Can you stop many hypersonic missiles. There's a reason strikes are weaponeer in salvos sizes with probability of kill designed to penetrate defense.
Can You Stop a Hypersonic Missile?
81–90 of 94 posts
Re: Can You Stop a Hypersonic Missile?
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Detecting hypersonics is relatively easy because they are the opposite of stealthy. Even most glide vehicles have an initial ballistic trajectory that exposes it to many sensors at distance. The US field-tested a number of short range hypersonics since the 1990s that don't have a ballistic trajectory but those were all canceled. Hypersonics have two related technical challenges. They are not maneuverable, at least no…
In TFA, only the missiles with terminal guidance are discussed, of which three models are currently known, one in each of USA, Russia and China, none of which has been deployed yet.
There is no indication that any of these systems have precision terminal guidance in the normal sense of the term, nor evidence that Russia or China have solved the engineering problems related to it.
The US has deployed hypersonic missiles with precision terminal guidance, though not strike weapons, for almost 20 years in more limited domains. However, given the longstanding US doctrine to not deploy a hypersonic attack weapon without precision terminal guidance, and the demonstrated engineering capability in the domain, it is reasonable to assume that Dark Eagle has this capability. Any information about how the terminal guidance works will be closely guarded; it has no obvious engineering solution and it took the US several decades to figure it out.
A bunch of things in that article are incorrect or misleading. For example, the kill chain latency model isn't correct in several respects. It looks like an AI mashup of popular internet slop.
Re: Can You Stop a Hypersonic Missile?
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also don't understand this. After having written something I never felt a need to have it reformulated by anything. What would even be the prompt for that?
I think it's easy for native speakers to say. But as English is not my mother tongue, I find it safer to run it through a checker and nowadays, LLMs. So maybe no need to be so harsh about it
Or us dyslexics, I don't mind having the robot check and rephrase my work.
Re: Can You Stop a Hypersonic Missile?
#84Lasers can stop a hypersonic missile, but the challenge is getting a beam on the target through the atmosphere. Some of the old SDI tests solved the problem by flying the laser above most of the atmosphere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1
What is the math on how much additional heat a laser would deliver to a warhead which is presumably designed with some kind of ablative shielding that is pushing through air compressed into a plasma? It seems like the damage from a laser pointed from miles away through atmosphere wouldn't be enough to change anything.
A practical laser is unlikely to cut through ablative shielding. There are a couple of caveats to this though.
First, asymmetric ablation can destroy hypersonic vehicles extremely quickly. It is a major cause of failure in hypersonic vehicles even when no one is shooting lasers at it. A laser just needs to induce the ablation asymmetry; the physics of hypersonic vehicles will do the rest of the work.
Second, precision terminal guidance systems can't function behind ablative shielding. The terminal guidance system has no protection from high-power lasers.
Re: Can You Stop a Hypersonic Missile?
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on what you're being attacked by. If it's just regular warheads, a nuclear interceptor is wildly inappropriate especially if the intercept happens over someone else's airspace.
Modern thermonuclear weapons don’t really have fallout.
That's better but people typically won't appreciate a thermonuclear explosion overhead in order to take out a missile armed with a few hundred kilos of explosives. That is doubly the case if the nuke is from a neighboring country intercepting a missile targeting them.
Re: Can You Stop a Hypersonic Missile?
#86This is an exhausting and dispiriting article to try to read because of its short, choppy, clearly AI-generated sentences. The topic is interesting, but whoever caused it to be penned didn’t seem to care enough to make it appealing to read.
Curious which parts specifically felt that way for you? I spent over a week on this, and yes ofc, I used LLMs to help reformulate some sections, but "didn't seem to care enough to make it appealing to read" isn't it. Happy to look at the spots that felt choppy if you can point them out.
> The wallet was supposed to be the constraint. It turns out, as we will see, that the wallet is the constraint after all.
