however, using that same logic, Russia should be a territory of Mongolia, given that the latter once controlled large parts of Russia, including Moscow. Oh, and Iran, that darling of both the Russians and Chinese - who should own them? Maybe carve them up b/w Iraq, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan? It'll be fun seeing the reactions of China's friends when they're told what their status should be if Beijing's arguments are applied uniformly across countries. In fact, China too should be abolished and made a part of Mongolia, and Tibet, which wasn't a part of the Mongol empire, can get its independence.
And poverty
You don't need great weapons. Just Drop A "Heat bomb" In Antarctic Ice Sheet. You'll Drown The World.
Casteism
Says who & in what context? m.shenhav "guessed" that hypersonic weapons were something new that could destabilise MAD. Now you're arguing (for ? / against ?) in an incomplete & incomprehensible statement.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
There is an opinion that Ukraine was a ticking time bomb since Ukrainian "independence" because of the black sea fleet, sevastopol base has been crucial to russian armed forces doctrine. Something had to happen there before 2017 anyhow. http://news.kievukraine.info/2...
The US is more subtle. They try to appear as you say, however their armies are simply enforcing a propaganada machine. Rather than annexing, they are policing and manipulating. I don't see the difference. The actions in Iraq had more to do with oil and Israel than the US directly, and when you look at it from that perspective they were very successful and have allowed territory to be annexed by allies. Just because the USA is better at hiding their bodies doesn't mean they are innocent.
What does military subordination have to do with religious persecution?
If the 'Iraqi people' - read here the Shiites, who control the 'democratic' government by virtue of being 60% of the population - were genuinely thankful to the US, they'd have become a pro-US country, like Israel. They'd not have started a fresh round of religious persecution. Instead, however, they started behaving just like their Iranian neighbor.
What Arab empire?
A.k.a. the Arab League - the group of countries were Arabs are a majority, although by no means the entire population, and which stretches from Mauritania to Iraq. And Comoros to Syria.
Because it makes sense not talking to the de facto leaders of half of your country after the US failed to win the impossible battle against them?
The US won the battle against them in 2001 by December - the Taliban had lost even Kandahar. Hamid Karzai owes not just his power, but his life to the US: otherwise, like Abdul Haq, he too would have been captured & lynched by the Taliban.
Instead, he has no memories of that, but rather, is pursuing a policy of making the Taliban a part of his government. Which defeats the original US purpose of ousting them: if the US was okay w/ the Taliban being a part of a regime, why did it install you (Karzai) as the leader of the government?
My original point above refuted the allegation that the US has puppet regimes in either Afghanistan or Iraq. Whether the policies that these regimes in Kabul or Baghdad are following make sense or not is another issue. In the former, the party that it ousted is slowly creeping back to power, even while Mullah Omar still has the $25M on his head. In the latter, the US ousted a regime and replaced it w/ one friendly to its major enemy in the region - Iran. Some puppets!!!
I'm actually supportive of the Russian claims on Crimea - not just due to the Black Sea Fleet, but also the fact that Crimea's population is mainly Russian, and that the transfer of Crimea from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR by Khrushchev was by diktat, rather than any democratic expression by the people of Crimea.
It's a different story though in Donbass, or the entire Ukrainian coast that Russia seems to want.