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Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

airforcemag.com

111–120 of 209 posts

Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if they decide they want to gobble up Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan, Australia, etc? Should we just sit back and say "it's not us, so this is fine?"

Does Taiwan have nukes? EDIT: google thinks no.

Hasn't the rumor always been that they got a nuke from Israel or South Africa?

Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, you see a headline every so often alleging this but they're pretty far off the mark. CSGs are defended by the entire system operating in layers. During conflict conditions they'll have airborne early warning radar flying to see threats coming a long way out. There's usually at least 4 AEGIS equipped ships. The carrier air wing will be doing patrols and intercepting threats at great distance. The carrier itself wi…

Has the belief that these platforms are survivable ever been tested in a meaningful scenario (ie, a conflict between two carrier-group-capable adversaries)? I get that the Navy does a lot of stuff to mitigate this threat, but it's a hell of a threat to mitigate.

No. But it hasn’t been looking good for carriers in war games/modeling exercises. China’s ASBMs might work today against a CSG or they might not (they need good targeting and maybe ABM systems can handle); but I’d analogize the US carriers of today to the 68030 and China’s ASBMs to the 386, where 68030 is probably a better chip but one side has a clear route to a Pentium, the other doesn’t, and economies of scale are in play, too.

Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#113
post #94

would a MARV-tipped ICBM be able to reach a target faster than flying straight at it at Mach 5? I was looking for MARV reentry velocities, couldn't find any numbers. A regular ballistic missile hits mach 20+ on reentry but I don't know if it maintains that speed all the way to the target.

From my understanding, the primary benefit of the Hypersonic Missile over the ICBM is not the speed of payload delivery, but the amount of warning given to the target. An ICBM needs to ascend 100s of kms, thus enabling it to be detected by very far away radar systems. Those same radar systems that would be over the horizon at the lower altitudes within the atmosphere. Launching an ICBM almost immediately announces to the world "I am launching a nuclear warhead", thus enabling countermeasures to be readied, and a retaliatory strike to be launched. The time between this warning and the strike is indeed small (measured in 10s of minutes), but that's much more time than a hypersonic missile gives.

Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#114
post #25

What does hypersonic mean? I thought all missiles were largely supersonic, except for maybe cruise missiles.

Though it means mach 5+ in terms of weapons systems it indicates a capability for a long highly maneuverable period at those speeds. https://www.gao.gov/blog/faster-speed-sound-u.s.-efforts-dev...

It's worth noting that at these speeds a "long" period need only be ~1 hour to reach a target from launch. A flight from Hawaii to Taipei would be 1.3 hours at Mach 5, and 54 minutes at Mach 7.

These weapons represent an ability for both the US and China to conventionally intervene from their mainlands to any location within the Pacific.

Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#115
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, we aren't particularly afraid of hypersonic missiles because nobody even has defenses against conventional ICBMs.

Perhaps hypersonic missiles could play a part in ICBM defense. You need something very fast and maneauverable.

That existed from 1975 to 1976 as:

[/] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile)

Problem was it needed many of these

[\] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safeguard_Program#/media/File:...

for support. (see caption)

Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#116
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time the navy is asked about the survivability of the carrier groups they seem to start talking about the “whole kill-chain” of the enemy weapons. It sounds like they plan to knock out the targeting satelites before they could target them instead of trying to catch the missiles. Or at least thats how I read the tea leaves.

They're not going to target one link. They're going to target the whole kill chain. Satellites, sure, and the satellite ground stations, and the missile launch sites, and the update path from the satellite ground stations to the missile launch sites, and jamming radio reception for the missiles in flight, and optical chaff or some other kind of confusion, and radar chaff, and probably some I haven't thought of.

> They're going to target the whole kill chain. Satellites, sure,

So, their plan in the event of war is to make space inaccessible for all of humanity, by filling it with debris from killed satellites?

Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#117
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a speed regime. Under Mach 1 is subsonic. From Mach 0.9 through 1.2 or so is transsonic. 1.0 and greater is supersonic. Above Mach 5ish is hypersonic. Mach 25 is approximately orbital velocity, but since Mach is actually related to air pressure, it's not a very meaningful comparison except to note that anything moving that fast isn't going to be in-atmosphere for very long.

