But they wouldn't give Trump enough time to dramatically call them back at the last minute. If he miscalculates his pause for effect the missiles could have already hit and he could unintentionally start a war when all he wanted was a bit of a distraction...
6
Men, Frightened to death, designing death.
14
My first reaction reading this thoroughly written, essential-to-know article was 'national security concerns and its implications (and it played in my head Trump potentially saying The Times is sabotaging national security & calling it "fake news") but soon enough the next episode played - the public's right to know what in fact entails what could effortlessly lead to their very destruction, an act being initiated by its government without their knowledge.
As for Secretary Pomeo: the man, (including Bolton, the men) need to take their oaths of their offices seriously and respect international norms, values and rules of diplomacy.
Imagine how much the everyday citizen of Russia & China know about this talkless of voting rights to issues as deadly as this if the U.S.'s are equally largely in the dark! (Thanks The Times for the awareness).
Everyone, Americans, Chinese, Russians, citizens of every country should be scared.
4
Mutually Assured Destruction is a decision not a condition. If governments made it clear that any attack would trigger an automated catastrophic response then MAD would remain in place. Only an idiot would think there is a way to win. The real problem is that there are religious lunatics who believe in the rapture running our government. They want to trigger Armageddon. Its just what they have been waiting for.
12
As with all advocacy, there is a bending of truth. “This is a country that produced an atom bomb under the stress of wartime in three years from the day we decided to do it,” sounds true, right?
The question is "which country?" No country alone developed the A-bomb -- even if you consider immigrants true Americans with no past.
The implication that technologies and science started at T=0 with nothing is false. An academic system had come up with most of the pieces, and implementation took 3 years. Like developing moral vision, everything takes time.
9
People take note: planning for warfare is real and many people do it full-time. Also, $2b is actually not very much.
6
It appears that some men create and then solve problems associated with mass destruction, but that is not enough as they also create problems for women which men will never experience.
The very concept of war is an absurdity that few men in government address with reason which is the same approach they take to abortion.
How can anyone trust men, who exhibit no concern sending our children off to the death of war and accept hypersonic weapons of death as a means of control, to bring reason to the abortion debate?
2
Not worried. Just put up my force field.
3
The tech nerd in me says, "cool!" The fear of hostile foreign countries in me says, "build 'em quick and build 'em better!" But the realist says, this is yet another waste of $ billions upon billions, and I just think: if we spent this money funding businesses and trade partnership and educational opportunities linking our country together with peaceful and economic ties, we could create world peace. Wouldn't that be better than this endless, destructive hostility?
16
Star Wars all over again. The military-industrial complex is salivating at the money being thrown at the problem.
6
That which leads to mental illness is to be observed: If your first thought is wrong, then the “logic” of your premise is wrong. War is an mental illness.
3
We all need to watch the movie “Dr. Strangelove” again.
4
Not to worry. The greedy Oligarchs in Russia will soon bankrupt the country into insignificance.
3
The strategic weapons policies of the United States have always been based on the false assumption that our opponents operate from the same fundamental premise that we do, that we are the good guys and that they are the bad guys. It should be a blinding flash of the obvious that this is not the case; nobody wakes up in the morning thinking that they are the bad guys. And mammalian guano paranoia is not the exclusive property of the other (bad) side. Perhaps a little less faith in technological solutions and a little more respect for honest game theory is in order. Unfortunately the mindset that leans towards technological advantage, not matter how fleeting that advantage may be, and no matter how less stable the subsequent state of rebalance might be, has been ascendent since the MIRV debate in the early 60's.
5
No, they're not unstoppable. They're a relatively minor increase in speed in an existing class of weapons. Yes, they will generate a lot of spending to maintain and improve combat capacity and match opposing forces. Remove the jargon, and it's a Bigger Better Stick argument. The only working reality in all this hype is that the US will be confronted with hypersonic systems at some point in the future. The level of vagueness about policy is no surprise. Politicians are typically a generation behind whatever they're supposed to be administering, and somewhat further behind with miliktary technologies.
4
As this description of the new global arms race is described it raises the question: Is this one giant backward leap for mankind?
Paradoxically, the technologies that are being researched in China, Russia, and the United States could also be used to create a very cheap source of electricity that would permit Earth's human population to evolve its fossil energy to solar electricity and save humankind from a global warming catastrophe.
1st proposed by Peter Glaser in 1968, space solar satellites in geosynchronous orbit would convert sunlight to electricity. The electric power from the space solar satellites would then be converted to microwave power and beamed to virtually any spot on Earth where it is converted to AC power and fed to power grids.
Beamed space solar power will yield enormous benefits. Unlike ground based solar farms which only generate power 20% of the time, space solar power satellites in GEO orbit deliver power 100% of the time, 24/7.
There is no need for the expensive energy storage systems required for ground based solar farms. 2nd, space based solar does not need large ground areas with their environmental problems, vulnerability to storms, local inhabitant objections, etc. 3rd, solar power can be beamed to virtually any location on the planet.
