One problem with these hypersonic endeavors and DOD development in general is there are too few tests (And done too slowly) to iterate. The developers do not get lots of opportunities to learn from real-data, like at SpaceX. Instead, there are low-single-digit numbers of tests with tons of political attention ready to pounce at the smallest (And most common!) failure.
A lot of the success of SpaceX can be attributed to their rapid incremental development model that they established with Falcon 9 and continued with Starship.
But at least with civilian rockets all the competitors have clear success metrics: they all launch with some regularity, and it's obvious if those launches were a success. Lots of weapon systems have one or two tests and then take a decade before they see any action, if at all.
Fore example the Patriot system is operational since 1981, but when first used in combat a decade later its accuracy came under heavy scrutiny, and continues to look suspect on a per-missile basis [1]. But that's one of the weapons systems that actually sees active combat, and sees improvements based on that. Now think of all the systems that are deployed but never used.
It should be noted that the Patriot was being used outside of its original design goal when tasked with shooting down missiles. It was designed to shoot down Soviet interceptors, but had to pivot when the Soviet Union collapsed. Missiles were a stretch goal of the original project, but ended up being its primary mission.
If I were a company in this space, I would try to keep my tests secret for exactly that reason. If I was successful, they would not be available for scrutiny by hacker news.
Public tests are still independently necessary and failing them is still an embarrassment, of course.
I think keeping actual hypersonic flight tests secret is pretty hard. At least in IR they should be very well visible from space.
>DOD development in general is there are too few tests (And done too slowly) to iterate. The developers do not get lots of opportunities to learn from real-data, like at SpaceX
i suppose cost is among the major reasons. The SpaceX had an objective to take the cost down which is synergetic/self-enforcing with the many tests and iterations approach. DOD is opposite - the goal for the contractors is the smallest number of tests done at the highest billed price to DOD as that maximizes the contractor's profit.
In other words, if you aren't actively using a weapon in real war, it probably will fail when you try.
Kind of like the Russian ground forces in Ukraine. They hadn't fought real ground wars in a while.
Not sure what this says about humanity. But it certainly raises questions about how to maintain a defensive force. The answer, unfortunately, might be to have a series of small wars just to keep in practice. Even then, the knowledge gained might not translate well to a large war.
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 part of the performance and capability phase space before settling on a production design.
Historically, most of the bugs in new US hypersonic designs stem from an unwillingness to sacrifice terminal guidance performance for the sake of velocity. Sensor packages rapidly and unavoidably disintegrate due to atmospheric ablation in-flight, which makes terminal guidance very difficult (because your sensors barely work by the time they get to the target). Anyone can build a hypersonic missile if you are willing to forego high-quality terminal guidance, and most do. This is an extremely difficult engineering problem when operating at the fundamental limits of material physics but the US has been unwilling to field systems that don't address it.
The sensor stuff is a common but exaggerated discussion point in online discussions about this. There's a ton of previous work. Pershing II used terrain matching of SAR images for terminal guidance ages ago. The main technology for making this work is just electrically neutral ablative heat shields, which there are a variety of companies making commercially today. Other historical examples for say visual IR use quartz windows, etc. There's complications due to the heat and related plume, but the sweeping claims about this point are usually off the mark.
Quartz isn't durable enough for hypersonic IR windows in dense atmosphere. When tested decades ago, actively-cooled sapphire, diamond, and even more durable exotics ablated too quickly for that purpose. I don't know what they are using today but the inability to find an IR transparent material that could survive long enough was a central design problem. This can be seen in the odd compromises made to the seeker design of e.g. THAAD, which doesn't spend much time in the lower atmosphere.
@edenceover is probably referring mainly to the boost-glide vehicles that are moving at up to mach 20 ... through atmosphere. The air-breathing cruise missile type designs go slower (only mach 6-ish) but at that speed you can have a sane discussion about guidance. This rocket-guidance problem, by the way, is where the Black-Scholes model came from.
Correct. No one has "real" hypersonic missiles that travel in the atmosphere for extended periods(*1). The heating problems for shock impingment in non-"simple conicals" has *not* been overcome and won't be. "Hypersonic" missiles are mostly just ICBMs with a very brief passage through the dense lower atmosphere where there's enough lift. And if they try to go higher up to escape the heat flux there's not enough for lift. See, https://exrocketman.blogspot.com/2022/06/about-hypersonic-ve...
