There’s no point. Neither russia or China is close to developing a system that can come close to countering a icbm/slbm based attack. It would be a whole lot of money for minimal tangible gain. If you’re asking why the us doesn’t have something to go after tactical this would fly in the face of the US’s “massive retaliation” policy.
Having a missile that can intercept a nuke is miles from having the capability to defend against an all out attack. Russia and the us have had Abms since the late 50’s. The us and Russia have deployed mid course defend missiles for decades but that hasn’t raised their confidence. The simple answer for this is that the math just doesn’t work out. Win a minute man costs $30 million and the missile that you need to intercept it costs $75 million it’s not looking too good. Add onto this that you need to fire 3-4 interceptors per icbm to guarantee a favorable Pk. Of course you could just wait for terminal but that opens up an entire pantry of cans of worms that I don’t want to talk about.
TLDR ballistic missile defense costs to much to be viable and it’s counterable by just building more nukes.
Do we know the success rate of these tests? Would like to know because defending against ICBM attacks is an extremely difficult thing to do.
When intercepting ICBMs you’d also want to launch 2-3 missiles for every incoming ICBM, and considering the amount of territory to be covered, that means a large interceptor system is needed, which to my knowledge neither the US, China, or Russia has successfully deployed.
If you believe publicly available data for Chinese missiles then they have never failed a single test. China doesn’t have near the same transparency as the us and only let people see their weapon successes.
Anything that flies into space is visible on radar for thousands of miles around and has to be announced beforehand to prevent it from being mistaken as an actual attack. These are issued as NOTAMs weeks in advance.
If there was a failure, US would both know and heavily publicize it. I can believe that the tests were in highly idealized conditions though.
China has never failed an abm test got it. Also China does its missile tests out in the taklamakan desert which the us doesn’t cover with radar. If they treat it anything like say Area 51 then there’s a permanent restriction.
And what makes you think the US would announce that. Sounds like a great way to give away your capabilities. The only launches that the Jindlee site is known to be able to track from takeoff our ones from China’s coast.
>“massive retaliation” policy.
I assume that means Counter-Value targets from SSBNs? Basically wipe out all major cities and ports? China has been building a lot of silos to keep the US guessing on which silos are actually armed for the possibility that the US could potentially launch a first strike Counter-Force attack, which is interesting. Because that means the Chinese think it might be possible for the US to actually pull it off, because they wouldn't waste their time building those extra silos if they didn't think it was possible.
No, it means that in response to the Russia say nuking a carrier group the us would start glassing everything. The point of this is to allow The US to leverage it’s conventional superiority without the risk of getting hit by a tactical nuke.
If we look at the calculation Pf Ren made, he stipulates that 3 Minuteman could render the facility to launch inoperable, so in the 2010s, in a non-war state, the % of China successfully launching like **1** nuke after a first strike is like 1% or something insanely low, and the chance for a wartime stance is a bit higher. I don't recall the precise #, but it was pretty much accepted back then that if the US launches a first strike, China only has a rudimentary form of response.
What purpose is there in targeting silos? The US has been able to track ballistic missile launches in 1961 when BMEWS went operational. Before that the Pine Tree line, failed MCL, and DEW for tracking bombers. These days it's SBIRS/STSS, UEWR, and AN/TPQ-2s.
If China or Russia were to launch a massed attack, the US would know. The same goes in all three directions. Same goes with SLBMs, a Trident D5 is just as trackable as a Minuteman III. The primary targets of US nuclear weapons are people, MAD. There is **zero** value in targeting silos, the launch **will be detected** and the reaction will simply be to launch missiles before the targets can be impacted.
All ICBMs are hypersonic. They fly up out of the atmosphere, break up into multiple separate warheads that all reenter at hypersonic speeds that are really hard to intercept.
There is no real need for hypersonic atmospheric cruise missiles.
hypersonic cruise missiles are being developed, no one has them yet. Google the following projects hifire, scifire, hawc, mohawc
HGV - the US is close to deploying LRHW, again no one has any HGV as confirmed as deployed.
The DF-100/CJ-100 is a hypersonic cruise missile that’s in service with the PLARF across multiple brigades for a few years now.
It’s weirdly one of those weapons systems that should be talked about a lot more than it is but it kinda got drowned out by the marketing around the DF-17/21D/26 because to most people it doesn’t really sound all that novel or ‘new’ compared to its ballistic stablemates.
Is that a true hypersonic cruise missile (with a scramjet), or just a high supersonic ramjet? It looks like what little info I can find makes it seem to be mach 4ish, which makes me lean towards the latter.
