Unlike a recent hypersonic missile test, officials didn't immediately confirm Friday's flight was a success.
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Weapons of war are launching from Cape Canaveral for the first time since 1988
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... Biden? Because the launch in the photograph at the top of the article was in December 2024. This has little to do with Trump except that he founded the "Space Force" many years ago, but in any case this was an army launch.
I mean Trump sucks but let's not go into hysteria at all times please. It is as ludicrous as the "THANKS OBAMA" that right-wing people were doing in 2008-2016, blaming Obama when like, a tornado ripped through town.
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Hi, you've reach the US government, if you need help please press 1, please note if we have not received your offerings of gold, land, or Trump loyalty for the month we will not be able to help you. If you have not signed a blood oath, we will not be able to help you, lastly even if you've done these things we reserve the right to not help you. Thank you for calling.
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Incorrect.
The USAF very much has, and wants, the close air support mission (CAS). The A-10 is no longer relevant (despite protests from ground pounders), as every USAF and USN fighter and bomber aircraft (sole exception: B-2) has been, and is being used, in the CAS role. MANPADs are now too good, and too ubiquitous, to fly low/slow and survive. Weapons and the platforms that deliver them are much more precise using laser, TV, GPS, and/or inertial guidance than previous generations of bombs.
Secondly, the A-10C is just getting too damn old. We’ve re-winged and replaced avionics (several times), but continued investment just doesn’t make sense. I grant you the A-10 is a tough bird, designed to take the hits and keep flying, but it was also not designed or even designated for the CAS mission. The A-10 was designed to kill tanks. That’s it, just armored vehicles, and it was very good at that, for a time. The USAF changed the A-10 over to CAS when it became apparent the vaunted 30mm gun was losing effectiveness against modern armor. Even during 1991’s DESERT STORM, the F-111s killed more tanks by “plinking” from 30kft with laser-guided 500lb bombs than did the A-10s. And it’s gotten worse for any aircraft that flies low/slow since then.
Besides, the USAF is bringing on board a new COIN aircraft, but it will (theoretically) operate only in low threat areas/scenarios.
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So these are entirely different from the ‘glide bomb’ things that the Russians are either throwing at extremely random civilian targets in Ukraine or have discovered can’t hit the broad side of a barn and are using as pure terror bombardment?
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The entire news cycles of panic about our adversaries having better hyper sonic missiles than us a few years ago smacked of a joint little effort between some cranky and ignored DoD missile procurement team and perhaps a weapons manufacturer who were pissy their slice of $1.1 Trillion dollars isn’t big enough and wanted to gin up pressure/panic among lawmakers to allocate more.
All it takes for a lot of eager journalists is waving around the TS/SCI credentialing, and saying phrases like “if you knew what I knew, you’d be scared to death” and then they’ll happily, uncritically run uncredited effectively press releases directly from some anonymous DoD or intel source. Then that person gives them a list of sources and wow look at that, an anonymous source at Lockheed who just happens to have the solution in a dusty box if only they could have a few billion dollars to finishing development we wouldnt be so far behind Russia (lol) and China (scarrry!!) Crazy coincidence.
I’ve worked in PR long enough to know a manufactured cycle when I see it.
To be clear - I’m NOT saying thats whats going on with this article. Ars has legit reasons to cover missiles being fired from a primarily civilian space range.
But when newsweek and usa today started covering it in 2022, then they moved up the food chain until NYT had it? That was classic press strategy in action.
All it takes for a lot of eager journalists is waving around the TS/SCI credentialing, and saying phrases like “if you knew what I knew, you’d be scared to death” and then they’ll happily, uncritically run uncredited effectively press releases directly from some anonymous DoD or intel source. Then that person gives them a list of sources and wow look at that, an anonymous source at Lockheed who just happens to have the solution in a dusty box if only they could have a few billion dollars to finishing development we wouldnt be so far behind Russia (lol) and China (scarrry!!) Crazy coincidence.