James Powell, Maglev's inventor, describes in his book "Spaceship Earth", a Maglev launch system that can place satellites in orbit at less than 1% of chemical rocket cost providing very cheap power.
3
So what will get us first, Hypersonic missiles, AI Global Warming. Pollution, some Godawful pandemic, or just anxiety of all this.
2
Hypersonics are an interesting evolution in missile technology.
Basically.... these are a new generation of kinetic weapons... where the hypersonic impact does all the penetration and kinetic damage to the target.
As such.. they can be small, compact, and numerous... such that you can saturate a target to insure the target is unable to defend itself. This does represent a very clear vulnerability to large slow moving targets like naval task groups (which all major powers deploy at sea).
This makes for a great stand-off defense for nations like China in the South China Sea against foreign sea borne incursions.
The more interesting evolution will be how they adapt this for anti-submarine warfare.. where the missile must stay intact until impact... which means it is basically a bullet.
1
Not so "interesting" for the people they kill. It is this kind of emotionally absent consideration of warfare and killing that leads to horrors like the Holocaust and will eventually lead to the demise of mankind. Very interesting...
4
Complexity, especially deadly complexity, is never amenable to solution by bumperstickers. The problem I see evidenced by the most recommended Readers Picks is a refusal to deal with the reality that other countries will develope these weapons whether or not the U.S. chooses to do so. It is one thing to say we could use the money for better things. It's another to figure out how to deal with the reality.
One thing few people keep in mind is that the very desire on both the Right and Left to replace Congress with young, "uncompromising untainted" newcomers would deny the experience and perspective necessary to deal with such complex and momentous issues. Just saying NO! to self-serving industry lobbyists by aspirational newbies will not solve the problem. That doesn't mean there aren't younger, excellent people out there to put into Congress. What it does mean is that we should not toss out lots of people just because they've been around awhile. As California learned with term limits, if you dump all your experienced legislators, the only people around the capitol who actually know how things work are the lobbyists who are there forever.
5
One question.
Is there any civilian application of this supersonic technology?
1
How will we ever pay for this?
I just hope that some of our species manage to colonize another planet before they destroy this one. Unfortunately, it appears that the production of these horrific weapons, and their use, will outstrip our ability to have at least some of us escape beforehand.
1
Hypersonic hyperbole. The authors forgot to mention supercavitating torpedoes, the undersea equivalent of hypersonic missiles. Old tech, but with fascinating implications.
Hypersonics will have their place, especially against stationary targets-- those that can be location identified and can't move in a short period of time-- and for decapitation strikes (which the US is presently immune to since we don't have an effective leader). Payload is generally inadequate against more mobile targets where a near miss is a fail, unless one goes nuclear which leads to MAD. Terminal guidance is more important than velocity, anyone can get a hypersonic to hit a specified dot on the ground, but having terminal guidance work though the plasma and thermal effects plus have delta V to change direction within the detection time/range envelope... that is more difficult.
So we have a aerial swarm drone attack on a carrier group, which clutters the atmosphere; with simultaneous hypersonic conventionals which probably miss the carrier but shield the noise from supercavitating torpedoes from sleeper drones which take out the Aegis cruisers. Carrier group flees having lost top cover. Tactical win, possibly strategic win if a lucky hit takes out the carrier.
2
Bomber gap, missile gap and now hypersonic missile gap. So we are tossing MAD out the window and replacing it with what?
The bright side of this is that we can stop worrying about global warming. Our future is nuclear winter.
3
It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to see where all this leads. Maybe we will get there before we destroy the whole of the planet, making it impossible for any species to survive.
1
Hypersonics have a specific light signature, and light travels much faster than sound. The future of warfare will be quick, dependent on automated detection, and involve a directed energy response. pew pew. ;-)
2
Conventional hypersonics don't trouble me that much I suppose.
In a way, if everyone gets hypersonics, the U.S. might be advantaged, as the U.S. needs to fight abroad, far from home. And it takes a long time to send a B-2 from Kansas.
But what are China and Russia going to do with conventional hypersonics? Not hit the U.S. mainland (if we are talking about WW3 then I don't think hypersonics are the deciding factor), but use them to deny the U.S. access to a regional conflict like a battle for Taiwan. But China probably already has enough intermediate range ballistic missiles to overwhelm the U.S. air bases in Asia/Pacific and potentially accomplish that without the need for hypersonics.
Now maybe hypersonics can more easily hit our carriers (who might have more warning from a ballistic launch and at least have a chance to prepare or defend the attack).
Now I thought maybe nuclear tipped hypersonics could put our strategic nuclear missile subs at increased danger--the enemy could target a launching sub with a hypersonic carrying a nuclear warhead potentially before the sub could get all of its missiles off. But I just searched and discovered our Ohio class missile subs can get their entire payload off in like 5 minutes.
And we aren't launching our nukes on warning, so whether a ballistic missile or hypersonic nuke attack hits D.C. I'm not sure it makes a difference in terms of nuclear deterrence or risk of an accidental launch.