I can't tell if you made a mistake and meant the wallet isn't the constraint. These short burst sentences are really hard to read. Write "As we'll see, the constraint is x.". There's no need to split that, a single sentence conveys the whole point.
The article is full of similar wording, and that's why it feels choppy to read.
> The rest of this essay is about why that is harder than the press understands. And about a second problem hiding underneath it
I'd describe this as chain of thought writing. It's fine in casual conversation, with the words just tumbling out of our mouths, but it doesn't work in writing or speeches. There are so many ways the two concepts expressed there could be worded, combined or separated. "The press has an unfortunate tendency to use hyperbole and simple descriptions, but even with those stripped away there are deeper misconceptions..."
It's interesting that folks have honed in on AI as the problem. I'm my view the issue is that you haven't decided on your writing style, and as a non native speaker, you're unable to write a simple phrase and get AI to embellish it. Writing simple phrases is surprisingly difficult. Try making everything concise, with no repitition, and then adding style and flowery language afterwards.
Edit: sorry I may have read another person's comment about being a non native speaker. Writing concisely is something we can all work on.
Re: Can You Stop a Hypersonic Missile?
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
In TFA, only the missiles with terminal guidance are discussed, of which three models are currently known, one in each of USA, Russia and China, none of which has been deployed yet.
There is no indication that any of these systems have precision terminal guidance in the normal sense of the term, nor evidence that Russia or China have solved the engineering problems related to it. The US has deployed hypersonic missiles with precision terminal guidance, though not strike weapons, for almost 20 years in more limited domains. However, given the longstanding US doctrine to not deploy a hypersonic at…
>nor evidence that Russia or China have solved the engineering problems related to it.
Absence of evidence, especially when dealing with China, is not evidence of absence.
I would rather our planners take China having that nut cracked as a base operational assumption at this point.
Re: Can You Stop a Hypersonic Missile?
#88> Ground radar is line-of-sight. The Earth is round. Anything below the horizon is invisible. That's not true. Ground based radar can see over the horizon (hence the term Over-the-horizon radar) by taking advantage of the refractive index of air, allowing the radar waves to essentially curve along, as well as by bouncing radar waves off the ionosphere. Given that this is the foundation of TFA's argument, it does not…
I cut this on purpose due to the poor resolution other commenters have mentioned already.
You shouldn't have because the poor resolution is irrelevant and OTH radar is widely used in BMD systems.
Re: Can You Stop a Hypersonic Missile?
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also don't understand this. After having written something I never felt a need to have it reformulated by anything. What would even be the prompt for that?
I think it's easy for native speakers to say. But as English is not my mother tongue, I find it safer to run it through a checker and nowadays, LLMs. So maybe no need to be so harsh about it
I understand that motive. On the other hand, LLM smell makes the text untrustworthy. I have detected it as well, and I immediately started to wonder about whether I am reading a reasonable expert analysis or just an AI hallucination. I still don't know.
I recommend prompting the LLM to mostly fix glaring grammatical and stylistic mistakes, not to rewrite the entire thing into a LinkedIn post style text.
Re: Can You Stop a Hypersonic Missile?
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aren't all hypersonic missiles based on re-entry vehicles? The altitudes they operate at are basically 'all of the above'. If someone can launch a low altitude missile that can sustain Mach 5+, I'm not sure what you are going to do against it. So what are the hypersonic low altitude capabilities for maneuvers for these platforms? I don't deny the maneuver but I have this hard time believe someone just throws out some…
TFA does not discuss the missiles that only reach a hypersonic speed, which is true for any ballistic missile, because such missiles have existed for a very long time. It discusses the hypersonic missiles that are maneuverable, which for now have not been deployed in combat yet, by any of the 3 countries known to possess such missiles.
So what are the hypersonic low altitude capabilities for maneuvers of them missiles? I keep seeing it claimed but I don't see any numbers. Just hypersonic, maneuvering and glide vehicles doesn't really say much. That's the Space Shuttle. I've yet to hear anyone claim the space shuttle is a 21st century weapon.