7 ms·
Raytheon, Northrop Grumman to build Air Force scramjet hypersonic missiles
- bertjk 4y agoI love the phrasing used in this press release. > hypersonic weapon designed to hold high-value targets at risk We don't destroy targets anymore. We hold our targets at risk.
- bamboozled 4y agoWhat's wrong with the wording? ICBM missile solo, not something you really want to blow up, but it would be cool if you could eliminate it within minutes should it start to pose a risk.
- drewm1980 4y agoHow would the Russians react? Would they launch extra nukes just to be "safe"? Maybe we should build a weapon that ~enhances the yield of their nukes, so that they figure sending one is enough!
- dsr_ 4y agoYour username suggests that, had you been born 10 years earlier, you would have already been thinking about things like that for several years when the Berlin wall came down. But instead, you were 9 and the world has rarely been at risk of full-scale nuclear war for you. The questions that you seem to be posing sarcastically were really, truly discussed seriously from 1959 through 1989.
- baybal2 4y ago
- boc 4y agoHolding targets at risk is fundamentally different from destroying targets. Hypersonic anti-ship weapons allow China to hold US carriers off the coast of Taiwan "at risk", but it doesn't mean they have to destroy them to be effective. I know you're trying to dunk on this press release, but it's actually a specific phrase that has real meaning in the defense world.
- PradeetPatel 4y agoExactly. Words, when used precisely, can carry be used to infer a significant amount of intentions behind the text. In this case, holding targets at risk implies a strategy of deterrence, a desire for peace and the de-escalatition of conflicts, as opposed to initiating the first strike with the intention of destruction.
- bertjk 4y agoI understand deterrence. I am commenting on the doublespeak. "Holding a target at risk" here exactly means wielding a credible way to destroy said target. I would argue that replacing the phrase: > ...weapon designed to hold high-value targets at risk in contested environments from standoff distances with: > ...weapon designed to destroy high-value targets in contested environments from standoff distances leaves the meaning of the quote and overall press release completely unchanged.
- throwawaylinux 4y agoThere's some truth to it. These missiles won't be used for bombing the Middle East. They'll be used for things like demonstrating to China that an invasion fleet in the Taiwan Strait is vulnerable. If they ever have to destroy a target it will be because that primary strategy failed.
- zardo 4y ago> These missiles won't be used for bombing the Middle East. Maybe not out of any kind of tactical necessity. But quite possibly just to show off the new missile, depending on the commander in chief.
- throwawaysleep 4y agoBasically that means it is for deterrence.
- walrus01 4y agoThis is a logical and normal term in strategic military planning, the concept of knowing that your own important thing will almost assuredly be destroyed in a retaliatory strike, should you be the one to initiate the war. See also the last 70 years of cold war era mutually assured destruction calculus. This is one of the reasons why highly advanced anti ballistic missile systems are seen as very dangerous because they upset the parity of two nuclear ICBM armed states being in approximate equal capability with each other. The cold war never really ended.
- zer0zzz 4y agoSLAM!!!
- smalley 4y agoI mean I don't think anybody outside of Siberia is going to try to do nuclear powered ramjets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersonic_Low_Altitude_Missile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersonic_Low_Altitude_Missil... (I hope)
- Arubis 4y agoTl;dr: - deal is for just a hair short of US$1bn - jobs are in Tucson - proposed delivery starts 2027 - proposed launch platform is f-15 - tech is undescribed, this is a from-scratch development, not an existing propulsion platform
- toasted-subs 4y agoSeems like a project to inject cash to relatively remotely areas to help deal with the housing crisis indirectly.
- Arubis 4y agoThat wouldn’t be atypical, but Tucson isn’t especially remote or underfunded.
- toasted-subs 4y agoWell, you cannot throw money into the middle of nowhere, but Tucson definitely won't be most people's first choice for places to live. Might also help create jobs for the people at the border aswell. Hitting multiple bird's with a single stone.
- jjk166 4y agoTucson is the headquarters of Raytheon's Missile and Defense division. Been located there for 70 years. It started out as a Hughes Aircraft Company facility relocated away from the west coast during WW2 to avoid the threat of Japanese attack.
- toasted-subs 4y agoCool tidbit! Makes a lot more sense now!
- narrator 4y agoChina and Russia are ahead of the U.S as far as hypersonic missile tech goes. https://www.ft.com/content/c7139a23-1271-43ae-975b-9b632330130b https://www.ft.com/content/c7139a23-1271-43ae-975b-9b6323301...