I’ve worked in PR long enough to know a manufactured cycle when I see it.
To be clear - I’m NOT saying thats whats going on with this article. Ars has legit reasons to cover missiles being fired from a primarily civilian space range.
But when newsweek and usa today started covering it in 2022, then they moved up the food chain until NYT had it? That was classic press strategy in action.
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Alternatively wait for The Donald to post hi-res screen shots on Trump Social.
I suppose it'd be unfair to post something like "I don't think Dark Eagle is technically hypersonic" on a War Thunder forum and wait for a disgruntled contractor to post the complete technical specs?
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Ground-based Air Defense systems are an Army responsilibilty, have been for decades, including current systems such as THAAD, Patriot, etc. (not just short range like Stingers or others). Also why the MDA is located at Redstone Arsenal, an Army base.
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There is a lot factually wrong here. The coast guard does have rescue helicopters (CH-60s I think). The navy does also have helicopters on their carriers, and they say NAVY. The Navy also flies F-18 super hornets and F-35s, which I wouldn’t call obsolete.
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If political winds change down the road and the US decides it wants to be helpful again. I doubt Europe will say no unless they have a missile of their own.
Even if we go full defeatist and assume Trump isn’t leaving office. His plans change by the end of the week. So, who knows?
Long story short the lifespan of this weapon will outlive Trump.
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Or a high value target that has modern point defense. Stealth is only so good and radars can still target them at close range. It's a lot harder to hit something that's coming in at Mach 5+, especially if it's maneuvering and you only pick it up after it comes over the local radar horizon.
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Ground launch ground attack? That’s the same as artillery. Army role.
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And the Coast Guard has prop planes unless they got rid of all of them.
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This administration launches weapons of war domestically on a daily basis. What's new?
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Hypersonic arms race
Weapons physicists have been stating for a number of years now that "hypersonic weapons are mediocre" and if you look into the actual physics of these weapons they are a cost burden but hyped up by the media and of course the weapons industry to be "glorified death fireworks that fly at Mach 20".
Physics = headaches
Maybe because hypersonics can be used with conventional warheads without the adversary kicking off WW3, unlike with re-entry vehicles launched on ballistic missiles with depressed trajectories. If I see a mass IRBM launch with trajectories possibly ending at my major cities, I would think it was a nuclear strike in progress.
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Wasn't an arbitrary decision about helicopters. When helicopters were first made practical, around the Korean War, the Air Force was focused on nuclear war. Numerous generals in the Air Force never particularly wanted the close air support or tactical transport missions - generals like LeMay figured the 'real' war would be bombers and ballistic missiles, and that everything else was just support or a distraction. The Strategic Air Command's (SAC) leadership figured WWIII would be over in about 30-45 days. Given the state of the technology of the time, SAC figured it would take that long for them to drop every U.S. nuclear gravity bomb on a Soviet target. Even fighter aircraft were viewed within the context of nuclear war. Plenty of Air Force generals figured there were only two 'real' roles left for fighters: escorting bombers and air defense of the U.S. homeland.
That being said, there were generals in the USAF who recognized the value of helicopters and smaller fixed-wing transports like the CV-2 - militarized version of the de Havilland DHC-4 Caribou, capable of taking off in a mere 1,020 feet and could carry 32 troops or 2 Jeeps or equivalent cargo space and weight.
The big disagreement was about how to employ the air assets. The Army wanted assets that were assigned to Army units and responsive to the needs of those units - e.g., aircraft assigned to the 82nd flew missions in support of the 82nd, and aircraft assigned to the 101st flew missions in support of the 101st. The Air Force wanted air assets to be assigned to separate air units and employed how Air Force commanders thought best for an overall war effort - e.g., if the 82nd and the 101st both wanted missions flown then Air Force commanders would decide how to respond to those requests...so maybe the 82nd got everything it wanted and the 101st only got some of what it wanted. Or neither got all of what they wanted because the Air Force decided that the needs of the war were better filled in a different way. This last is key - the Army envisioned tactical aviation effectively functioning like mechanical cavalry, and the Air Force envisioned aircraft used as a separate part of a war effort.
