7 ms·

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.

kristopolous 4y ago
correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe institutionally those were thought to be real by the people working on them at the time.
edouard-harris 4y ago
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.
- newaccount2021 4y ago
  but this is gobs of money that could be much better spent by the military just off the top of my head: - dramatic improvements in military IT (search for recent story "just give us new computers") - more investments in unmanned combat systems - just buy more of the things that work...numbers matter etc etc
  - WillPostForFood 4y ago
    more investments in unmanned combat systems 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.
  - JackFr 4y ago
    > - just buy more of the things that work...numbers matter That's not always true. Numbers can matter but certain technological leaps render whole classes of weapon systems obsolete.
  - jeffdn 4y ago
    Right now, for instance, the American military: - 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.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Not when there are people who profit from paranoia.
superkuh 4y ago
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-vehicles.html 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.
- dr-detroit 4y ago
  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.
- bufferoverflow 4y ago
  "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)" This is in 1975.
  - danbruc 4y ago
    But sprint did not have an airbreathing engine and was intended for close range interception and not long range missions.
  - jjoonathan 4y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZZV464z9g8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZZV464z9g8 That's a pretty fast missile... (RV zips by at 3x the speed)
jeffbee 4y ago
Don't forget the ekranoplan gap.
- Victerius 4y ago
  The mineshaft gap!
- petre 4y ago
  Useless in rough seas and on the ocean. There's a reason they operated on the Caspian Sea.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    Useless you say? The problem is they were too small!
jandrewrogers 4y ago
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.
- jandrese 4y ago
  So you can build missiles that fly extremely quickly to a part of the sky where the target is no longer occupying?
  - ARandomerDude 4y ago
    Or at the ground and hit the wrong target, potentially with very bad consequences.
  - killjoywashere 4y ago
    @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.
    - govg 4y ago
torginus 4y ago
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.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  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.
  - CSMastermind 4y ago
    My impression was that Russia's failures in Ukraine mostly stemmed from failures in their logistics and doctrine rather than their technology.
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      > My impression was that Russia's failures in Ukraine mostly stemmed from failures in their logistics and doctrine rather than their technology. Also lack of proper spending priorities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJkmcNjh_bg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJkmcNjh_bg And corruption: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9i47sgi-V4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9i47sgi-V4
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > 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.
ryanmarsh 4y ago
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? It's an interesting question to consider.
- imtringued 4y ago
  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.

kristopolous 4y ago

correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe institutionally those were thought to be real by the people working on them at the time.

edouard-harris 4y ago

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.

newaccount2021 4y ago
but this is gobs of money that could be much better spent by the military just off the top of my head: - dramatic improvements in military IT (search for recent story "just give us new computers") - more investments in unmanned combat systems - just buy more of the things that work...numbers matter etc etc
- WillPostForFood 4y ago
  more investments in unmanned combat systems 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.
- JackFr 4y ago
  > - just buy more of the things that work...numbers matter That's not always true. Numbers can matter but certain technological leaps render whole classes of weapon systems obsolete.
- jeffdn 4y ago
  Right now, for instance, the American military: - 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.
pessimizer 4y ago
Not when there are people who profit from paranoia.

superkuh 4y ago

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-vehicles.html 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.

dr-detroit 4y ago
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.
bufferoverflow 4y ago
"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)" This is in 1975.
- danbruc 4y ago
  But sprint did not have an airbreathing engine and was intended for close range interception and not long range missions.
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZZV464z9g8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZZV464z9g8 That's a pretty fast missile... (RV zips by at 3x the speed)

jeffbee 4y ago

Don't forget the ekranoplan gap.

Victerius 4y ago
The mineshaft gap!
petre 4y ago
Useless in rough seas and on the ocean. There's a reason they operated on the Caspian Sea.
- imtringued 4y ago
  Useless you say? The problem is they were too small!

jandrewrogers 4y ago

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.

jandrese 4y ago
So you can build missiles that fly extremely quickly to a part of the sky where the target is no longer occupying?
- ARandomerDude 4y ago
  Or at the ground and hit the wrong target, potentially with very bad consequences.
- killjoywashere 4y ago
  @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.
  - govg 4y ago

torginus 4y ago

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.

rootusrootus 4y ago
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.
- CSMastermind 4y ago
  My impression was that Russia's failures in Ukraine mostly stemmed from failures in their logistics and doctrine rather than their technology.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > My impression was that Russia's failures in Ukraine mostly stemmed from failures in their logistics and doctrine rather than their technology. Also lack of proper spending priorities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJkmcNjh_bg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJkmcNjh_bg And corruption: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9i47sgi-V4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9i47sgi-V4
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > 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.

ryanmarsh 4y ago

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? It's an interesting question to consider.

imtringued 4y ago
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.