Tangential: the USA had a mach 5 phoenix missile back in the 1970s on the F-14 and now they're re-fitting them with new guidance/etc to make a hypersonic test bed.
*1: Of course, when you're going hypersonic you only need tens of minutes to travel to the other side of the Earth.
"Sprint accelerated at 100 g, reaching a speed of Mach 10 (12,300 km/h; 7,610 mph) in 5 seconds. Such a high velocity at relatively low altitudes created skin temperatures up to 6,200 °F (3,430 °C)"
You beat me to it! This timecoded link shows the launch sequence of the Sprint with a tracking shot of the vehicle itself. Pretty remarkable watching it start to glow white:
I think this is the first video on that channel where the subject can match the guy's cadence. It's a great overview of the development of the Sprint though, worth watching if it's of interest.
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.
No, this is in fact not categorically new. MaRV and related demonstrated 60 G pull up to horizontal glide maneuvers.
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.
As I understand it, it's not about “not being interpreted as nuclear strike” — since almost every Russian missile (including anti-ship missiles like Kh22 and the likes) could potentially carry a nuclear warhead, they explicitly don't care about the ambiguity, while the Western doctrine is diametrically opposite, explicitly aiming for as little ambiguity as possible to keep the escalation risk low. And your interpretation basically goes against both doctrines. — But more about keeping a low trajectory so that the missile stays below the early-warning radar horizon for most of its flight, striking without warning, where a ballistic missile gets within the LOS of radars quite early due to its trajectory.
Yeah, ICBMs have slightly glidy, menuevering entry vehicles. But these don't fly. It's more like falling with style. And they certainly don't have shapes that aren't simple conicals. Otherwise the heat from compression and where the shockwaves impinge on the complex structure completely overcomes materials tech and any possible heat soak or re-radiation.
Low altitude air breathing hypersonics are unlikely to ever be practical. That speed at low altitude is just a fire ball.
Air breathing hypersonics at altitude are real though. The US has successfully tested scramjets in the past. And currently has the HAWC program which has successfully flown twice now.
the Standard Missile "SM-3" goes Mach 8 we have had hypersonic weapons since the 1930s. This is a goalpost shift to say they have to cruise AND be hypersonic which is impossible due to the curvature of the earth which is really the premise of the entire argument is that russiaboos think the earth is flat and Nato isnt like 100 years ahead of Russia in military technology.
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 Chinese have overtaken the US in this field, as well as the Chinese started fielding similarly high-end carriers of their own, creating a legitimate target for US hypersonics.
It seems more likely that Russia and China are still decades behind the US but considerably more willing to hype up technology they don't actually have. China has made some progress but they are a long ways behind. Russia, well, ... Ukraine is demonstrating how stagnant their military capability has become. I kinda wonder how many of their nukes would actually fly right now if they were crazy enough to push the button.
> Russia's failures in Ukraine mostly stemmed from failures in their logistics and doctrine rather than their technology
Russia’s reactive armour had egg cartons in place of explosive. The same oligarchs are delivering these weapons. Meanwhile, Moscow’s “smart” weapons missed entire airfields.
When developing advanced military capabilities, the US usually runs offensive and defensive programs in parallel. Beyond the "what if our enemy had this" aspect of the conversation, having a good model of what an advanced defensive system might look like informs design choices on the offensive side.
Too many people conflate the US deeming a weapons technology relatively ineffective given the (classified) capability matrix of their other systems with them not having the technology. Hypersonic endo-atmospheric guided missiles, for example, is an area where the US has deep design expertise going back several decades. They were designing and testing hypersonic guided missiles for battlefield(!) use in the 1980s.
This is entirely correct. A basic example is how the US doesn't prioritize SAM systems to the same degree as Russia. This doesn't mean the US isn't capable of producing similar or even superior systems at volume, it's just that it doesn't make sense given the overwhelming scale of the US Air Force. Likewise there's a similar relative de-emphasis on some forms of artillery.
Now after shaking off decades of counter insurgency warfare and pivoting to address a multipolar world instead it's not surprising they want to change up the mix. It doesn't mean there's some dire technology or capability gap fundamentally however.
Military stuff is entire operational systems vs other operational systems, yet nearly all these forum warrior conversations treat it as some sort of swipe left or swipe right pairwise comparison of two pieces of specific equipment.
