4 ms·

The US is working on missile defense and there are technologies that might change things in decade or two. But there is no way that they have been deployed in s

The US is working on missile defense and there are technologies that might change things in decade or two. But there is no way that they have been deployed in secret. The scale would be too large to hide and the government likes to brag. Deploying a full system requires SpaceX Starship and the number of launches would be large. Even then, it may not be possible to have system that works against major attack. The 747 laser was retired 9 years ago. They are working on laser firing drones but don't have any prototypes after years. Also, these are boost phase lasers which are fine with North Korea since can get close but don't work with Russia. There is talk about kinetic kill vehicles in space but I haven't found any concrete programs. This sometimes gets mixed with the Space Development Agency satellite constellationm but that is more about communication and detection. Kinetic warheads are not a thing. There haven't been enough satellite launches to put anything in orbit. They need to be big, both to have enough mass and for the rocket to get down. One big problem is that it takes 15-30 minutes for them to descend; shorter time requires a bigger rocket. The reaction time is one reason they are a bad idea since target can't tell if they are nukes or first strike. EMP and jammers don't work against nuclear missiles. They are self-guided. The electronics, like a lot of military electronics, are hardened and tested.

ActorNightly 4y ago
Government definitely has secrets. There is definitely compartmentalized projects with weapon systems that we don't know of. X-37B for example spent some time in orbit, nobody knows why. >The 747 laser was retired 9 years ago. That you know of. The 747 laser may not be a thing, but a military warplane with the next gen version of that laser may very well be > Kinetic warheads are not a thing. That you know of. Putting a rack of tungsten rods with basic guidance's system on a payload isn't really that complicated. They don't really need to be that big for localized destruction either. A 20x1 foot one has destructive power of an ICBM. A smaller one could take out a silo easily as it would penetrate quite far. >EMP and jammers don't work against nuclear missiles. They are self-guided. If they use gps for guidance, they can definitely be jammed/misdirected with a strong enough fake gps signal. And setting off an emp that creates magnetic fields strong enough to cause high current in circuitry is not that farfetched - the guidance computer may be fairly shielded, but you still have servos and other parts exposed that would be affected.
- ianburrell 4y ago
  > That you know of. The 747 laser may not be a thing, but a military warplane with the next gen version of that laser may very well be There is no reason to keep laser aircraft secret since they are only for limited use. The whole YAL-1 aircraft and the follow on program have been announced but we haven't seen the prototype. If was secretly working, wouldn’t have Congress complaining about budgets being cut. Laser research has been focused on short-range air defense. You missed the part about deployment. Boost phase lasers need to be close to target, we would have noticed ones flying from Japan or South Korea around North Korea. If there was working laser system, they wouldn't be spending tons of money of missile-based defense. > That you know of. Putting a rack of tungsten rods with basic guidance's system on a payload isn't really that complicated. They don't really need to be that big for localized destruction either. A 20x1 foot one has destructive power of an ICBM. A smaller one could take out a silo easily as it would penetrate quite far. Hypersonic guidance is hard, ICBMs aren't guided. China has anti-ship missile but that is on slower IRBM. Unguided ballistic projectiles may not be accurate enough to hit silos. That much tungsten weighs 34 tons. You also need to send up the rocket to drop it out of orbit. Falcon 9 can only put 22 ton into LEO, Falcon Heavy is 50 tons. Basically means either need smaller (there is a limit to size) or wait for Starship. SpaceX has dropped the price but it is also projectile per launch. That size projectile would do 850 ton TNT at 10 km/s. Not as destructive as an warhead which are 100x more powerful. Other problem is that there isn't much use for 1 kT strike, it is too big for conventional warfare that prefers lots of precision strikes. Strategic attacks can be done with cruise missiles against non-peers and not at all against peers. Final problem with kinetic bombardment is proliferation. There is no way to know if it is kinetic or nuclear payload and nuclear is much better option. Opponent would have to assume that any launch could be nuclear attack. Or if conventional then your proposed first strike. It is the same problem that scrapped conventional ICBM. > If they use gps for guidance, they can definitely be jammed/misdirected with a strong enough fake gps signal. And setting off an emp that creates magnetic fields strong enough to cause high current in circuitry is not that farfetched - the guidance computer may be fairly shielded, but you still have servos and other parts exposed that would be affected. They don't use GPS, they are inertially guided. Once they launch there is no outside output. The military hardens all of its electronics. Warheads are designed to have nuclear explosion go off next to them, both for nearby siblings and nuclear-armed SAMs.
wnkrshm 4y ago
I want to add to that, that lasers are situational in the atmosphere (e.g. launch your nukes when it rains at the target to disadvantage the defender), there is so much absorption and scattering. Even the space-borne concepts were duds due to their one-time use: they were chemically pumped since you needed so much power to make it through the atmosphere and the guiding mirrors would rapidly break due to micrometeorites. Short range concepts these days rely on multiple laser-emitter sites (like the Rheinmetall fiber-laser turret) to intercept a single target, with multiple beams on target. Dwell times are in the range of multiple seconds for drones and with rain, they can easily go up by a factor of 8 - for some incoming targets (e.g. rockets), the dwell time is already 10s of seconds and rain extends the dwell time beyond what the round needs to impact (as in this study [0]). [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/EFFECTIVENESS_OF_LASER_WEAPONS_IN_THE_ENVIRONMENT_OF_SOUTHEAST_ASIA_%28IA_effectivenessofl1094563470%29.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/EFFECTIV...
testTED 4y ago
> They are working on laser firing drones but don't have any prototypes after years. Sure.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ActorNightly 4y ago

