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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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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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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.