2
Hate to be a doubter. The weakness of such weapons is there terminal guidance. As the article implies the missile at speed ionizes the air in front and around it, blocking sensors and communications. As the author admits, the weapons must slow to allow the guidance to function. At that point, the missile is vulnerable to modern ADA systems.
It would seem that one benefit of such a system is it would force the potential target to invest in shorter more point defense systems just like the Reagan era cruise missiles did.
That vulnerability would be even greater if the target were mobile. The missile would have to locate the target and then determine the necessary maneuvers, adding more time for defensive systems to engage.
But, they look to make war even scarier than in the past.
1
It appears that, if climate upheaval doesn't doom the human race, these weapons might. No time to ponder extinction, just give the order.
1
There is a technology that is capable of destroying these missiles effectively and with less expense than any existing or future missile in development. How can we compete with new technology and create a paradigm change against existing major missile producing companies?
The problem with apocalyptic weapons and the rush to enhance such weaponry (hypersonics in development today - imagine the technology available if the world powers are still in such a standoff a 100 years from now) is that with any human endeavor something always goes wrong over time. The odds may be low over say a year's time period, but what about a 100 years? 1000 years? 10000 years? 100k years? Statistically something will touch off oblivion on earth; an apocalyptic regime, technological error (almost happened several times - closest was in 1983 when a Soviet satellite malfunctioned), or military misjudgment. Humanity needs to thread of very small needle to avoid such an outcome, leaving its militarism and tribalism in the past.
1
At some point, all the billions spent on these weapons by us and other nations and all the new technology that will result to deter and render them useless and the nonstop ratchet of paranoia and mindless posturing even as our shared prosperity depends on each other and our shared fate depends on our cooperation…
At some point…
You have to stand back, look at the folly and…
Laugh.
It really is quite stupidly hysterical.
And, maybe the sheer comical stupidity of it all is the best way to turn the public against it.
1
Incredible science, manufacturing prowess.
Not only do I not have to worry about going up in a puff of smoke, I won’t have any warning because it all happened so fast… Just as well, for the end of the world is going to come one way or the other might as well be quick!
2
The world is facing massive problems from over heating, pollution and overpopulation: the solution from the "best and the brightest" - and certainly the most well paid engineers - is to develop more efficient means to kill. What's more, to make new systems so fast that human beings are far too slow to intervene if there is a malfunction, and eliminating that ghastly human queasiness over observed mayhem.
3
@cheryl: What a complete waste my physics education feels like now.
This new technology should concern everyone. Would anyone trust Trump or Putin or Xi with a button that could unleash a rapid first strike capable of decapitating foreign military and political leadership plus any retaliatory assets?
Also, do we trust that our expensive and hard earned technical capabilities will remain secure from spying, traitors, and cyber theft? Or that adversaries won't develop better technology?
Nuclear weapons and MAD should be enough to minimize full scale superpower wars. There's no need to spend untold billions to gain a fleeting advantage on weapons that are more likely to be used offensively. Or that shorten the fuse for opponents to use theirs defensively. Or that confuse everyone about everyone else's capabilities.
Instead, spend the money on diplomacy, anti-poverty programs, population control, environmental restoration, and climate change mitigation. Improve everyone's quality of life. Don't create new, easier ways to kill people.
1
A 3200 acre site stretching across multiple counties in New Mexico??? Do the math.
1
If they restore Mutually Assured Destruction, they're worth it. We have gotten to close to an unstable situation with missile defenses which might tempt one party or the other to risk an offensive loss. Is MAD desirable? No, but consider the alternative of someone creating an offensive attack.
1
Fascinating. They will probably make aircraft carriers obsolete unless we can develop an electronic countermeasure that messes with their guidance system. And much as Iran hacked one of our drones and brought it down for a landing, we'll have to watch out for those who can turn the weapon against us.
@David Doney
Carriers may already be "obsolete" for sustained near-peer all out war. There is still no great solution for a cruise missile barrage, even if one cruise missile is fairly easy to defeat.
But for limited wars, raiding attacks, or wars against regional powers, they can be enormously powerful, flexible platforms. They can replace some overseas bases entirely, are much easier to defend and supply than a temporary outpost in the middle of nowhere and do not require asking permission from a host country.
Carriers are still uniquely powerful, just not in the way they were in WWII.
1
Why exactly is France, a NATO member and supposed ally of the US, working with Russia to develop advanced weapons systems?
2
"France and India have active hypersonics development programs, and each is working in partnership with Russia, according to a 2017 report by the Rand Corp."
Really ? France and India are working with Russia on a strategic program.
How does that make any sense ?
2
With such weapons, it is important that we have a stable president who would not incite an adversary to strike first.
I know, the Republicans do not consider such qualities for their candidates.