(I also don't believe that China has reliable, deployable scramjet capability)
(Similarly, I don't believe the Russian Zircon exists in any functional form)
Hypersonic missiles don’t need a particular mode of propulsion, in the strictest terms it’s to do with its speed, anywhere from mach 5+, but in the context of modern hypersonic weapons it’s a combination of speed and it’s flight profile, where it cruises at an altitude between the top of the stratosphere (50km) and the Ionosphere (100-150km), making it almost impossible for both atmospheric and exoatmospheric interceptors to shoot down, the former because it’s too high for their control fins to manoeuvre the interceptor due to the atmosphere being too thin, the latter because it’s too low for the guidance thrusters of the interceptor to work due to the atmosphere being too thick, a kind of goldilocks zone if you’re looking to kill carriers.
They also give far less early warning than a traditional ballistic missile because post boost phase they from down from the thermosphere to their ionosphere/stratosphere cruising altitude meaning they don’t appear on long range sensors till they are much closer.
Whether you accomplish this through a rocket booster launching a hypersonic glide vehicle, a scramjet powered missile, or by the power of a million angry caffeinated pigeons is completely irrelevant as long as it meets the minimum speed requirements and follows the sub ballistic flightpath.
Re the Zircon, it kinda doesn’t matter your beliefs. The Russians used them, they publicised that they did, and it was verified by western defence/intelligence services. There isn’t a single subject matter expert or government claiming that the Zircon wasn’t used or that it wasn’t a hypersonic missile, in fact the Russians have used several throughout the war and it’s never been questioned by their adversaries, many of whom would love to prove Russia wrong and humiliate it.
The issues the Zircon as a system has are many, but as a missile, it exists, it works, and it’s been used several times in combat (Edit: Zircon hasn’t been tested in combat yet, the Kinzhal has). It’s greatest weaknesses are that the Russians can’t produce them in the numbers needed to overwhelm a densely defended target like an aircraft carrier, that there’s approximately 10 Mig-31’s modified as launch carriers only, and that the Russian ISR network isn’t advanced or dense enough to provide a constant stream of targeting information. All of these issues however, the Chinese don’t have, their hypersonic missile arsenal is huge, has various delivery methods on land, sea, and air, they have an effective, distributed and redundant ISR network to provide the targeting information needed, and a solid & well trained doctrine for their use.
>Why doesn't the US go for nuclear armed hypersonic weapons?
What benefit does the US get from it, that it doesn't already have? I assume you are referring to a new class of hypersonic weapons here, not the existing ballistic missiles.
There are limited funds available(despite the claims of the "one gorellerion dollars are wasted on defense" crowd), and even a narrowly defined nuclear delivery system, like the Sentinel, is enormously expensive. Now, if Russia or China began building a missile defense system that could catch the majority of incoming ICBMs, you have created a use case. They haven't though, neither has the US for that matter.
We publicly released we have successfully tested a hyper sonic weapon and recently there’s been public calls from top military and government officials to treat this like Sputnik. Basically invest heavily into developing and surpassing Russia and chinas capabilities, amount and arsenal in both offensive and defensive situations.
Basically we have them, we tested them and have the capability to manufacture a lot of hypersonic weapons. It just hasn’t been publicly or officially announced yet. I imagine they’re waiting for Russia and china to officially publicly show their hand to the world. Instead of us showing ours first. Based on the increase in articles and various media sources covering this topic, claiming we are behind China and Russia. I’d imagine, congress, top military brass, aerospace, and military manufacturers are gearing up to publicly announce we need to make and develop hypersonic weapons like yesterday to get fat ever expanding billion dollar contracts.
Long story short, we have them. We are waiting for china and Russia to officially announce and show to the world their capabilities and arsenal, so that people can cash in on fat contracts and win elections and shit.
Russia, China, and the U.S. both have the capabilities to completely shut down each other’s power grid. Everyone knows what everyone is capable off and what their doing. To much money, too much egos, too much internet, too much surveillance, too many spies, too many leakers to keep anything secret.
There’s no point. Neither russia or China is close to developing a system that can come close to countering a icbm/slbm based attack. It would be a whole lot of money for minimal tangible gain. If you’re asking why the us doesn’t have something to go after tactical this would fly in the face of the US’s “massive retaliation” policy.