This disagreement was largely created as a result of the Korean War. Close air support between the Army and Air Force was a very lengthy endeavor. The prescribed procedure was for an Army forward controller to radio the headquarters of the Army division to which he was attached, which would pass along the strike request to corps headquarters, which in turn would relay it to the Army-Air Force Joint Operations Center, which operated alongside an Air Force Tactical Air Control Center. The TACC would then order an airfield to supply the appropriate aircraft, which would contact the TACC on the way to the target and be handed off to an airborne or ground-based forward controller for actual strike coordination. It often took an hour or more between the call for the support and bombs striking targets.
Contrast that to the Navy and Marine Corps system. Due to their experiences with amphibious landings in WWII, the Marines used close air support as a substitute for artillery - artillery was often one of the last things landed, and naval gunfire support might be too risky due to the distances between friendly and enemy units. Thus, the Marine Corps system was one of forward air controllers communicating directly with pilots overhead. This system also kept aircraft loitering over the battlefield and waiting for support calls rather than on the ground (or deck of the carrier) until a call was made. The Air Force considered loitering aircraft too inefficient.
The Army, and the Air Force after it was established, had not considered close air support a substitute for artillery. This worked in the European theater during WWII, but was not a recipe for success in a fast-moving and close-quarters battle environment like Korea (or, later, Vietnam).
When the Marines entered the Korean War the Air Force wanted the air assets of 1st Marine Aircraft Wing put under Air Force control. The Marines, politely for Marines, told the Air Force to go fuck themselves. I vaguely remember reading that MacArthur himself ultimately made the call to let the 1st MAW stay with the 1st Marine Division.
Early helicopters had limited payload, range, and speed. The Air Force was not particularly interested in them...but didn't want the Army to have them. Same with small fixed-wing tactical reconnaissance aircraft and tactical support aircraft. So the Army was said "hey, y'all aren't willing to be too helpful to us, so we'll just do it ourselves" and was buying and using the things. This culminated in the Johnson-McConnell agreement of 1966 when the Army agreed to give up its fixed-wing tactical airlift aircraft and the Air Force agreed to let the Army have rotary-wing aircraft for intratheater transport and fire support.
In regards to one of your other statements - the Marines also have fighter jets. The Marines fly the F-18 and the F-35. In fact, one of the biggest albatrosses around the neck of the F-35 design is the Air Force and Navy versions see performance compromises because the 'common' fuselage means their versions have design components necessary for that stupid VSTOL fan the Marines insisted on having.
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A lot of the organizational kerfuffle has to do with the ballistic equation. The Army has a long history of dealing with that, starting with artillery weapons. A ballistic weapon traditionally has the totality of its energy imposed in the boost phase, which is very short compared to the rest of its flight, where its location all the way to impact can be pretty easily determined through simple propagation of its position/velocity vector. This was poignantly illustrated to me early in my career witnessing a night launch of a Black Brandt missile from the Woomera range in almost-the-middle-of-nowhere Australia; it burned for a few seconds, then "coasted" through the rest of its rather-predictable ballistic arc to somewhere we couldn't see.
That the Air Force got ICBMs I think has more to do with the short battlespace than anything, and maybe the presence of some strategically-thinking AF leaders at the time (Bernard Schriever comes to mind).
Hypersonics are intended to disrupt all that ballistic thinking, in putting the ballistic portion of the flight very early in the ground trajectory. Danged thing comes screaming at the ground, then goes into this jinky maneuver phase to wherever it's supposed to go. Very tough to shoot at something going a lot greater than 1Mach AND maneuvering all the way. Also very tough to develop a re-entry vehicle that can do the screaming-meemee hairball maneuver without burning up.
