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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

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.
- ActorNightly 4y ago
  >Boost phase lasers need to be close to target Sure, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist. Im just saying technology was proven to work, and could exist in some form and way even if its not the primary defense method. There is a possibility of Aurora existing (i.e the current gen SR71) that can catch up to a missile and hit it with a laser. >That much tungsten weighs 34 tons. Yes, but a smaller 5 ton one can still do a shitload of damage to the target. And flight paths of a VERY streamlined object reentering atmosphere hypersonically are pretty predictable, you don't need fancy guidance (keep in mind there is technology to do guidance on a bullet fired out of a gun that exists today) . A smaller one would not look like a nuke at all, it would just be a localized explosion, with a delivery method that is hard to detect/intercept. >They don't use GPS, they are inertially guided. I may be wrong but I think the first stage prior to deployment still uses GPS to set the trajectory accurately, after separation of first stage its all inertial guidance. >Warheads are designed to have nuclear explosion go off next to them, Warheads yes, delivery vehicles no.
BWStearns 4y ago
Regarding the tungsten rods from god (RFG), your specified 20x1 round would be about 24,000lbs. That means that you could put two shots up per Falcon 9 launch with hardly anything left to spare for anything non-tungsten (guidance, fuel). Just using launch capacity we can see that unless Starlink, and basically all of SpaceX, is a giant maskirovka, then the US hasn't fielded any such weapon in meaningful amounts.[0] The RFG sats would need to be LEO or some polar orbit to have some chance of not immediately being outed (a bigass GEO/GSO parked over Moscow would draw notice). Additionally LEO sats deorbit after a human-relevant-while so your rods from god would need to have and EOL plan or some way to do on orbit maintenance because if they deorbit from either EOL or guidance failure then they wouldn't burn up on the way down and could be catastrophic. Then let's also consider the risk that such a weapon draws an ASAT attack either wittingly or unwittingly from Russia or China. Now we have a cloud of tungsten flechettes in orbit. As much as I'd love to see some awesome space weapons, at the moment there's no way they're fielded and a big reason for that is that they'd basically be more of a liability than a capability at the moment. Also the ballistic missiles in question don't use (only) GPS for guidance, they also use inertial and celestial navigation which is pretty spoof-proof when you're aiming at a city. [0] also since we can track and even see starlink sats, we can be confident that none of those flights were used for RFGs, so that further reduces the hypothetical upper bound of the rounds in orbit.
runjake 4y ago
We (US mil) use GPS and INS, with tons of error detection/correction in those weapon systems. They aren’t going off-course due to jamming. We’ve been aware of jamming since day one because we were the first to experiment with it.

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.

ActorNightly 4y ago
>Boost phase lasers need to be close to target Sure, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist. Im just saying technology was proven to work, and could exist in some form and way even if its not the primary defense method. There is a possibility of Aurora existing (i.e the current gen SR71) that can catch up to a missile and hit it with a laser. >That much tungsten weighs 34 tons. Yes, but a smaller 5 ton one can still do a shitload of damage to the target. And flight paths of a VERY streamlined object reentering atmosphere hypersonically are pretty predictable, you don't need fancy guidance (keep in mind there is technology to do guidance on a bullet fired out of a gun that exists today) . A smaller one would not look like a nuke at all, it would just be a localized explosion, with a delivery method that is hard to detect/intercept. >They don't use GPS, they are inertially guided. I may be wrong but I think the first stage prior to deployment still uses GPS to set the trajectory accurately, after separation of first stage its all inertial guidance. >Warheads are designed to have nuclear explosion go off next to them, Warheads yes, delivery vehicles no.

BWStearns 4y ago

Regarding the tungsten rods from god (RFG), your specified 20x1 round would be about 24,000lbs. That means that you could put two shots up per Falcon 9 launch with hardly anything left to spare for anything non-tungsten (guidance, fuel). Just using launch capacity we can see that unless Starlink, and basically all of SpaceX, is a giant maskirovka, then the US hasn't fielded any such weapon in meaningful amounts.[0] The RFG sats would need to be LEO or some polar orbit to have some chance of not immediately being outed (a bigass GEO/GSO parked over Moscow would draw notice). Additionally LEO sats deorbit after a human-relevant-while so your rods from god would need to have and EOL plan or some way to do on orbit maintenance because if they deorbit from either EOL or guidance failure then they wouldn't burn up on the way down and could be catastrophic. Then let's also consider the risk that such a weapon draws an ASAT attack either wittingly or unwittingly from Russia or China. Now we have a cloud of tungsten flechettes in orbit. As much as I'd love to see some awesome space weapons, at the moment there's no way they're fielded and a big reason for that is that they'd basically be more of a liability than a capability at the moment. Also the ballistic missiles in question don't use (only) GPS for guidance, they also use inertial and celestial navigation which is pretty spoof-proof when you're aiming at a city. [0] also since we can track and even see starlink sats, we can be confident that none of those flights were used for RFGs, so that further reduces the hypothetical upper bound of the rounds in orbit.

runjake 4y ago

We (US mil) use GPS and INS, with tons of error detection/correction in those weapon systems. They aren’t going off-course due to jamming. We’ve been aware of jamming since day one because we were the first to experiment with it.