I'm not sure what big difference you are implying here. There hasn't been a new defense system developed in the last 8 months or anything. More money has been thrown at the problem but it's too early for that to have borne fruit.Oldman too said:
Hi, please allow me to elucidate on my post and it's points.boneh3ad said:
The biggest differences from earlier posts in this thread are, prior to the past few days hypersonic missiles have not been used in combat, also the only practical information concerning defense presented in this thread (that I have noticed) is the youtube video you commented on, and as you noted that presentation is likely flawed on multiple technological points. I appreciate your opinion on the tech, thus I'm posting the PDF for your, and others to review and comment, particularly how the PDF presentation compares to the video presentation.boneh3ad said:
Wow, talk about exposing falsehoods. Here's a passage from that article. Now flip the coin and suppose the War Zone is pushing fake news; how do we expose that? Fact checking can be very labor intensive.boneh3ad said:
Very labor intensive for sure. Having said that, the information that War Zone publishes is generally publicly available, so you could go and check if you so desired.anorlunda said:
I agree 100%, obfuscation is part of these programs by design. While reading about the Blackbird in the 80's I recall how stunned I was to learn it was in use during a particular SE Asian conflict, pretty impressive for 1960's tech. One analogy might be, laying down your hand at the beginning of a poker game, from a military point of view, you're going to come up aces and eights.Klystron said:
I appreciate your post very much, useful is an understatement. I'm particularly pleased with the quality bookmarks I'm collecting from this thread.boneh3ad said:
It's also odd because the range didn't seem to warrant it. They have other more plentiful weapons that could have hit the same target just fine. I've seen speculation that it was either meant as a message to the West or signified they were running low on stocks or confidence in other precision systems. Or both. No one really knows (or is allowed to publicly say they know, anyway).Klystron said:
Most likely high end terrorism.boneh3ad said:
Interesting, I hope that turns out to be the case.boneh3ad said:
Who was cowering in fear? Kinzhal is kind of "hypersonic lite" but Russia still has actual hypersonic weapons. But their numbers are few and they're not as tactically usefully as what we are developing.caz said:
My comment was directed at media coverage of military technologies. I agree that there is nothing special about Kinzhal.boneh3ad said:
caz said:
I don't see the discrepancy. Iskander is a ground launched SRBM. Kinzhal is an air launched modification of Iskander.Klystron said:
Your 2020 comment is a good one. If Russia, for example, wanted a nuclear holocaust we couldn't stop it whether they used newer hypersonic missiles or standard ICBMs. There are just too many ICBMs and not enough interceptors.caz said:
Right. Thanks for the clarification. My knowledge of missiles remains slight; my aero and radar career focused primarily on fixed-wing aircraft. The WP series describes evasive counter-measures employed by these missiles penetrating controlled battle space.boneh3ad said:
This depends on the type of missile in question, as not all of these planned hypersonic systems are the same. There are, broadly, two types of hypersonic strike weapons under development by various countries right now: boost glide and air breathing.Klystron said:
Just wondering if the war game is pricing itself out of existence with these advanced systems.boneh3ad said:
I guess we will see. The DoD has publicly and repeatedly expressed a strong desire for the defense industry to find a way to push the coats way down so they can field many of these in tactical roles. That certainly seems unlikely to be true of the first batch of systems with all of the sunk R&D costs and no established economies of scale, but may be reasonable for second generation systems. Finding ways to make it more economical is itself a major R&D focus.256bits said:
Correct on both points. Most modern missile defense, whether against subsonic, supersonic, hypersonic, or exoatmospheric weapons, is predicated on predicting where the target will be at a given time. That's why it's comparatively easy to intercept an ICBM reentry vehicle (or decoy), as it's on a "fixed" path and unable to maneuver defensively, and easier to counter sub- and supersonic weapons, as the speeds are slower and you have more time for your interceptor to react. The challenge with hypersonic, especially stuff that can maneuver, is the ability of the target to maneuver in ways that make the intercept far more difficult to successfully complete. Not impossible, as you can throw enough interceptors up and guarantee you'll kill the target by simply covering all possible vectors it could use to evade, but that gets cost and resource prohibitive in a hurry. Similarly, using a big enough 'boom' can do the trick, and that was considered a viable strategy in the Cold War for the SAFEGUARD program. Sprint and Spartan both carried nuclear warheads to compensate for the challenges in using 1960s computing to intercept incoming ICBM RVs within and outside the atmosphere, respectively. Sprint, iirc, used the blast effect and the radiation pulse to effect the kill, while Spartan was exclusively a radiation kill using high x-ray flux, but that's a topic for another thread.boneh3ad said:
nsaspook said:
Why are they using the Kinzhal instead of the Tsirkon? Is it mainly a supply problem?boneh3ad said:
Russia goes out of their way to oversell their stuff. There are probably a few reasons for that: propaganda (both domestic and international), no one willing to tell the boss bad news, etc. They do that with the Kinzhal, but it appears increasingly likely those have now been depantsed as still being relatively standard SRBMs with a bit of a speed boost.berkeman said:
). I believe they are also primarily anti-ship missiles.nsaspook said:
Kinzhal was never a superweapon. But Patriot has a history of being seriously oversold (e.g., in the Gulf War when it was sold as having a nearly 100% success rate against Scuds and apparently had a nearly 0% success rate in reality). So to me this is very interesting because it's a very public demonstration of how much improvement these systems have had.nsaspook said: