131–140 of 171 posts
Given that the bomber gap, missile gap and the cruiser gap was all shown to be fictional, I do wonder if the perceived hypersonic gap is real.
That's a very reasonable question, though in cases like these it seems prudent to err on the side of being too paranoid rather than the opposite.
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I generally find that the US lags in weapons technology whose biggest utility lies in countering American superweapons - carriers and stealth fighters. I think it's quite understandable why this is the case - imagine spending hundreds of billions on carrier procurement, and simultaneously developing a weapon that more or less renders them obsolete. The situation has changed in that there's news that the Russians and…
The new Chinese carrier needs a takeoff ramp and isn't even nuclear powered. Paper tiger.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Shand... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Fujia...
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I generally find that the US lags in weapons technology whose biggest utility lies in countering American superweapons - carriers and stealth fighters. I think it's quite understandable why this is the case - imagine spending hundreds of billions on carrier procurement, and simultaneously developing a weapon that more or less renders them obsolete. The situation has changed in that there's news that the Russians and…
Why would the someone develop anti-stealth fighter weapons when their opponents aren't flying stealth fighters? Same with carriers. Nobody else has a serious carrier fleet anymore.
Given that the bomber gap, missile gap and the cruiser gap was all shown to be fictional, I do wonder if the perceived hypersonic gap is real.
The US has a lot of experience designing hypersonic missiles -- I remember when they were testing various material configurations in hypersonic guided missiles 30 years ago. Some of those platforms exist as operational systems today. Design of hypersonic missiles is largely limited by material physics and configurations thereof. The US ability to fabricate unique exotic materials allows them to search a much larger p…
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The new Chinese carrier needs a takeoff ramp and isn't even nuclear powered. Paper tiger.
Perhaps because China is focused on defensive capabilities, not offensive?
Almost every weapon or weapon system can be described as defensive or offensive, depending on the motives of the person discussing said systems.
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Why does it matter what order the strikes are in? Unless the first strike somehow manages to wipe out the ability to retaliate, the order just determines how we queue up for the reaper (I guess first is best, there'd be a billions long line).
> Why does it matter what order the strikes are in? If you know where the other nation's leader is, first strike allows you a better chance at eliminating them. It's a marginal benefit. And Russia is more vulnerable to it. (Putin disappearing could create a violent scramble for power that diminishes its military's retaliatory capabilities in a way that taking out the President and say half the Cabinet would not.)
edit: if western intelligence had managed to cultivate the number of traitors and the amount of influence that it would take to quickly replace the Russian system, it would already have assassinated Putin. An assassination of Putin right now would unite the Russian public in its hatred for the US, not fragment it. The goal is to make the Russian public miserable enough that the US can get into this position.
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Mach 10 is almost too fast to be hypersonic! Hypersonic is the range around Mach 5-8. There are various types of ballistic missiles that go faster than this (and have been doing for decades) but since they are old they aren't as sexy as "hypersonic missiles".
The new thing is trying to go hypersonic in the atmosphere for more than a couple minutes so you can use it for lift. But either there's too much heat or not enough lift.
The technology of a HGV and a maneuverable re-entry vehicle are essentially the same. The main reason for talking about "hypersonics" as a separate category today is to emphasize flight profiles that would not be interpreted as nuclear strikes.
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The US having our own hypersonic missiles is not actually a defense against this scenario you have outlined?
No, hypersonics would be too fast and have too low of a flight profile for our early warning systems to work. Our second strike facilities would be destroyed before they could launch a counter-attack. Game theory-wise, the winner would be whoever struck first, since they would get to use their full arsenal. Retaliation could only be done reliably with submarines. That's what frightens me the most about hypersonic dev…
I don't think so.
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"Technically", "hypersonic" means "scary because it's hard to intercept" and "NATO is behind Russia and China on this". Elementary military marketing.
Yes, you understood the assignment. The public knows about US and NATO weapons what the US and NATO wants the public to know. Individuals in a position to know the truth, who violate the narrative, are dealt with harshly. Case in point: The public had relatively little knowledge of the battlefield performance of current gen ATGM's prior to Russia's recent offensive in Ukraine. This is in spite of the fact "current ge…
And the threat posed by ATGMs to improperly deployed tanks has been well understood since the 73 War where Israel first faced the Sagger ATGM.
Also, ATGMs didn't play a big role in either Iraq or Afghanistan, especially against armored vehicles. In Afghanistan the Javelin was used primarily as a bunker buster or knocking on cave doors. In Iraq, both TOW and Javelin were used for breaking up fortifications. Hellfire was used in the abortive Apache raid that showed how useless helicopter gunships were in a contested environment with lots of AAA.
This idea that there's a secret arsenal with staff and personal briefed on a need to know basis is just conspiracy theory. Sure, there are weapons in development that are secret, and specific capabilities are secret, but there's very few silver bullets hiding out in Tonopah or White Sands.
Too bad there’s nowhere to import nazi scientists from this time :/
1) Get out of Poland, now.
2) Get out of anywhere to the east of Poland.
3) Get to American-controlled Germany. Register with the Americans, and say you were a low level bureaucrat. You will be immediately released, possibly with a stipend, and rearrested a couple of years later. Go to trial, be sentenced to life or death. You will be released before 1954. There will be a network of people you killed children with to help you get back on your feet, leaders of government and industry. Your fate after this relies on how much your peers respected your ability to kill. If you were good at it, and never complained, the sky is the limit.