[удалено]
Having a missile that can intercept a nuke is miles from having the capability to defend against an all out attack. Russia and the us have had Abms since the late 50’s. The us and Russia have deployed mid course defend missiles for decades but that hasn’t raised their confidence. The simple answer for this is that the math just doesn’t work out. Win a minute man costs $30 million and the missile that you need to intercept it costs $75 million it’s not looking too good. Add onto this that you need to fire 3-4 interceptors per icbm to guarantee a favorable Pk. Of course you could just wait for terminal but that opens up an entire pantry of cans of worms that I don’t want to talk about. TLDR ballistic missile defense costs to much to be viable and it’s counterable by just building more nukes.
[удалено]
Same success rate as what? China’s and Russia’s missiles are likely as bad if not worse.
Do we know the success rate of these tests? Would like to know because defending against ICBM attacks is an extremely difficult thing to do. When intercepting ICBMs you’d also want to launch 2-3 missiles for every incoming ICBM, and considering the amount of territory to be covered, that means a large interceptor system is needed, which to my knowledge neither the US, China, or Russia has successfully deployed.
[удалено]
If you believe publicly available data for Chinese missiles then they have never failed a single test. China doesn’t have near the same transparency as the us and only let people see their weapon successes.
Anything that flies into space is visible on radar for thousands of miles around and has to be announced beforehand to prevent it from being mistaken as an actual attack. These are issued as NOTAMs weeks in advance. If there was a failure, US would both know and heavily publicize it. I can believe that the tests were in highly idealized conditions though.
China has never failed an abm test got it. Also China does its missile tests out in the taklamakan desert which the us doesn’t cover with radar. If they treat it anything like say Area 51 then there’s a permanent restriction.
US has satellites and long range radar like Jindalee in Australia that can see high flying rockets.
And what makes you think the US would announce that. Sounds like a great way to give away your capabilities. The only launches that the Jindlee site is known to be able to track from takeoff our ones from China’s coast.
>“massive retaliation” policy. I assume that means Counter-Value targets from SSBNs? Basically wipe out all major cities and ports? China has been building a lot of silos to keep the US guessing on which silos are actually armed for the possibility that the US could potentially launch a first strike Counter-Force attack, which is interesting. Because that means the Chinese think it might be possible for the US to actually pull it off, because they wouldn't waste their time building those extra silos if they didn't think it was possible.
No, it means that in response to the Russia say nuking a carrier group the us would start glassing everything. The point of this is to allow The US to leverage it’s conventional superiority without the risk of getting hit by a tactical nuke.
If we look at the calculation Pf Ren made, he stipulates that 3 Minuteman could render the facility to launch inoperable, so in the 2010s, in a non-war state, the % of China successfully launching like **1** nuke after a first strike is like 1% or something insanely low, and the chance for a wartime stance is a bit higher. I don't recall the precise #, but it was pretty much accepted back then that if the US launches a first strike, China only has a rudimentary form of response.
What purpose is there in targeting silos? The US has been able to track ballistic missile launches in 1961 when BMEWS went operational. Before that the Pine Tree line, failed MCL, and DEW for tracking bombers. These days it's SBIRS/STSS, UEWR, and AN/TPQ-2s. If China or Russia were to launch a massed attack, the US would know. The same goes in all three directions. Same goes with SLBMs, a Trident D5 is just as trackable as a Minuteman III. The primary targets of US nuclear weapons are people, MAD. There is **zero** value in targeting silos, the launch **will be detected** and the reaction will simply be to launch missiles before the targets can be impacted.
>What purpose is there in targeting silos? To prevent a Counter-Value retaliatory strike.
Which would require first strike, which I just explained, is impossible.
All ICBMs are hypersonic. They fly up out of the atmosphere, break up into multiple separate warheads that all reenter at hypersonic speeds that are really hard to intercept. There is no real need for hypersonic atmospheric cruise missiles.
They could have their uses, but it's kind of a niche area.
Because that’s a SLBM
Why can't it be fired from a SLBM?
every SLBM and ICBM is hypersonic
I'm talking about HGVs and HCM
hypersonic cruise missiles are being developed, no one has them yet. Google the following projects hifire, scifire, hawc, mohawc HGV - the US is close to deploying LRHW, again no one has any HGV as confirmed as deployed.
The DF-100/CJ-100 is a hypersonic cruise missile that’s in service with the PLARF across multiple brigades for a few years now. It’s weirdly one of those weapons systems that should be talked about a lot more than it is but it kinda got drowned out by the marketing around the DF-17/21D/26 because to most people it doesn’t really sound all that novel or ‘new’ compared to its ballistic stablemates.
