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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (325415)	3/8/2025 3:25:17 AM
From: i-node	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 358094

>> We have what we've always had, MAD. Yes, but we have nothing more than computer models to tell us how effective it would be as a defense mechanism in the case of the high-end hypersonics. It would be far more effective to be able to take these out with something along the lines of a radically updated missile defense, yet the Avangard (a hypersonic boost-glide vehicle, launched atop an ICBM, capable of Mach 20+ (over 24,000 km/h or 15,000 mph) with a range exceeding 6,000 kilometers (3,728 miles)) presents obstacles we really are hard-pressed to accommodate. I don't believe anyone is that confident that Arrow or THAAD can take these out. The point being that the closer you can get to Russia the more likely you will be able to defend against these strikes from newer missile types from Russia. Even then there are no guarantees. I have never felt good about MAD as a deterrent, yet it has had thus far. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.

To: bentway who wrote (325415)	3/8/2025 9:04:13 AM
From: combjelly	1 Recommendation Recommended By CentralParkRanger Respond to of 358094

Of course we have hypersonic missiles. Every ICBM is hypersonic. IRBMs, too. Plus, we were flying hypersonic, manned atmospheric craft in the 1950s. Remember the X-15? We were doing boost-glide stuff like Russia and China back in the 1980s. True, there have been no high profile fielded projects by the US. Which isn't a huge surprise, we really don't have a pressing need to kill carriers. And if we do, we have a very different approach using low observable weapon systems. Now our public use case for hypersonics is the kind of stuff that Noodles is all lathered about. Which is to precisely target something hardened anywhere on the face of the globe in under half an hour that isn't an ICBM. In other words, air-breathing hypersonics. We can't do that, but neither can anyone else. Now we have been doing some promising work with the Australians, which I suppose has already been shut down because Aussies, and every once in a while China has an excited press release, but progress is slow. This is the realm of scramjets, rotating detonation engines and such. Everything else is just a rocket, and those have been quantified risks for going on a century and not something new, scary and we need to panic and conquer large swaths of the globe... Which, come to think of it, is a very Russian outlook.