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.
You are simply mistaken on this topic, probably due to only reading click bait or nationalistic articles on the topic.
Carriers are by no means obsolete, and ballistic missile defense is one of the things the Navy prioritizes heavily, and has done, for ages. Even for the DF-21 a carrier strike group is a tough nut to crack.
China's carriers are still a couple generations away from being at parity to the US fleet.
Sensationalized bait headline articles are not a good source for learning about this stuff. https://twitter.com/RickJoe_PLA writes for the large media brands with some regularity, and is strict about sticking to a substantive factual basis for everything.
That's not the _new_ Chinese carrier, that's the Type 002 class carrier _Shandong_[0]. Their latest carrier, the Type 003 class Fujian[1], was launched last month and has a catapult system, just like American and French carriers.
Has nothing to do with offensive/defensive capabilities (which is really a straw man). They simply are proceeding with their carrier development in an incremental fashion, learning as they go.
Almost every weapon or weapon system can be described as defensive or offensive, depending on the motives of the person discussing said systems.
What’s would be the defensive purpose of a nuclear aircraft carrier? The offensive part is obvious - makes a whole lot of difference when you are invading someplace on the other side of the world, which is what US Navy is optimized for.
You can defend international sea lanes (so shipping can go through), you can defend your territorial waters, etc etc etc. Defense is in the eye of the beholder.
And how exactly is nuclear propulsion necessary for any of this? Because it it makes a whole lot of difference when there are no allied harbors nearby, ie you are on the other side of the world, ie you’re invading someone again.
Funny how those international sea lanes that are important for world trade just happen to be far away? Because it's foreign trade you're protecting. Oil, etc. If all the US was protecting was US shipping going from US port to US port, then yeah, we wouldn't need nuclear power, though it still might make sense depending on the threat.
Would a (the) global superpower want its rivals to believe its capabilities are ahead or behind of their current state?
This leads me to believe we're never going to get an accurate picture of the state of a weapon development program through the press. Is the F-35 program in trouble, or not? If it was why would you let your adversaries know this?
You want your enemy to overestimate your capabilities if you don't intend to fight them. If you want them to start a defensive war, you want them to underestimate you so you have a greater chance of successful provocation where you get to counterattack and destroy their unprepared forces.
- desperately needs a new self-propelled howitzer, as the M109 is a 60-year-old design that has been upgraded to its limit, and can no longer perform adequately in a modern near-peer engagement
- the AIM-120 AMRAAM is outclassed by other beyond visual range air-to-air missiles developed in the last 30 years
- the OH-58 Kiowa, based on the Bell JetRanger, was the Army's scout helicopter for decades -- but was retired in 2020 without a replacement
- the Ticonderoga-class cruiser, which was the first incarnation of the Aegis anti-air and anti-ballistic-missile system, is being retired without a replacement, forty years after it entered service -- its planned replacement, CG(X), was cancelled, and so more Arleigh-Burke class destroyers with larger Mark-41 VLS cells are being shoehorned in
- the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer, which also has the Aegis system, is still in production after 34 years because the Zumwalt-class that would've replaced it was a total flop due -- its eight-inch Advanced Gun System requiring bespoke ammunition on the order of $800,000 per round
These are all replacement programs that could have been (and in some cases were) started over a decade ago, but we are just now seeing the fruits of some of the very long development processes.
- the ERCA (Extended-Range Cannon Artillery) is not forecasted to enter service until 2025
- the AIM-260 is meant to enter production this year
- there is currently an ongoing competition between Sikorsky and Boeing to build the Army's next scout helicopter
- the DDG(X) program will replace both ship classes eventually, but is not even meant to begin construction until 2028
Meanwhile, one shining example of the successful replacements of older programs is the Virginia-class submarine. It remains one of the few examples of American military procurement that was delivered ahead of schedule and under budget, while still being a success.
Isn't that why we should invest in hypersonic missiles? It is a relatively cheap unmanned alternative to building aircraft carriers (and the obligatory fighters), and other large vulnerable systems.
Hypersonic is very unfortunate term, because it makes people assume that hypersonic speed is the new thing in these.
X15 was manned hypersonic vehicle in 1959. Pershing II had maneuverable hypersonic re-entry vehicle in the 80s. ICBM's are hypersonic or high hypersonic. Space shuttle was a hypersonic glider, so is X-37 currently operated by the US Space Force.
