Welcome to the jungle - US super/hypersonic programs

a reply to: Zaphod58

cant find the thread im looking for but it was talking about secure silicon manufacturing and what not in the future

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a reply to: anzha

very cool

it looks like there is something right in front of the impactor maybe it was from some sort of plasma generator

www.flightglobal.com...

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a reply to: anzha

Or just cancel GBSD and put it on the subs. Potential savings close to 100 billion US-$

a reply to: mightmight

Horrible idea.

a reply to: Masisoar

Why do you think the US still needs land based deterrence?

ICBM have not been survivable fo r a long time. They are a outdated relic of the Cold War, built at a time when reentry vehicles were in their infancy and sub based missiles sucked.

Technology has long since evolved.
There's simply nothing you can do with a lad based ICBM than cannot be replicated SLBM. The CEP issue has been irrelveant since the introduction of Trident II in the early 90s. And while the Trident systems has been continuously upgraded and improved, the ICBM field basically stagnated. And with good reason.

Today the only purpose of ICBM fields in a nuclear war is to soak up enemy warheads.
This sounds nice on paper but serves no purpose in the reality of nuclear war. The equation is very simple. Your enemy will only bother with counterforce attacks if he can reserve sufficient warheads for a decisive countervalue strikes.
If your enemy lacks the capability to due that he will ignore the missile fields and to be able to go for the cities instead.

So in practicse this means the US is investing close to 100 billion US-$ for Russia to waste a fraction of it's limited long range nuclear arsenal on the ICBMs, only to lose it's cities anyway in an all out nuclear war. If the Russians would even bother.
China certainly wouldn't, their arsenal simply lacks the depth to do anything but hold it back for the counter value strike

There’s no law of nature demanding a nuclear triad. Just because it may have been neccessary in the past doesn’t mean the US should hold on to it in the future

SLBMs won’t go anywhere. Their precieved invulnerability offers and assured retaliatory capability which is essential for nuclear detterence to function at lower force levels.

Nuclear armed strategic platforms offer capability SLBMs or ICBMs lack. They can be easily recalled in a developing crisis and are the only nuclear weapon system left in the US for tactical nuclear warfare. And frankly, the bombers exist anyway and putting a nuke on a missile is (or rather should be going by their track record) a trivial exercise.

a reply to: mightmight

honestly the video of that missile launch reminded me of a sub launched missile

even physically looked like one....the lock downs are even the same

For every arm of the nuclear triad we have, that's just one more consideration an adversary has to worry about overcoming. And each consideration requires a substantial amount of resources to counter. The whole point of these weapons isn't about "winning", no one wins in nuclear war, even if MAD isn't achieved. It's about deterrence, it always has been.

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a reply to: anzha

I like the name. "Project Mayhem"

a reply to: Masisoar

By that logic you could also argue for a tetrad and deploy space based nukes. In the real world this is just not necessary. Deterrence works perfectly well on a robust dyad of SSBNs and strategic bombers.

a reply to: mightmight

In the world of yesteryear, which no longer exists. We now have a maturing adversary hellbent on denying America every advantage it has.

a reply to: Masisoar

China only has modest nuclear capabilities.
They introduced a SSBN capability and are regenerating their land based capabilities, but there are no indications the want to evolve to anywhere close to Russian or American force levels any time soon.
Of course they'll will increase their arsenal somewhat over time, but they simply don't represent a nuclear threat that would require the US to maintain current deterrence levels.

a reply to: mightmight

You trust China that much? There is no reliable method of verification for what they do and don't have. Their military has been trending towards acquiring dominance over American strategic advantages for quite some time. That's enough reason to implement as many unique means of delivery as possible. Land, Sea, Air, Space - tactical & strategic, it's all on the table. Remember deterrence isn't just about nuclear war, it also mitigates countries from challenging the US (conventionally) on foreign policy as well. China is a full spectrum issue that needs to be dealt with a full spectrum of options.

a reply to: Masisoar

I see China as a more dangerous adversary than the Soviet Union in the long term.
What i don't see is a Chinese effort to advance their nuclear capabilities to a point where they would be able to degrade US nuclear deterrence.
If anything their breathtaking armament program almost excludes their nuclear capabilities. If they wanted to challenge the US in this regard, they'd increasing their arsenal and copying the new Russian doomsday machines. This just isn't happening.
They'll grow their arsenal a bit over the coming decades and will build up a robust SSBN force, but it's highly unlikely we see China deploying thousands of ICBMs to recreate the Cold War threat environment for the US.

If anything they want to beat the US on conventional level and stick to their firm no first use policy. And if the US keeps wasting it's very limited resources on unnecessary programs like GBSD, their is a high chance for them winning this round of the great game.

originally posted by: mightmight
a reply to: Masisoar

I see China as a more dangerous adversary than the Soviet Union in the long term.
What i don't see is a Chinese effort to advance their nuclear capabilities to a point where they would be able to degrade US nuclear deterrence.
If anything their breathtaking armament program almost excludes their nuclear capabilities. If they wanted to challenge the US in this regard, they'd increasing their arsenal and copying the new Russian doomsday machines. This just isn't happening.
They'll grow their arsenal a bit over the coming decades and will build up a robust SSBN force, but it's highly unlikely we see China deploying thousands of ICBMs to recreate the Cold War threat environment for the US.

If anything they want to beat the US on conventional level and stick to their firm no first use policy. And if the US keeps wasting it's very limited resources on unnecessary programs like GBSD, their is a high chance for them winning this round of the great game.

thats assuming these projects arent already 10-20 years old.... i kind of hope someone steps to the US....it would be an interesting and quick show and thats with the US not even going nuclear


what do you think the cutting edge of the US arsenal is?

serious question.


ive seen things that if i were another world leader would scare the pants off me as far as just ONE US asset goes.

no one can beat the US PERIOD, other wise they would try.

a reply to: penroc3

I don't think the things you may have seen would be used in any confrontation save for a prolonged conflict that puts the existence of the US in question.
Simply because i don't think the, say, very cutting edge toys of certain player(s) on the US team is not integrated with the more conventional forces at all.
It would take time for these toys to be made available for regular military operations. Not just a question of command integration but also about readiness and usability in actual high intensity combat operations.

So those toys wouldn't be available in a snap conflagration and in a prolonged but indecisive conflict they revelation would not be warranted.

Real world example, if you remember Neptune Spear, it's quite telling what tidbits came out about the inclusion of stealthy helicopters in the raid. This was a relatively mundane classified asset, but its inclusion had to be pushed from the top of the command chain or it wouldn't have happened. You would think the Tier One operators would be very familiar with the asset and it should have been a relatively straight forward affair, but at least i got the impression it was anything but.

So how do you think that would work with an asset of whatever organisation utilizing world changing tech?

Anyway, this is just may interpretation though and I'm far from certain the cutting edge is as cutting as you like to assume. I don't think your necessarily in the wrong, i just don't, can't and frankly don't want to know.

a reply to: mightmight

firstly i agree with you like 99%

the triangles are not part of the air force or army etc, they are part of a hopefully US run cooperation that figured out something from some of these crashes the pentagon has now coped to.

We KNOW the BT exist and that some very very high performance aircraft exist(yellow light and green lady for example)and thats not even getting into the Phoenix sighting and the cash landrum sighting