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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?"
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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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."
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)
"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.
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.
We've been very lucky over the last few hundred years as to who's been running the show.
The British Empire, while not perfect, was much better than the alternative. Compare modern ex-British colonies which built infrastructure to the ex-Spanish colonies which just took the natives gold, for example. She (eventually) outlawed and effectively prevented slavery due to the enormous navy. The empire was a massive help in defeating the Nazis ( and before them the dictator Napoleon ).
America, again not perfect, but much rather that than some of the alternatives we've had ( Nazi Germany, Napoleon, USSR, the Ottomans, etc ).
Power will shift eventually, it always does, but we can hope America is replaced by somebody equally or more benevolent.
* This isn't to excuse the actions of either the British Empire, or anything the Americans have done, but they have certainly been a force for good in the grand scheme of things.
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.
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.
Effective except for any silos you miss through technical or intelligence failure. And any aircraft that are already up. And the submarines.
You'd still be getting a barrel of instant sunshine in return.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
I'm stockpiling now, we can not allow a sticks and stones gap.
"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!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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In some ways he was better. There was a lot more social mobility in Napoleon's empire than in much of the rest of Europe at the time. The main problem was that he was a great general but a terrible politician. He had no idea how to run a country without a war and he didn't have an economy that could sustain perpetual war. On the other hand, he did abolish the metric time system that the French Revolution introduced...
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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.
He also re legalized slavery, which most boney cheerleaders like to gloss over...
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
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.
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.
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.
>> Because we're all bastards.
Fixed that for you.
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.
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Submarines solved that problem a long time ago.
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?