Oh, and Cape Canaveral has a much longer history of supporting weapons testing than late-comer civilian space stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Canaveral_Space_Force_Station
That the Air Force got ICBMs I think has more to do with the short battlespace than anything, and maybe the presence of some strategically-thinking AF leaders at the time (Bernard Schriever comes to mind).
Hypersonics are intended to disrupt all that ballistic thinking, in putting the ballistic portion of the flight very early in the ground trajectory. Danged thing comes screaming at the ground, then goes into this jinky maneuver phase to wherever it's supposed to go. Very tough to shoot at something going a lot greater than 1Mach AND maneuvering all the way. Also very tough to develop a re-entry vehicle that can do the screaming-meemee hairball maneuver without burning up.
Oh, and Cape Canaveral has a much longer history of supporting weapons testing than late-comer civilian space stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Canaveral_Space_Force_Station
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The US has had hypersonic weaponry since the Cold War. It was developed and shuttered like a large number of other space weaponry to adhere to geopolitical norms. When China and Russia decided to cross those lines and pretend to military supremacy, the US merely began to deploy long hidden technologies it had in reserve. It isnt a secret after Putin launched the first space based weapons platform the US military launch cadence shot through the roof.
It wasn't "fear" like Putti and Comrade Red like to imagine, it was "oh goodie! The morons wanted to cheat! Good thing we have nearly 50 years on them!".
Then, look up the SR 72. That thing was flying for years and the Aurora was since the 80s. It tracks with the history where Russia and China must scare the world with their latest tech and scare people at home to crush their hope. The US? It has never had a reason to parade around their latest tech. Assume what you see is nearly 20+ years old. Assume what you see from Russia and China hasn't even let the paint dry yet.
The US has had a lock on hypersonics for a long time. It simply didn't have the need to play the card until Potato pretended he was too hot to touch anymore. He was very much touchable.
A funny history is that the US successfully built the nuclear missile that Putin blew up his entire nuclear task force with... Project Pluto. Get rekt revanchists...
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From my knothole, the USAF bought into helicopters for two reasons: mission support, and their contribution to special ops. During my tenure, I ran into a lot of the former: range support, missile field transportation, Capitol Area VIP taxi. All UH-1s, to my direct experience just a collection of parts flying in formation, all shaking in different vectors.
Navy seems to be a similar adoption. I watched a Sea Knight re-provision the 6th Fleet command ship after it left Gaeta, ostensibly to avoid Italian port taxes, pallet-by-pallet, over a bunch of hours of round trips to a supply ship. Pilot would hover at an altitude that put slack in the pallet cables to let the deckhand unhook it from the helo bottom; lower-and-lower on each round trip, to where the poor sot was almost on his knees between the helo and the deck.
Generally, I'd say the services weren't above crossing "equipment boundaries" when they had use cases for the equipment.
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The launch phase of these “hypersonic missiles” is a two stage solid fuel rocket that is indistinguishable from an IRBM launch until you see the glide vehicle hitting the atmosphere and maneuvering. Of course it would totally be possible to put a nuclear weapon on a glide vehicle too, so it doesn’t actually make a difference that it isn’t a standard ballistic warhead design.
And since hypersonic weapons are surrounded by a plasma sheathe, they are incredibly visible to radar, infrared cameras, and even the mk I eyeball, but can’t actually see through the plasma themselves. As a result, they can only be used against stationary targets, which is the kind of target where speed of arrival is least useful.
Then to top it all off, it has already been demonstrated in Ukraine that semi-obsolete Patriot missiles can easily shoot down targets moving at hypersonic speeds. Not that that should be any surprise. I’m pretty sure the Scuds that Iraq launched at Israel during the Gulf War were going hypersonic, and the only reason the earliest Patriots had difficulties with them was that they kept hitting the rocket body instead of the warhead, a problem that hypersonic glide vehicles conveniently solve for the defenders by leaving the rocket body behind due to the depressed trajectory.