1
The people do not want to spend their treasure on weapons that we all know will never be used, or that if used will end the world. But somehow our precious and limited wealth is always commandeered for these dangerous and pointless projects. The entire media sphere even now talks about these weapons in terms of national security instead of in terms of what they really are: the theft of our future for the benefit of a narrow industrial interest, the military industrial complex. It is clear that we would all be safer if every child was given a good free public education, and if our population was not encumbered with the chains of debt that drain most of our resources into the financial market. We are the country that went to the moon with only slide rules and seat of the pants engineering, but today we can't put anyone into space without renting space on other countries rockets. And we could not again land a man on the moon with less than ten years of dedicated engineering development. We have thrown away our chances at creating a better society and following our dreams into space for the sake of demigods and their twisted bitter followers who have no clear connection to their fellowman. We are all working like slaves to build hypersonic pyramids based on fantasies as wild as the Pharaohs dreams of reincarnation. The difference is that we claim to be a democracy that works for the will of the people. Then why can't the voice of the people be heard?
3
The way to stop hypersonic weapons is to pre-empt the enemies use with a first strike. Elon Musk is right about population collapse but for all the wrong reason. We are securely and perhaps irreversibly sliding towards self-destruction as a species through AI guided hypersonic weapons which will when proliferated give every nation and non-state actor the power to confront and attack enemies globally. The only defense will be to strike first. The result is exponentially more dangerous threat environment where the time to identify and react to an enemy attack will be counted in seconds (such that AI will need to be deployed to issue retaliatory strikes). Knowledge in the hands of homicidal chimps is never a good thing and our collective knowledge has evolved exponentially faster than our morality and self-control. The planet is entering a critical period wherein potable water supplies will dwindle, sea levels will rise and conflict with WMD will be the rule and not the exception. If anyone expects sane rational minds to prevail and self-police humanity, they would have to be delusional and ignorant of history.
1
Wrong on so many levels. These thoughts make the presumption that change in economic and political systems are unable to be conceived in recognition of the ultimate demise of our planet and its civilizations. Does the allure of world domination over a planet with limited water supply, scarred with environmental, nuclear and human waste have greater appeal to us as a people when compared to future generations of family, progress and love of life? Is there a distinction between ultimate reasons for living between the wealthy, powerful, poor or desolate? Hope. That is the one thing we all share, and it’s root is in the future. No one, except Maganuts, hope for the past.
Ever notice that the citizens of the United States have little to no input into US military and foreign policy? It’s barely discussed during campaigns and, in any case, Congress has foolishly ceded its Constitutional war-making powers to the Executive Branch. This needs to change.
4
@....a reader.....
Suggestions?
@IsThisThingWorking
See James Burnham's 1959 "Congress and the American Tradition"
@....a reader.....
If you gave the average citizen a blank world map, how many countries could they write the correct name in for?
There is a reason both parties adopt similar foreign policy positions and keep the people out of it as much as possible. International relations are a complex and in some sense lawless setting where game theory is often the most powerful tool. Most people, even otherwise smart people, are completely terrible at game theory but often do not realize it - consider the nonsense surrounding the recent final Jeopardy game for James because of his small but correct wager in Final Jeopardy.
It seems like the only use for these things would be against aircraft carriers, which now cost us 11 billion each (just for the ship).
I suppose our arms merchants can sell them to those who do not want our carriers around for a highly profitable sum.
2
One would hope that the same reluctance to use nuclear weapons is applied to hypersonic weapons. How quickly a target can be hit after a hypersonic weapon is fired is not much different than the instant the trigger of a gun is pulled to the impact of that projectile.
As we are taught during firearms training, pulling the trigger is a serious commitment, and you are responsible for all that transpires afterwards.
2
@solar farmer
Exactly, right. We spend all this brain power and all this money building them, and then, we stockpile them.
We create all these strategies to survive them should we use them. And they sit. And we sit stressed over the possibilities, wondering how to create meaning from our lives with this existential threat hanging over us.
That guy has a gazillions degrees which he spent most of his whole lifetime dedicated to making newer, better? weapons. All designed to wipe out all life, including his life. I actually laughed when I started to read this article.
I find it hard to take it seriously. You are trying to design a better death. Why?
2
All of this money spent on defense and 19 guys with box cutters had little problem attacking New York City.
4
@tom harrison
In some sense (and to be kind), we were playing with fire to allow that vulnerability to persist long after it was clear suicidal attackers existed. This is an example of where applying game theory to the problem would have prevented the attack, but this may have come at a political cost (alarming the public, security delays, etc) that those in office (somehow) found intolerable.
1
“Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”
- Dwight D.
He must be spinning about Mach 15 in his grave!
2
@Ralph: Ike golfed through it all while it was metastasizing.
It isn't hypersonic missiles that are starting a new arms race, it's Mike Griffin and others who want a new arms race, whether for personal enrichment or because they love to buy unimaginably expensive and deadly weapons with our money.
2
@Dan Woodard MD: Meanwhile the controls on the NYC subways date back to the Depression. One wonders if they were installed to create jobs back then.
3
Anyone behind the ridiculous, Reagan era, idea for "Star Wars" should certainly NOT be listened to by congress. The man is a war monger and a lunatic.
This kind of new weapon system will only lead to more of America's treasure wasted. Worse, it will lead to a world that is even less safe from nuclear destruction than it is now.