In subsonic flight, the air behaves as if it's incompressible (like a liquid). In transonic flight, some parts of the airflow are starting to become supersonic, and compressibility starts to become a factor. Something called "wave drag" is important in this regime, as the compression wave is moving along with the aircraft. In supersonic flow, compressibility of the air becomes the main thing and the flow is defined b…

Fun, unrleated fact. Transsonic is very bad for rifle accuracy, as it tends to be somewhat unpredictable. For most rifle calibers this isn't a big deal, because they spend their entire flight time in the supersonic flight regime. But for 22lr, this is an issue because even the fastest 22lr around is going to be subsonic within 100 yards or so for reasons[0]. The result is a shot that’s laser accurate until 100 yards or so, and then suddenly becomes unpredictable beyond that. So "match" 22lr ammo tends to be subsonic even out of the barrel.

0 - The reasons are due to maximum allowable pressures, and barrel rifling. At max pressure for a 40gr bullet you’re going to get maybe Mach 1.1, maybe. If you want to go faster without increasing pressure above spec, the solution is a lighter bullet. But lighter bullets often like different rifling, and virtually all off the shelf 22lr barrels come with 1:16 rifling, unsuitable for extra light bullets. Also, lighter bullet get pushed around by the wind more; you’d often rather compensate for more drop than wind, since drop is more predictable.

Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, you see a headline every so often alleging this but they're pretty far off the mark. CSGs are defended by the entire system operating in layers. During conflict conditions they'll have airborne early warning radar flying to see threats coming a long way out. There's usually at least 4 AEGIS equipped ships. The carrier air wing will be doing patrols and intercepting threats at great distance. The carrier itself wi…

Has the belief that these platforms are survivable ever been tested in a meaningful scenario (ie, a conflict between two carrier-group-capable adversaries)? I get that the Navy does a lot of stuff to mitigate this threat, but it's a hell of a threat to mitigate.

>>>Has the belief that these platforms are survivable ever been tested in a meaningful scenario (ie, a conflict between two carrier-group-capable adversaries)

Not since WW2.....but the US Navy built up a LOT of invaluable experience on damage control practices and ship design based on the pounding our carriers took fighting the Japanese. Our current Ford and Nimitz CVNs are the refined iterations of a design lineage going back to the very durable Essex class. That said, the recent destruction of the Bonhomme Richard amphibious assault ship, which sustained cost-prohibitive damage in port due to a single arsonist, is disturbing.

There are wargames where we lose carriers against China.....and there are wargames where we don't. They're not invulnerable, but they never have been against a true peer anyway. Often it boils down to the CSG Commander not being overly cocky in terms of how he maneuvers his force.

Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is no chance a US carrier could be nuked without a proportional response

The hypersonic missle won't carry nuclear war head. The impact is enough to render a CV lose combat capability. The modern weaponry are delicate machines. A 50s computer might withstand an earthquake. The modern one probably won't survive a drop less than 1 meter.

The US Navy does shock tests, where it detonates large explosives underwater close to its carriers, for exactly this reason. These ships are way more durable than you give them credit for.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/41181/shocking-images-...

Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In subsonic flight, the air behaves as if it's incompressible (like a liquid). In transonic flight, some parts of the airflow are starting to become supersonic, and compressibility starts to become a factor. Something called "wave drag" is important in this regime, as the compression wave is moving along with the aircraft. In supersonic flow, compressibility of the air becomes the main thing and the flow is defined b…

Fun, unrleated fact. Transsonic is very bad for rifle accuracy, as it tends to be somewhat unpredictable. For most rifle calibers this isn't a big deal, because they spend their entire flight time in the supersonic flight regime. But for 22lr, this is an issue because even the fastest 22lr around is going to be subsonic within 100 yards or so for reasons[0]. The result is a shot that’s laser accurate until 100 yards…

What kind of pressures do you have in a barrel?
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