Is that a true hypersonic cruise missile (with a scramjet), or just a high supersonic ramjet? It looks like what little info I can find makes it seem to be mach 4ish, which makes me lean towards the latter. (I also don't believe that China has reliable, deployable scramjet capability) (Similarly, I don't believe the Russian Zircon exists in any functional form)
Hypersonic missiles don’t need a particular mode of propulsion, in the strictest terms it’s to do with its speed, anywhere from mach 5+, but in the context of modern hypersonic weapons it’s a combination of speed and it’s flight profile, where it cruises at an altitude between the top of the stratosphere (50km) and the Ionosphere (100-150km), making it almost impossible for both atmospheric and exoatmospheric interceptors to shoot down, the former because it’s too high for their control fins to manoeuvre the interceptor due to the atmosphere being too thin, the latter because it’s too low for the guidance thrusters of the interceptor to work due to the atmosphere being too thick, a kind of goldilocks zone if you’re looking to kill carriers. They also give far less early warning than a traditional ballistic missile because post boost phase they from down from the thermosphere to their ionosphere/stratosphere cruising altitude meaning they don’t appear on long range sensors till they are much closer. Whether you accomplish this through a rocket booster launching a hypersonic glide vehicle, a scramjet powered missile, or by the power of a million angry caffeinated pigeons is completely irrelevant as long as it meets the minimum speed requirements and follows the sub ballistic flightpath. Re the Zircon, it kinda doesn’t matter your beliefs. The Russians used them, they publicised that they did, and it was verified by western defence/intelligence services. There isn’t a single subject matter expert or government claiming that the Zircon wasn’t used or that it wasn’t a hypersonic missile, in fact the Russians have used several throughout the war and it’s never been questioned by their adversaries, many of whom would love to prove Russia wrong and humiliate it. The issues the Zircon as a system has are many, but as a missile, it exists, it works, and it’s been used several times in combat (Edit: Zircon hasn’t been tested in combat yet, the Kinzhal has). It’s greatest weaknesses are that the Russians can’t produce them in the numbers needed to overwhelm a densely defended target like an aircraft carrier, that there’s approximately 10 Mig-31’s modified as launch carriers only, and that the Russian ISR network isn’t advanced or dense enough to provide a constant stream of targeting information. All of these issues however, the Chinese don’t have, their hypersonic missile arsenal is huge, has various delivery methods on land, sea, and air, they have an effective, distributed and redundant ISR network to provide the targeting information needed, and a solid & well trained doctrine for their use.
Afaik Zircon has never been used in combat, you're probably thinking of Kinzhal, which has seen limited use in Ukraine
You are entirely correct, I’m a bit of a derp. I’ll change it.
Because you don’t have to fire a slbm in a orbital manner, you can do oblique shots.
They can’t already extinguish all human life?
>Why doesn't the US go for nuclear armed hypersonic weapons? What benefit does the US get from it, that it doesn't already have? I assume you are referring to a new class of hypersonic weapons here, not the existing ballistic missiles. There are limited funds available(despite the claims of the "one gorellerion dollars are wasted on defense" crowd), and even a narrowly defined nuclear delivery system, like the Sentinel, is enormously expensive. Now, if Russia or China began building a missile defense system that could catch the majority of incoming ICBMs, you have created a use case. They haven't though, neither has the US for that matter.
We have had them for 50++ years.... They're called ICBMs....
We publicly released we have successfully tested a hyper sonic weapon and recently there’s been public calls from top military and government officials to treat this like Sputnik. Basically invest heavily into developing and surpassing Russia and chinas capabilities, amount and arsenal in both offensive and defensive situations. Basically we have them, we tested them and have the capability to manufacture a lot of hypersonic weapons. It just hasn’t been publicly or officially announced yet. I imagine they’re waiting for Russia and china to officially publicly show their hand to the world. Instead of us showing ours first. Based on the increase in articles and various media sources covering this topic, claiming we are behind China and Russia. I’d imagine, congress, top military brass, aerospace, and military manufacturers are gearing up to publicly announce we need to make and develop hypersonic weapons like yesterday to get fat ever expanding billion dollar contracts. Long story short, we have them. We are waiting for china and Russia to officially announce and show to the world their capabilities and arsenal, so that people can cash in on fat contracts and win elections and shit. Russia, China, and the U.S. both have the capabilities to completely shut down each other’s power grid. Everyone knows what everyone is capable off and what their doing. To much money, too much egos, too much internet, too much surveillance, too many spies, too many leakers to keep anything secret.