3
(Company) (Share Price) (Percent Increase 25 Yrs)
Lockheed Martin, $359,36, 1,343%
General Dynamics, $177.43, 1,526%
Raytheon, $183.13, 5,052%
Boeing, $371.84, 1,383%
United Technologies, $128.75, 1,557%
Northrop Grumman, $322.16, 1,624%
Profit incentivizes production. The more we reward for output, the more is produced.
In the past 25 years, the U.S. has incentivized our largest contractors. When companies are thus incentivized, they're going to spend ever more dollars to maximize profit. This principle comes straight out of conservative ideology.
How much is too much? Our military-foreign policy establishment is a macroeconomic reflection of the NRA. One canever be too well-armed. Own a couple of guns for self-protection? Buy five more, buy ten more if need be. This rewards those who make the guns. Our military-foreign policy establishment, in other words, is the NRA on steroids.
There once was a school of thought that if the government owned the means of production for war, it would not operate on the profit principle and thus would have less incentive to want to go to war.
There are doubtless good people who work in the military-foreign policy establishment. Just as there are doubtless many good people who work for the big banks. But these people are not infallible.
Ask yourself this: Have teachers' salaries been increasing at the same rate as our military contractors' have been? Where are our priorities if it isn't to educate people?
2
@sthomas1957. Sorry, the Raytheon return should be 505% over 25 years. I was in a hurry at work.
Seems to me slamming self made hypersonic metal objects into the earth would possibly result in...extinction level events?
2
This brings to mind a quote attributed to Albert Einstein:
“I don’t know what weapons might be used in World War III. But there isn’t any doubt what weapons will be used in World War IV — Stone spears.”
5
It is absolutely terrifying to understand how the proliferation of these weapons will compress reaction times to mere minutes when detecting an active threat. In such an environment mutual deterrence is almost impossible and they are more likely to trigger instantaneous massive reactions rather than prevent them. Instead of engaging in this new arms race we need to get the main actors, Russia, China, and ourselves, to realize that there is limited advantage to acquiring these weapons and that their development needs to stop now. It probably won’t happen but we have to try,
1
Who ever thought we'd long for the good old days of Mutually Assured Destruction? We were so much safer.
Can we all take a vote to stop this one-upmanship before it goes horribly wrong. The last man standing would inherit a dead planet. It's beyond madness.
3
Putin watched Reagan bring down the USSR by making its citizens "tighten their belts" to pay for Star Wars. He is now copying the Reagan playbook, making the US go further into debt to keep up. This is what we can thank George W. Bush, who in thrall to John Bolton, withdrew the U.S. from the ABM treaty. If there is ever one launch of a nuclear-tipped hypersonic missile, the invasion of Iraq will pale in comparison.
2
@Roger Evans - And I am sure Putin is happy that we have wasted a trillion or so in Afghanistan and are no closer to winning than the Soviets were.
4
W?
Just press Hillary's Reset Button and all will be well with Russia.
Or as Hillary also suggested, just ignore Putin.
Glad she was yanked before she did any more damage.
But yeah W. You betcha.
1
This article has Mike Griffin written all over it. The reality is that even the primitive Iraqi Scud missiles were seldom stopped by our high-tech Patriots. Despite billions in spending, there is no defense against even the older Russian ICBMs. Obama, Clinton and even Reagan and Bush worked to persuade both sides to disarm. You can only kill me once, and a 50 year old nuclear warhead will easily do it. There is nothing more idiotic than creating a new trillion dollar arms race with the money we desperately need for education and health care for the children who are begging in our streets. These insane missiles will benefit no one except the military-industrial complex, just as Eisenhower warned us, while human misery spreads, world without end. We need leaders who can build bridges, not walls.
3
Impressive against aliens, maybe. but unneeded against any human enemy because no need to “deliver” when every country w/ nukes has already placed them inside/next-to any potential target city or base or factory or...
1
Our weapons are designed by private companies whose prime incentive is to make the weapons into the largest revenue stream they can scam our military into approving. Since repair and maintenance of the weapons are largely contracted out, they are designed to be unreliable and expensive to maintain, repair, and upgrade.
They are approved by military personnel who know they will be retiring early and will finally get good-paying jobs with defense contractors if they were cooperative with those contractors, and by congressmen who are looking to be reelected by bringing home the bacon of jobs and investment opportunities from defense contractors.
Effective weapons such as the ground-support Warthog are phased out, replaced with vastly more expensive systems that spend most of their time being maintained, repaired, and upgraded to fix deficiencies that were known when they were approved.
Since we must disguise any industrial policy or system of patronage/assistance for distressed localities as something else for ideological reasons, our present military-industrial complex cannot be discussed, debated, rationally designed, or challenged on its real merit, goals, and effectiveness. Like our presidential election system, it is something that just happens and morphs as a result of all the forces trying to game, scam, and/or improve it.
1
I often think the earth would be much better off if the human race went extinct. Articles like this convince me there is a better than even chance our species will destroy itself. However, the real problem is that when we destroy ourselves, we will destroy virtually every other animal species on earth and probably many plant species.