- frostburg 4y agoThe Pershing II and the ASM-135 ASAT did that in the '80s, actually. The Soviet Union also had a FOBS.
- analognoise 4y agoChina maybe, but absolutely not Russia. Let's not make jokes.
- nostrebored 4y agoThis is correct. We are substantially behind both in terms of design and infrastructure to bring those designs to life (hypersonic wind tunnels). The U.S. believed that hypersonic tech was “not of strategic importance”.
- oyashirochama 4y agoAnd to us it really isn't. We use a different doctrine of attack and defense.Wwe are primarily air and information superiority concepts and are only now getting into hypersonic due to the risk of a near-peer carriers and reef air fields.
- Covzire 4y agoThe US is ahead in terms of the populace thinking they have secret weapons nobody knows about.
- daemoens 4y agoHypersonic missles aren't really new or a gamechanger. When Russia and China flaunt it, there's a reason they never point to any real use cases for it. At those speeds, you can barely even communicate with the rocket.
- bilsbie 4y agoHow far away are we from making airplanes or rocket boosters with this technology?
- pfdietz 4y agoScramjets are not terribly useful for boosters. They are more suited to cruise missions rather than acceleration missions.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jakzurr 4y agoThat really is the problem with scramjets - apparently the longest test flights have been only a few minutes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramjet#Progress_in_the_2010s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramjet#Progress_in_the_201... AFAIK, every existing hypersonic weapon out there (from any nation) uses rocket propulsion.
- techdragon 4y agoThing is, if you’re able to hit your target in a few minutes, your engine, your avionics or even your software stack only needs to last a few minutes. I can’t find a Google reference right now on my mobile, but there’s a relatively well known example of a mission having some sort of loop related overflow in the guidance software that wasn’t fixed because by the time it could possibly happen, the rocket has burned out and the missile has done its job, it’s either exploded or is falling out of the sky and the software bug was irrelevant.
- jjk166 4y agoWell when you are moving at about a mile per second, a few minutes is a long flight. The issue with scramjets is they operate under extreme conditions which are both unforgiving (small errors are catastrophic) and difficult to model (experimental data is limited and expensive to gain). The only path to development is to produce lots of full scale, fully functional prototypes with the understanding most will be destroyed in seconds and there will be little if anything recoverable afterwards to study to determine what went wrong.
- honkler 4y agonever happening. I don't think the US can do it anymore.
- credit_guy 4y agoHere's one way how to think about this missile. You start from the report to Congress [1]. On page 8: In FY2022, the Air Force launched the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM) program to develop a hypersonic cruise missile that integrates Air Force and DARPA technologies. Some reports indicate that HACM is intended to be launched from both bombers and fighter aircraft, with a senior Air Force official noting that a B-52 could potentially carry 20 HACMs or more. B-52 can carry 32 tons of munitions. So 20 of these missiles "or more" may mean that each missile is about 1500 kg. That's in line with the current AGM-86 long range air launched cruise missile [2], [3]. Of course, AGM-86 is subsonic, while HACM will be supersonic. AGM-86 has a range, depending on configuration, between 950 km and 2500 km (maybe even more, this is the non-classified range). I guess HACM will have a similar range. Being hypersonic means it's easier to carry out a saturation attack (you send more missiles than the enemy can defend against simultaneously). That means, the US Air Force will be able to carry deterrence patrols with their B-52s in order to prevent China from sending a naval landing force to Taiwan. Without this weapon, the main deterrence was supposed to be provided by the US Navy and their carrier strike groups. With this weapon, the US Air Force may be able to provide a cost effective alternative. [1] https://news.usni.org/2022/07/22/report-to-congress-on-hypersonic-weapons-7 https://news.usni.org/2022/07/22/report-to-congress-on-hyper... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-86_ALCM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-86_ALCM [3] https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104612/agm-86bcd-missiles/ https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/1046...
- sofixa 4y ago> B-52 can carry 32 tons of munitions. So 20 of these missiles "or more" may mean that each missile is about 1500 kg Not necessarily. US bombers, especially old ones such as the B-52 were designed for bomb loads stored inside and dropped when the doors open. Carrying missiles was added later on, and since those have to be outside, usually on the wings, the main limitations is space, not weight. If it cannot fit more than 20 missiles due to only 10 launchers with 2 missiles each (for instance) being able to physically fit on the aircraft's fuselage/wings, it doesn't matter how many more it could carry inside. Also, has tech advanced so much to have a similarly weighing scramjet hypersonic missile have a similar range to a supposedly more optimal subsonic one?