Government definitely has secrets. There is definitely compartmentalized projects with weapon systems that we don't know of. X-37B for example spent some time in orbit, nobody knows why. >The 747 laser was retired 9 years ago. That you know of. The 747 laser may not be a thing, but a military warplane with the next gen version of that laser may very well be > Kinetic warheads are not a thing. That you know of. Putting a rack of tungsten rods with basic guidance's system on a payload isn't really that complicated. They don't really need to be that big for localized destruction either. A 20x1 foot one has destructive power of an ICBM. A smaller one could take out a silo easily as it would penetrate quite far. >EMP and jammers don't work against nuclear missiles. They are self-guided. If they use gps for guidance, they can definitely be jammed/misdirected with a strong enough fake gps signal. And setting off an emp that creates magnetic fields strong enough to cause high current in circuitry is not that farfetched - the guidance computer may be fairly shielded, but you still have servos and other parts exposed that would be affected.

ianburrell 4y ago
> That you know of. The 747 laser may not be a thing, but a military warplane with the next gen version of that laser may very well be There is no reason to keep laser aircraft secret since they are only for limited use. The whole YAL-1 aircraft and the follow on program have been announced but we haven't seen the prototype. If was secretly working, wouldn’t have Congress complaining about budgets being cut. Laser research has been focused on short-range air defense. You missed the part about deployment. Boost phase lasers need to be close to target, we would have noticed ones flying from Japan or South Korea around North Korea. If there was working laser system, they wouldn't be spending tons of money of missile-based defense. > That you know of. Putting a rack of tungsten rods with basic guidance's system on a payload isn't really that complicated. They don't really need to be that big for localized destruction either. A 20x1 foot one has destructive power of an ICBM. A smaller one could take out a silo easily as it would penetrate quite far. Hypersonic guidance is hard, ICBMs aren't guided. China has anti-ship missile but that is on slower IRBM. Unguided ballistic projectiles may not be accurate enough to hit silos. That much tungsten weighs 34 tons. You also need to send up the rocket to drop it out of orbit. Falcon 9 can only put 22 ton into LEO, Falcon Heavy is 50 tons. Basically means either need smaller (there is a limit to size) or wait for Starship. SpaceX has dropped the price but it is also projectile per launch. That size projectile would do 850 ton TNT at 10 km/s. Not as destructive as an warhead which are 100x more powerful. Other problem is that there isn't much use for 1 kT strike, it is too big for conventional warfare that prefers lots of precision strikes. Strategic attacks can be done with cruise missiles against non-peers and not at all against peers. Final problem with kinetic bombardment is proliferation. There is no way to know if it is kinetic or nuclear payload and nuclear is much better option. Opponent would have to assume that any launch could be nuclear attack. Or if conventional then your proposed first strike. It is the same problem that scrapped conventional ICBM. > If they use gps for guidance, they can definitely be jammed/misdirected with a strong enough fake gps signal. And setting off an emp that creates magnetic fields strong enough to cause high current in circuitry is not that farfetched - the guidance computer may be fairly shielded, but you still have servos and other parts exposed that would be affected. They don't use GPS, they are inertially guided. Once they launch there is no outside output. The military hardens all of its electronics. Warheads are designed to have nuclear explosion go off next to them, both for nearby siblings and nuclear-armed SAMs.

wnkrshm 4y ago

I want to add to that, that lasers are situational in the atmosphere (e.g. launch your nukes when it rains at the target to disadvantage the defender), there is so much absorption and scattering. Even the space-borne concepts were duds due to their one-time use: they were chemically pumped since you needed so much power to make it through the atmosphere and the guiding mirrors would rapidly break due to micrometeorites. Short range concepts these days rely on multiple laser-emitter sites (like the Rheinmetall fiber-laser turret) to intercept a single target, with multiple beams on target. Dwell times are in the range of multiple seconds for drones and with rain, they can easily go up by a factor of 8 - for some incoming targets (e.g. rockets), the dwell time is already 10s of seconds and rain extends the dwell time beyond what the round needs to impact (as in this study [0]). [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/EFFECTIVENESS_OF_LASER_WEAPONS_IN_THE_ENVIRONMENT_OF_SOUTHEAST_ASIA_%28IA_effectivenessofl1094563470%29.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/EFFECTIV...

testTED 4y ago

> They are working on laser firing drones but don't have any prototypes after years. Sure.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]