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The US And Australia Are Testing Hypersonic Missiles (engadget.com)
schwit1 quotes Engadget:
Both the U.S. and Australia have confirmed that they recently completed a series of mysterious hypersonic missile tests. All the countries will say is that the flights were successful, and that they represented "significant milestones" in testing everything from the design assembly to the control mechanisms. They won't even say which vehicles were used or how quickly they traveled, although past tests have usually relied on Terrier Orion rockets and have reached speeds as high as Mach 8.
The tests are part of the long-running HIFiRE (Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation) program, whose first launch took place way back in 2009. They should help bring hypersonic flight to a "range of applications," according to HIFiRE partner BAE. That could easily include ultra-fast aircraft, but it's widely believed the focus here is on missiles and similar unmanned weapons. A hypersonic missile would fulfill the US military's goal of building a conventional weapon that can strike anywhere within an hour, and it would be virtually impossible to stop using existing missile defenses. In theory, enemy nations wouldn't dare attack if they knew they'd face certain retaliation within minutes.
Originally NASA was involved in the project, which has been ongoing for more than eight years. But it's timeline may have shortened after reports that foreign powers including Russia and China are already building their own hypersonic missiles.
The tests are part of the long-running HIFiRE (Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation) program, whose first launch took place way back in 2009. They should help bring hypersonic flight to a "range of applications," according to HIFiRE partner BAE. That could easily include ultra-fast aircraft, but it's widely believed the focus here is on missiles and similar unmanned weapons. A hypersonic missile would fulfill the US military's goal of building a conventional weapon that can strike anywhere within an hour, and it would be virtually impossible to stop using existing missile defenses. In theory, enemy nations wouldn't dare attack if they knew they'd face certain retaliation within minutes.
Originally NASA was involved in the project, which has been ongoing for more than eight years. But it's timeline may have shortened after reports that foreign powers including Russia and China are already building their own hypersonic missiles.
This is the reason why we can't have nice wars
"[I]t would be virtually impossible to stop using existing missile defenses." I thought I read recently that the U.S. just deployed a new laser weapon that could shoot down missiles.
1. Would this be a defense against hypersonic missiles?
2. Does anybody know if it was developed as a defense against hypersonic missiles?
No enemy "nation" will attack the US. The US armed forces already have enough firepower to do a whack-a-mole job on any "nation" in the world.
The folks to worry about don't have a nation, but wear beards and rags on their heads. The US won't be able to use a s00per-s0nic-giga-Internet-Of-Things-Blockchain rocket against them anyway. Where should the US fire the rocket? Into the country "hosting" them . . . ? If the government even is actively supporting them . . . ? Is it a case of a bunch of Kalashnikov and meth'ed up Koran Kooks bullying a bunch of ignorant primitive peasants into religious submission . . . ? Frankie, says, "pre-teen war-bride sex slaves for all true believers!"
Actually, screw the giga-sonic missile . . . just give me Colonel Kurtz and ten divisions of his men, and "our troubles here would be over very quickly."
Of course, our current Western morals and ideals would never permit us to commit such atrocities.
I've often wondered how Muslims living in the West deal with living in such a modern society: surrounded by Kafir, to fruit of the flesh of the devil. Do they really believe that they can live in tolerance of other folks?
This is the real security concern for the world of the future: not which country has the biggest, fastest missile. When Korea's Jar of Kimchi lobs a missile at Japan or the US, everyone knows how that one will end . . . really ugly. Go to your local airport, and observer the "Islamic Security Tax" paid by all the folks in the world because of the threat of Islamic Terrorism. That is a far bigger threat that will not be solved by any conventional weapons . . . or even an armed conflict.
We need desperately to find a way to live in peace with each other, without resorting to violence. But up until now . . . I have only seen solutions involving violence. Maybe we don't yet want peace enough . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The reason they didn't use a cruise missile on Bin Laden wasn't civilian casualties. They've never been excessively concerned about collateral damage when going after lower level Al Qaeda officials, why start worrying then? Because they wanted the body -- hard physical evidence that the job was done. It could have been called either way.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You could high tech this today with an XB-37 launch and some 'rods from God'. Throwing rocks from the high ground has worked for a long, long time. GPS helps.
We could low tech the problem and toast 'Lil Kim and his barber with a boring old 1 million dollar cruise missile. As usual, the political ramifications of doing so, tend to er, Trump, the straight military application of force.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
While options might in principle be a good thing, how is this particular weapon system anything other than destabilizing? Short hang time, hair-trigger.
We already have hypersonic missiles, they're called ICBMs (US Trident 3) and MRBMs. Launch one, any everybody watching assumes multiple incoming thermonukes. With the new toys, it might just be conventional explosives. That's going to make anyone abandon "launch-on-warning"? Least of all the US!
Consider the current crop of countries the US considers [potential] hot-war enemies: Would hypersonics keep the Russians out of Ukraine, let alone Crimea? The Chinese off the Pacific sandbanks? The NorKs from developing missiles? ISIS out of Raqqa? Iran from developing nukes? Short-fuse helps _none_ of these situations, and it is tough to think of one which it would.
Look, once you got nukes, the purpose of advancing military tech is no longer to attack other super-powers.
Instead, it becomes a combination of two possibilities:
1) Defeat lesser powers, including both non-nuclear nations and terrorists. They can't match our tech, so we do not need to go head to head against them.
2) BANKRUPT your competitor superpowers. The idea is to force other super powers to spend so much on defense that to keep up, that it limits their other options.
We are not trying to shoot down Russia's missiles. Instead we are trying to make it damn expensive for them to match us.
Which is why they are using other means besides their regular army. Ukraine, hacking, etc.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Existing ICBMs are hypersonic on entry. This is being considered something new because it is hypersonic through atmosphere while still under propulsion. That requires a lot more fuel than coasting through space and letting gravity pull you in. This could not hit "anywhere" in minutes because it wouldn't have enough fuel to go through that much atmosphere. It is an advance in short to perhaps medium range missile technology in that it is fast enough to get to a plane or from a submarine to a target before a response can be made.
8.5 km/s? Is that an orbital weapon? ;) Anyway, it used to be the case that information on Russian/Soviet systems ought to be take with a grain of salt. There's quite often a caveat somewhere in it. Especially when you see claims of Mach 10 scramjets allegedly in service in the 1980s USSR when the reality is that Mach 5-6 with a scramjet is hard enough in the 2000s-2010s everywhere else in the world.
Ezekiel 23:20
When I was a kid, I was doing some farm labour in a field besides the Abbotsford airport the day before the airshow begun. The Blue Angels were practicing and decided to use us as strafing practice or such. Wow, jet fighters flying perhaps a hundred feet up at 500 odd miles an hour, so close that one that went by upside down, I'd swear I saw the pilots eyeballs, but they were going so fast that they almost seemed foreshortened and you wouldn't hear them until they were gone. Quite an experience and I sure as hell wouldn't want to be an actual target.
Another time, living in the interior, not too far up a mountain, a small fleet of Apache attack copters went by, I was looking down at them, just the noise would have been pretty demoralizing if they were hunting me, though there it was possible to imagine responding to them as they were slow and broadcast their presence. Lots of supersonic bangs back then too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Can anybody now actually show us this 'hard physical evidence'?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.