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 gen" dates back to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq where they played a decisive role. Today, according to the press, ATGMs are the savior of Ukraine.
This is ridiculous. Anyone could have looked at the test results for Javelin and seen that it would be successful against modern armor. Same with the Ukrainian Skif and Stugna ATGMs, the UK's Brimstone and the NLAW. All of these had been extensively tested by multiple parties and found highly effective.
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.
I guess I would differ in describing it that way as well. Anything north of Baghdad on Day 18 was not a key battle at all, despite the Javelin playing a somewhat exaggerated role. Reading the wiki entry, it sounds like the ODAs were almost overrun despite the Javelin, and were saved by F-18s flying CAS.
The scary hypersonic missiles are the large, suborbital ones that can be used for bombardment; anti-tank rockets are a different genre of weapon, with unrelated uses, projects and funding.
hypersonic is fascinating - missile goes so fast it changes the behaviour of air molecules, which behave then behave in unpredictable ways. You basically need wind tunnels and lots of tests. US will get this right, no question, just a matter of when
While the terminology is imprecise, ICMBs tend to go up in a big arc making them visible to radar well in advance of a strike, whereas “hypersonic” missiles fly close to the earth, effectively hiding behind its curvature.
Isn't the difference that hypersonic missiles are supposed to be able to cruise at such speeds, not "just" fall along a ballistic (or, for the newer models, ballistic-ish) trajectory with a bit of steering at certain points, but powered flight all the way, with the maneuverability and potential stealth that entails?
Yeah, any time somebody says "this thing goes Mach <number>" the first question should be "at what altitude?" and the second should be "for how long?".
Perhaps I'm stupid, but I thought they were differentiated from classic missiles by actively diverging from a birds eye path at random during flight. Do ICBMs already do this?
both test failures seem to have been during the booster rocket phase and they weren't even able to test or collect data on the missile component
Lockheed is in charge of development, just like the SLS program. I'm curious how hard it would be to have SpaceX make an attempt or if they would even be willing. Seems safe to say they know rockets far better than Lockheed
> Lockheed is in charge of development, just like the SLS program
Lockheed tried to buy Aerojet Rocketdyne a couple years ago, the maker of the Shuttle's RS-25 engines, which are being re-used on SLS, but abandoned the acquisition. Boeing is the lead contractor for the launch vehicle.
This article describes the first test as ending in a booster failure, but describes the problem here as the failure of the test asset to ignite. I would guess that the test asset is the hypersonic device itself.
There are times when this makes perfect sense. Increasing size can make other things easier even if it takes more things like weight/fuel/size/etc. Making things small that work will sometimes add complications/complexity that otherwise could be avoided.
The best defense is probably still going to MAD with second strike capabilities. Assuming that a hypersonic first strike would destroy a majority of our silos and bombers, we'll probably have to beef up our submarine fleet.
> The best defense is probably still going to MAD with second strike capabilities. Assuming that a hypersonic first strike would destroy a majority of our silos and bombers, we'll probably have to beef up our submarine fleet.
For MAD scenarios, wouldn't attacking the US with stuff like fractional-orbital bombardment be more effective than hypersonic weapons?
Not sure, my orbital mechanics is bad, but reading that Wikipedia article it seems that a circular orbit might require a larger rocket than a sub-orbital trajectory? Hypersonics probably also give some advantage against terminal interceptors.
The problem is that the cost of an interceptor is a magnitude higher than a single missile. So it's easier to just build 10 missiles for every interceptor. You can also put multiple warheads on a single missile, or use decoys/countermeasures to defeat an interceptor.
Our current mid-course interceptors only have about a 50% success rate if I remember correctly, and terminal interceptors only cover a small range. There is a reason why we only deploy interceptors to geo-politically important theaters like Israel or Korea:
1. Because we only need to intercept intermediate-range or short range ballistic missiles
2. They are pinpoint areas that yield large amounts of coverage (of human lives) for a single deployment
It wouldn't be possible to blanket the US population centers in interceptor sites. Even if we could, our current radar systems wouldn't detect hypersonic missiles before its too late, meaning we would need a satellite fleet to detect launches from space. MAD is going to be the best option.