People controlling and promoting these high tech arms developments seem to believe that a small cluster of the world's people, either the US population or the Russian population or some other population, should be able to dictate to and dominate everybody else on earth. To my way of thinking they are incredibly short sighted, myopic, and stupid. They are the ones who will bring about destruction of the earth and all its inhabitants. For heaven's sake, we have people in the US government working in high places who are every bit as immoral and criminal as any devious historical figure you can think of.
Hope is a precious commodity, but it seems to get in shorter and shorter supply as time goes on.
2
@Tom Krebsbach: At least there will be plenty of radiation to accelerate the rate of mutations, some of which could be advantageous. Maybe the human survivors, if any, will become adapted to the radiation levels of space.
“even though the detonations of just 100 weapons would have sparked a severe global famine and stripped away significant protections against ultraviolet radiation”
This is a reference to nuclear winter theory. Unlike global warming, where scientists can ( unfortunately) compare computer models to what is actually happening, nuclear winter theory is largely based on computer models and not very much data about the actual behavior of massive fires and soot and its effects on the weather. Hopefully it will remain that way.
But we don’t need a computer model to realize that it would be a very bad idea to fight even a small nuclear war.
Complexity, especially deadly complexity, is never amenable to solution by bumperstickers. The problem I see evidenced by the most recommended Readers Picks is a refusal to deal with the reality that other countries will develope these weapons whether or not the U.S. chooses to do so. It is one thing to say we could use the money for better things. It's another to figure out how to deal with the reality.
One thing few people keep in mind is that the very desire on both the Right and Left to replace Congress with young, "uncompromising untainted" newcomers would deny the experience and perspective necessary to deal with such complex and momentous issues. Just saying NO! to self-serving industry lobbyists by aspirational newbies will not solve the problem. That doesn't mean there aren't younger, excellent people out there to put into Congress. What it does mean is that we should not toss out lots of people just because they've been around awhile. As California learned with term limits, if you dump all your experienced legislators, the only people around the capitol who actually know how things work are the lobbyists who are there forever.
3
@Steve Fankuchen: The solution has to be a world government of governments that develops all these exotic weapons to deter invading space aliens.
1
@Steve Bolger
Steve, more likely we'd have something like the rooftop L.A. scene in "Independence Day."
2
@Steve Fankuchen: The speed of light, the distances between stars, the physics of spacetime, issues of radiation and collisions with small object at extreme velocities, etc. make alien invasions extremely unlikely. There is no evidence of any hypervelocity wormholes for faster than light spaceships.
Still, since so many military pilots see UFO's, maybe all nations could agree that any superior beings arriving from space will likely have more nefarious intentions for all of us than we have for each other.
The Space Shuttle travelled at hypersonic speeds in low-Earth orbit at Mach 10+, The US has had MX missiles that since the late 80's have reached Mach 10+, so this is nothing new for the US except the timing of releasing this information.
This release isn't for the US public, it is a message to Iran. I am just disappointed that the NYT decided to play along (either willingly or unwittingly).
2
@James Wallis Martin
How exactly do you think that it's a message to Iran, lol. They already know we're developing hypersonic weapons, which are prototypes right now...
What am I missing here? ICBM's travel at mach 20, so someone has come up with another missile system that travels faster than a speeding bullet. Hurrah!
@Beto Great, we'll only have time to duck but not cover.
The DARPA chief? Metal gear?
Think of the progress we could have made of all the money spent by the USA, Russia, China, and Britain on increasingly terrifying weapons used to kill and maim had been spent on alternative energy and medical research.
1
I no longer have any doubt that the reason we haven't heard form "more advanced"civilizations is because they managed to kill themselves off shortly after technology made it possible.
1
A sexy sounding supersonic weapon, traveling 15 times the speed of sound, can probably hit with “precision” and cause significant damage. Nothing, however, can be as devastating as hacking of basic infrastructure can. So, the natural question is: why aren’t the Defense Department and intelligence services devoting more time and money to develop cyber weapons to prevent an exponentially more catastrophic cyber attack?
1
The winds of war never cease; do they? We are no better morally than North Korea and Russia:We love to destroy. This nation is too stingy to provide tooth brushes and bars of soap to immigrant children held in Concentration Camps. Yet- we have confabs of manufacturers of killing machines and "Government-Men" strategizing on the next generation of weapons: Really now. How much does it take to blow up buildings & people?
This is an eye-opening article showing who really runs this nation.
3
@Candlewick - "This is an eye-opening article showing who really runs this nation."
Its basically run by a group of heterosexual men with testosterone issues.
5
This is the socialism the War manufacturers and profiteers enjoy. Good thing we have these. Why bother lowering the cost of health care and education when we can make these and sell them to the world to enjoy to better the future?
1
@MC - When will the Democrats learn to hammer back at Republicans screaming, "socialism" when the farmers are socialized along with the contractors? But socialized healthcare is evil.