TLDR; hypersonic weapons are primarily a means of transferring huge amounts of money from governments to big corporations. I expect their actual cost effectiveness to be similar to the SLS.
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lol, ummm, no.
That’s not how this works.
You exist to help the Americans and the Americans exist to receive that help and then tell you that actually no, you’re a bunch of peasants that haven’t fought a war recently and oh, btw, how would you feel like becoming a state?
Coming to Auckland next month, the Trump Freedom Casino and Rare Earth Mine and you better be grateful otherwise…they won’t shake your hand when they arrive to colonise your country.
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It doesn’t matter if they turn it all around tomorrow, the US’ only interest is self interest, they’ve made it clear at this point.
Europe would be idiots to keep purchasing equipment from the USA even if it’s the best, because at the end of the day, they can always make supplies dry up if they want to control things or trip a random kill switch.
Independent tech, even if it’s a bit crap for a while is better than compromised tech and it’s not like Germany (as an obvious example) hasn’t got a bunch of rocket company startups who could pivot if they needed to.
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No, it isn't.
Some missiles fly most of their envelope under their own power and actively maneuvering. E. g. an anti-air missile, or cruise-missiles (which are basically jet-powered drone planes).
Some missiles are designed to fly mostly unpowered, these are ballistic ones. Most ballistic missiles have long been hypersonic, however, they fly out of atmosphere most of the time.
The whole kerfuffle is about powered hypersonic cruise missiles.
Russian ones actually exist and have been successfully battle-tested against best adversarial AA.
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Right. It’s not like we aren’t good at this stuff.
And unlike 40k orks, Russians lack psychic bonding ability so their duct taped rockets ‘splode before they even fire them.
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I'm not sure whats worse.
At least with ICBM's (likely with a nuclear payload) launching from the USSR in the 80's we knew we had 40-45 minutes warning to at least bend over and kiss your ass goodbye. Now with hypersonic weapons we know about it until it strikes on target, lol.
At least with ICBM's (likely with a nuclear payload) launching from the USSR in the 80's we knew we had 40-45 minutes warning to at least bend over and kiss your ass goodbye. Now with hypersonic weapons we know about it until it strikes on target, lol.
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Uh, every destroyer has a seahawk helicopter for ASW, that’s navy. They have special features like the winch down landing system compared to the land based variants, and can drop light torpedoes as well as perform recon and SAR.
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SubWoofer2
Ars Tribunus Militum
We already have the US billionaire prepper bunkers. Come on over and I'll give you a guided tour.
The chap who owns the Empire State Building has a very nice estate at the foot of the Remarkables. Local code was varied on condition he allowed school parties through. So far IIRC there have been no such tours, but if you and I declare ourselves adult students we could probably get to look around.
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The satellites that can pick up ICBMs launching can also pick up hypersonic weapons launching, as they all launch with good sized rocket boosters. Hypersonic weapons take longer to be visible from ground stations near the target, but if you see the launch they would usually take longer to arrive than an ICBM of same range.
With the number of satellites going up these days, it is likely that not only can all hypersonic weapons be tracked from launch to arrival, but some countries may even be able to track all jet aircraft in the world in real time.
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Not entirely, but very different yes. The US equivalent to those is something like JDAM-ER - a kit with wings and a guidance system you fit to an otherwise cold war era dumb bomb (you can of course purpose build them too - eg SDB/Stormbreaker - but there's a whole lot of old bombs out there). They're cheap (too cheap to want to shoot down with a SAM or such) and effective and the concept is very common.
LRHW is more like an advanced glide vehicle stuck to a large rocket. The main difference vs a traditional MRBM or such is that the glide vehicle can manoeuvre a lot more - thus flying a much less predictable path and being even harder to intercept. The difference vs something like a glide bomb is it's launched by a large rocket instead of a plane and because the glider has to be much faster and very manoeuvrable it's incredibly expensive.
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