Major failures are a little hard to hide probably. Advanced adversaries can see it probably, so better to control the story and report on it, rather than let the Chinese or the Russians reports on "US hypersonic missile fails, again!".
Another reason is to highlight the need for more funding. "We obviously need more money to run even more tests".
"Hey world! Look what we're building - we're not afraid of you or our failures!"
It's a very strong message. It's also propaganda, to control the narrative, distract and deceive.
Maybe they already know it's a dead end, or this is a test bed for something else. The cancelled rail-gun seemed like a giant materials science project, but maybe the Navy got _exactly_ what they needed.
Could it be that they aren't afraid _because_ they have superior weapons, and want to keep that edge? The world still appears to be a scary place when others may assume that you can't defend yourself.
According to the article this was published by the Defense Department, not the contractor. Sure, they also don't look good, but they have to justify their spending (to a degree). This is more or less a heads-up that the program will be delayed and cost more.
When something you don't want to get leaked is about to reach the public you are better of telling your side of the story to form public opinion before anyone else.
If you commit a crime and tell the whole neighborhood that someone else did it, they are less likely to suspect you.
E.g. Putin calls Ukrainians neo Nazis even though he is acting like a Nazi.
I predict they will keep pouring money into this pit until they get a success...and then quietly wind down the program. The cost-per-mission will end being ridiculously high with no meaningful gains over just using Tomahawks in volume, overwhelming any defense with numbers.
Recall that we also once thought it was imperative to develop a "stealth" destroyer
I wonder if one hypersonic missile would cost like 10 Tomahawks? 20 Tomahawks? Overpowering defenses is not always easy. One Tomahawk is about $2M.
Also, time to reach the target may play a role, given that the launching platform cannot come closer than, say, 500 miles in either case. We assume that the adversary can detect the launch in either case; the time to react would be very different for a Tomahawk (about 0.75M; 1 hour) and a hypersonic missile (say, 5M; 10 min).
Saddam Hussein allegedly wouldn’t spend more than 90 minutes in any one location during the Gulf War because he was afraid of being taken out by a Tomahawk.
Russia already has hypersonic. And there is no realistic defense against them. They scare the crap out of DC because a Russian sub could pop up off the coast of New Jersey and 5 million people including 99% of all US politicians would be dead 6 minutes later. So of course the US needs them.
> a Russian sub could pop up off the coast of New Jersey and 5 million people including 99% of all US politicians would be dead 6 minutes later
Anyone pitching this is talking tripe. Russia can already do this. They’ve been able to do this since the 60s. We have no missile defence against a MAD attack, which is what you propose involves.
Also, mechanically, Russia’s hypersonics are air-to-ground, anti-ship and ballistic or semi-ballistic. They evade naval and missile defences with more kinetic energy. Even theoretically, a gliding hypersonic missile (a) screams a heat signature more trivially detectable than a ballistic and (b) rapidly bleeds off the kinetic energy that separates it from a cruise missile. In summary, it’s not some magic new category of weapon, but a trade-off between ICBMs and cruise missiles. (Note: not best of both worlds. More expensive, more detectable and less accurate than ballistic. More expensive, more detectable and less manoeuvrable than cruise.)
The real threat hypersonics pose is to carrier groups. With Russia that’s mostly hypothetical, since they apparently can’t even get their subsonic weapons to hit targets with accuracy.
I don't disagree with you, but Russia IS firing the 3M22 Zircon from nuclear subs now. At Mach 9, that's about 2-3 minutes to impact DC. And everyone knows, first strike, best strike. Putin would survive.
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.)
Or not, because Putin is a structure, not a man. Propaganda makes us personalize these things in a way that distorts the decisions we make.
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.
> assassination of Putin right now would unite the Russian public in its hatred for the US, not fragment it
Public opinion is irrelevant when considering decapitations. In Russia or anywhere else. The generals and intelligence agencies are the beginning and end of power in Moscow.
Putin is, as a dictator, personally the institution of power. That contrasts blindingly with America’s institution-oriented system. Taking out Putin is roughly similar to taking out the President and his Cabinet and the leaders of Congress. This is the dilemma of dictatorships. It’s weak in a way monarchies weren’t. (It is a weakness the Soviet Union and China (until Xi) didn’t suffer.)
> Russia IS firing the 3M22 Zircon from nuclear subs now
A semi-ballistic cruise missile.