1
All of those billions and all that energy spent could be used to heal the planet of so many woes; the environment, education, health care, living conditions, etc. When will we elect adults with consciences to represent us? Many commenters express that the government is doing this behind our backs. This is true, but we elected these low-level self-interested thinkers. Only one presidential contender (who is among the few who have been to war) rejects this constant war mentality: Tulsi Gabbard. And she is being sidelined by all MSM and the DMC. Listen to her, at least for some ideas.
4
Looks like it is time for the U.S. to perfect its 'left of launch' technologies. so that enemy missiles are disabled or destroyed before they are ever launched, by cyber warfare or other means.
Cut the defense budget by 90% and the self destruct minded General Pattons would still have more than enough taxpayer cash to play with.
6
Imagine coming up with an idea for some Thing for which there is no need, and thus has no purpose to exist other than to (1) terrify you in that someone might use the idea to build the Thing to use against you, so you (2) rationalize the use of the idea to build that Thing...to protect yourself.
Circular reasoning.
Science.
Brilliant, aren't we?
Thus, we die.
3
Why doesn’t Dr. Griffin harness his enthusiasm and scientific knowledge to defeat global warming instead of just building things that destroy, kill, annihilate and vaporize?
What is WRONG with these people? Can’t they CREATE something for the common good of the planet, instead of always seeking new ways to destroy it?
I am sick and disgusted. May they all drop dead tomorrow, not a tear will be shed.
1
The fact they haven't quite gotten this right yet should put to rest the conspiracy theories about a so-called UFO being captured in Roswell, NM back in 1947. Not that this article has anything to do with UFOs but lots of folks really wanna believe that so hard. Well if that were true, don't ya think we'd have already solved the problem of a hull that doesn't peel apart in hypersonic conditions? Just sayin'.
Mr. President, we cannot allow a mineshaft gap!
2
You've gotta think there are plenty of General Turgidsons out there.
1
IMO, humanity has two, perhaps three generations remaining before it either nukes itself, poisons itself, suffocates itself or unleashes gets devoured by wild animals. Next up is the Millenia of the insect.
3
I could be mistaken but doesn’t Russia have hypersonic missiles?
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/21/russia-moves-20-hypersonic-missiles-to-testing-site-signaling-another-milestone.html
It is absolutely terrifying to understand how the proliferation of these weapons will compress reaction times to mere minutes when detecting an active threat. In such an environment mutual deterrence is almost possible and they are more likely to trigger instantaneous massive reactions rather than prevent them. Instead of engaging in this new arms race we need to get the main actors, Russia, China, and ourselves, to realize that there is limited advantage to acquiring these weapons and that their development needs to stop now. It probably won’t happen but we have to try,
3
The hype is good for investment in R&D and we need more hypes in different technologies to increase R&D investments in different fields. Hopefully, more bright scientists will work in those instead of in finance and social medias
Those scientists would do more good working on solar panel and controlled fusion research. You know, constructive projects, rather than destructive projects. But hey, I guess if you can conquer Russia and commandeer all their oil, you're really set!
Since we already have nukes on land, sea. and air and enough to destroy the world with, I guess they're just not fast enough. I really hope that there is a friendly alien civilization who will help us save this planet. It's all we have left.
7
I just read this article, which I found fascinating: it's not often that you get to see an entire, new and heretofore unimaginable future technology laid out right in front of you. But we're all doomed.
Think about it: finally a way to create practically instantaneous, colossal destruction without having to resort to nuclear weapons. Pure genius. Combine that with AI, which is growing like the world's most nasty, virulent pathogen, and the increasing ability of the robots to talk to each other and we don't even know how to say 'Gort! Klaatu barada nikto' yet in robot language, and you can see what's happening. We're doomed. Dooooooooomed. This cannot end well.
2
Not unstoppable IF we develop this first... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle-beam_weapon
1
You're not helping.
1
@PeteH Apending should be reasonably good for protecting our National Security by being logical enoigh to counteract any foreign threat by defensive not offensive measures. Not by mimickry.
Reminds me of an old Gahan Wilson cartoon in Playboy.
A man in a white lab coat is ranting and raving, while two men are watching him. One of the men says something like, "The professor is absolutely furious! General Electric beat him to the Death Ray!"
2
No money for healthcare? Really?
12
"...a revolutionary new type of weapon, one that would have the unprecedented ability to maneuver and then to strike almost any target in the world within a matter of minutes."
Mutually Assured Destruction will keep this technology in check on a macro scale it is when it is brought down to a an individual scale that it becomes truly frightening.
No more need for snipers working from a distance of a half a mile or more. A kill shot could be delivered from miles away with 100 percent accuracy a certainty.
Nuclear warheads and returning space vehicles have always depended on hypersonic technology. Research and development around hypersonics has been taking place around the world for over sixty years. Unfortunately, it has recently become technologically practical to build conventional weapons which can travel within the atmosphere at hypersonic velocities. If we don’t have them, a future strike by someone else could leave the US with no other choice but to counter with a nuclear response. You also can’t defend against something you don’t have any hope of intercepting. Unilateral disarmament has never worked at any time in human history and there is zero evidence that it would today. The only real long term solution lies in negotiating, just as it does with nuclear and biological weaponry. Unfortunately, our species still has a very long way to go when it comes to the dream of global disarmament.
