America can now bomb anywhere, in <1 hour.

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GasBandit

GasBandit

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http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-pentagon-successfully-hypersonic.html


The Pentagon on Thursday held a successful test flight of a flying bomb that travels faster than the speed of sound and will give military planners the ability to strike targets anywhere in the world in less than a hour.

Launched by rocket from Hawaii at 1130 GMT, the "Advanced Hypersonic Weapon," or AHW, glided through the upper atmosphere over the Pacific "at hypersonic speed" before hitting its target on the Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands, a Pentagon statement said.

Kwajalein is about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) southwest of Hawaii. The Pentagon did not say what top speeds were reached by the vehicle, which unlike a ballistic missile is maneuverable.
Scientists classify hypersonic speeds as those that exceed Mach 5 -- or five times the speed of sound -- 3,728 miles (6,000 kilometers) an hour.

The test aimed to gather data on "aerodynamics, navigation, guidance and control, and thermal protection technologies," said Lieutenant Colonel Melinda Morgan, a Pentagon spokeswoman.
The US Army's AHW project is part of "Prompt Global Strike" program which seeks to give the US military the means to deliver conventional weapons anywhere in the world within an hour.
On August 11, the Pentagon test flew another hypersonic glider dubbed HTV-2, which is capable of flying 27,000 kilometers per hour, but it was a failure.

The AHW's range is less than that of the HTV-2, the Congressional Research Service said in a report, without providing specifics.

The Pentagon has invested 239.9 million dollars in the Global Strike program this year, including 69 million for the flying bomb tested Thursday, CRS said.
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GasBandit

GasBandit

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Dave said:
That's what we need. More bombs.
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I have to point out this isn't just "another bomb," this is a bomb that you can't shoot down and don't have time to evacuate from. And it isn't nuclear, so that stigma isn't applied in using it. It's a weapon that can wipe out your capital before the news reaches you that war has been declared.

It's the closest that we've come to pushbutton death, ever.
 
C

Chibibar

I thought it was just a delivery system. Technically you can arm it with anything right?
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Chibibar said:
I thought it was just a delivery system. Technically you can arm it with anything right?
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Not exactly. While I am no nuclear scientist, I do know that what's involved in "nuking" a target is different from just smashing into it with conventional explosives. It's actually more devastating if the nuclear explosion originates in the air above the target rather than at ground level. I'm sure that's just the tip of the iceberg.

But at 27000 km/hr, even a lead slug would appear near-nuclear in devastation.
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

30 minutes or it's free...
Added at: 20:31
ooooh, on Wikipedia they are talking like it is a reusable robotic vehicle. That is dropping bombs. wholly crap!
Added at: 20:36
sixpackshaker said:
30 minutes or it's free...
Added at: 20:31
ooooh, on Wikipedia they are talking like it is a reusable robotic vehicle. That is dropping bombs. wholly crap!
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nope this test is just a 2k lbs. warhead.
A ballistic normal warhead could still start global nuclear war.
 
strawman

strawman

Chibibar said:
I thought it was just a delivery system. Technically you can arm it with anything right?
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Undoubtedly we could, however there are nuclear non-proliferation treaties that may put the kibosh on us arming them and keeping them around just in case.

AHW could be fitted with a 900-pound penetrator warhead or 900 pounds of rods to impact at Mach 4 speed
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Ostensibly they are not nuclear weapons, per se.

That doesn't mean that they aren't outfitted with the requisite chamber to fit a nuclear warhead. A 1mt warhead is plenty big enough to destroy the better part of a large city, and small enough to fit in this type of device.

However, this particular weapon was designed specifically to be non-nuclear. The original thought was to place conventional weapons into defunct nuclear missiles. The problem? Enemies would not be able to tell them apart, and launching a conventional weapon in an ICBM may initiate a nuclear response long before the conventional load detonates.

So the intention is to never outfit them with nuclear warheads as a matter of course, so if we do fire one towards or over a nuclear equipped enemy (heaven forbid at them) they won't go "ballistic".

That doesn't mean they won't just happen to have carriers that fit a typical nuclear warhead and make it fit into the glider. But it does mean we can't have any pre-loaded, on the ground, ready to go.

However, this type of weapon may still invite a nuclear response, since the phenomenally fast first strike capability of even 900lb of rods is so huge that there's no easy way to win against it without upping the ante.

http://www.captainsjournal.com/2011...pons-has-a-new-age-of-remote-warfare-arrived/

Older article near the start of development about the impetus and treaty ramifications:
http://sciencesecurity.livejournal.com/68280.html
 
C

Chibibar

I was thinking of more those mini-warhead types (similar to Iron Man Jerico weapon system)
 
TommiR

TommiR

GasBandit said:
Not exactly. While I am no nuclear scientist, I do know that what's involved in "nuking" a target is different from just smashing into it with conventional explosives. It's actually more devastating if the nuclear explosion originates in the air above the target rather than at ground level. I'm sure that's just the tip of the iceberg.
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In most cases, but that depends. I'm no nuclear scientist either, but as I've understood it, the difference is whether you want to kill something specific that is hard, or are going for AoE.

In a ground burst, the destruction is immense at ground zero, but as the energy gets radiated in all directions, most of it will go into the ground or skywards, with only a narrow band being useful to knock nearby stuff over. In an airburst, a much higher percentage of the energy (basically everything radiating downwards) will be usefully employed in creating mayhem, with the disadvantage that truly hard targets might not be destroyed. If you want to knock down a city, low airbursts are the way to go, with the added bonus that there is a lot less fallout as less material is scooped up, irradiated, and thrown out from the top. But if you want to take out for example an enemy nuclear silo, a direct hit with a groundburst is required (generating plenty of fallout).
But at 27000 km/hr, even a lead slug would appear near-nuclear in devastation.
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Could be less than you might think. If my math (and physics) is correct, a 1 ton mass striking a target at 27,000 km/h yields an explosion of under 0,7 kilotonnes, about the same as a low-yield nuclear artillery shell. Hiroshima was hit by about 15 kt, while modern strategic warheads may usually be a couple of hundreds of kt.

I mean, the thing we're talking about here will certainly be quite heavy, of course (a Tomahawk cruise missile is about 1.3 tonnes), but the effects of mass scale linearly.
 
B

Biannoshufu

This news makes me incredibly happy for the future of humanity. =\
 
Null

Null

Oh, I thought this was that satellite mounted system that was basically an orbital railgun firing tungsten rods the size of telephone poles. Cracked did a feature on that a while ago.
 
HCGLNS

HCGLNS

This is impressive, it's not something that needs to take a nuke though. It's fast enough to first strike the enemy's nuclear arsenal leaving the US as the only remaining nuke monger.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

HCGLNS said:
This is impressive, it's not something that needs to take a nuke though. It's fast enough to first strike the enemy's nuclear arsenal leaving the US as the only remaining nuke monger.
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I think this is the idea. Our missile defense system has been a flop so far, so we basically need something that can take our their capabilities before they can fire at us... and possibly to take out someone else's capabilities before they fire on someone else.
 
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