> At Mach 9, that's about 2-3 minutes to impact DC
ICBMs go Mach 20+ in their final stage. Falcon 9 flies faster than Zircon. Hypersonics don’t instantly accelerate. Their advantage is in flying low and plasma stealth, both of which are good against ground-based radar but not against anything in the air or in space.
If your stealth comes from submarine launch, you gain little from flying hypersonic. It’s faster than cruise or short-range ballistic, but much less accurate for a decapitation strike.
> Putin would survive
So would most of the U.S. government. (Not the civilian government, perhaps. But again, this is old news.) Certainly almost all of its military.
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 development. Whoever cracks the secret and can field the most will potentially upend MAD.
only if you pretend nuclear submarines don't exist, and that russia knows where all second strike facilities are, and can target all of them with supersonic missiles.
> only if you pretend nuclear submarines don't exist
Did you read my comment? I acknowledged that submarines would be the most reliable second strike option.
Those are a lot of "ifs" sure, but it's a numbers game. If deployed hypersonics were as numerous as ICBMs in the 80s, then it would be about who strikes first. If a first strike can reduce the enemy population by 90%, and reduce their second strike capability to kill only 70% of your own population, then striking first is in your best interest.
I am talking about the 21st century as a whole. Can we really be so sure that at some point MAD will cease to exist and someone pulls the trigger? I wouldn't be so complacent about it.
US boomers have enough firepower to wipe out everyone in Russia without the need for other weapons. That is the point. There is no 70%, it is 99.999%. At the end of the cold war a Soviet naval admiral said they had managed to track a US boomer twice for a few minutes.
The MAD balance is still there for the most part. The most part being it is unclear what % of Russian nukes still work given the shit show of maintenance and graft shown in the convention forces used in the Ukraine.
US has 14 Ohio class subs, ~90 warheads each. This is in addition to 400 MM3 ICBMs. Unlike the Russians the US knows their weapons system will work.
My point is not that Russia is going to overpower us. My point is that without significant second-strike capabilities like submarines, hypersonic weapons could destabilize MAD at some point in the next 100 years. Early detection becomes moot meaning that bombers and possibly some silos become useless.
Also I don't know what a "boomer" is, do you mean submarine?
A "boomer" is slag for a nuclear missile submarine. Hypersonic missiles do not change the logic behind MAD which is "you can launch a first strike, but we can still respond with enough damage that it makes doing so untenable."
I am aware, but it renders a lot of our existing infrastructure useless which means we'll have to invest a lot in other second strike measures. Which is gonna cost a lot.
This seems irrelevant. It has been conclusively demonstrated that the U.S. (like everyone else) lacks any kind of meaningful ready air defense. Some trucker crashed a Cessna into the White House, and DCA flights pass within 5km of the Capitol. If you wanted to decapitate the U.S. you wouldn't need a submarine, you'd just load your weapon into a 747 and file a flight plan for DCA. Nobody will stop you.
Does MAD still work if the person threatening the first strike is a literal mad man that is suffering a terminal illness knowing their time is short anyways?
> 20 minutes later Russia would be dead. 20 minutes later the world.
The idea of nuclear winter has been largely debunked by modern science. Sure the places hit by nukes would be destroyed, but most nukes aren't powerful enough to push smoke into the atmosphere, so there'd be no global cloud blackening out the sun and ending all life on earth.
The US has quite a.lot of ASW resources, can identify subs, and you can't do that attack without providing a position fix.
Also, the US has other intelligence sources.
Also, current political situation helps narrow likely attackers.
Also, and perhaps most importantly, not a lot of people have hypersonic weapons and subs to deliver them near the US. Flashy unique capabilities are great in many ways, but they are absolute crap for obscuring responsibility.
The US pretty much knows the location of the Russian missiles subs most of the the time. It would be a bit crazy to gamble on being sure the one you launch from was the one that was missed. Also most of the Russian boomer fleet is in dock most of the time.
Why can't they just have some Spacex falcon 9's outfitted with multiple small missiles as payload? The falcon can boost the missiles and upon release they can easily go hypersonic while the falcon comes back for more?
Leave it to the US to make their first priority at the end of WWII to save the Nazis. If you helped murder a million children and you wanted to die of old age a respected multimillionaire in your bed surrounded by your great grandchildren:
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.