4
@AndyW
Yes negotiating is the way to go. However, if you have a missile of such speed and destruction, you hold the cards. If you are on the other end of the stick, i.e., without any semblance of defense, you really have no real negotiating position.
At the end of the day, you have no choice but get into the race. You must determine if you can build a defense against such devices. Can this be done? The only way to find out is to get into the race.
These weapon systems are now pushing speeds and complexities to the point where humans will have to hand over operational control more and more to A.I.. Computational superiority linked with high speed remotely targeted projectiles and missiles leave little room for human error. I suspect humans will slowly be taken out of the equation as we take the next steps towards wars of machine verses machine.
1
Sky Net will become self aware February 14, 2035. We already have more than enough Artificial Intelligence(AI) in Washington D.C.
The NYT doesn’t know what the government is doing; it knows what it has been able to glean from sources, leaks and speculation. What seems obvious is that some attempt should be made to reach an international agreement about restraining development of these weapons along with a simultaneous effort to produce our own as quickly as possible. And I think that is exactly what is happening.
1
@alexander galvin
I would hope that you right! But...development of these types of devices can be done in secret. It is all great to have international agreements and all that, but you need effective monitoring to ensure the other side isn't cheating. How do you do that with hypersonic missiles? This is not like testing nuclear bombs where you can detect the explosions seismically.
My problem is who’s going to pay for this, the republicans are more interested in giving tax breaks to the rich and corporations (then awarding some of those corporations like Boeing multibillions dollar contracts). Congress gets that money at our expense, at the working class’s and poor’s expense, they will take it from our educational systems, they will let our infrastructure continue to crumble, while they throw hundreds of billions into weapons. Eisenhower, in his last speech to the country, warned us against the rise of the military industrial complex, now its here. And the only ones who won’t have to pay for it, but will benefit the most from it, is the large stake holders, the executives, and the corporations they manage, and of course themselves.
We will continue to hear the same lies from the same old white faces, telling us how great America is, how great we are at innovating, our manufacturing capabilities etc. Yet these same people are the sole cause of all the problems this country faces, and spending billions more developing hypersonic weapons, isn’t going to feed the hungry in this country, it’s not going to educate our children, it not going to insure that seniors are taken care of, it’s not going to fix the affordable housing crisis (that is fueled by low wages) it’s not going to fix our healthcare system, it’s only going to drain the government of OUR money, since corporations as the rich contribute less.
3
Classic security dilemna. The actions I take to enhance my security cause a reaction by others to counter it and we both end up more insecure. Time to talk and cut this arms race off before it starts.
4
All the surface fleets of the world became obsolete in 1982 during the Falkland Island War when four British warships were sunk by 1970's model Argentinian Exocet missiles. Certainly these hypersonic missiles will sink our vaunted aircraft carriers at the outset of any war with a power that has these missiles in their inventory. Yet naval warriors keep their heads firmly in the sand, refusing to consider that their ships are largely worthless against a modern enemy.
2
@Mike Murray MD
Carriers are no longer meant to fight the next world war. They are built for the current mission...local wars and as a deterrent against countries with limited military forces. Tridents are there for the next world war.
This entire premise of getting into a shooting war with China or Russia seems a bit crazy--and what else would these weapons be used for. The planet will be the survivor.
1
The military industrial complex along with all the hawks will help push Putin's plan to bankrupt the US. So, far it is right on track.
3
$17 billion to research a weapon that's merely ... fast? What a waste of money.
In just a few years genetically modified disease vectors will make hypersonic bomb delivery look positively antiquated. Customized anthrax, for example, would be much cheaper, less destructive, and more devastating.
“...This is a country that can do anything we need to do that physics allows. We just need to get on with it...
Wouldn’t argue with that...
But same said physics presumably includes thermodynamics and non-isothermal gas dynamics...
In domains where things like Widnall Instabilities can develop...
Physics is – by comparison – somewhat simpler, in the middle of a thermonuclear fire...
PS
Valkyrie was every bit as awe-inspiring as was Apollo...
Going back, in both instances – long overdue...
PPS
We can also do anything we need to that information theory allows...
Like determining optimally fuel (and craft)-conserving/ target-obfuscating trajectories...
Having to tack on an MCAS late in the program wouldn't turn out well here, either...
PPPS
Not sure any of this would actually fly – but it’ll make for some incredible simulation work...
Yes the article clearly states, there is no defense against them.
An alarmist article that exaggerates the threat and warning times. This is what the article fails to mention:
Since the mid 90s US Trident II submarine launched ballistic missiles could strike ~2,000 km in ~7 minutes on a depressed trajectory, and 3,000+km in ~12 minutes on standard trajectory.
When properly positioned our fleet of submarines will put the vast majority of Chinese and Russian assets within 7-12 minutes of strike.
And the warheads in the missiles were independently targeted and had maneuverability capability.
That was in the 1990s!!!! With declassified info.
We can do even much better now. And France, the UK, Russia can do the same. China is getting there.
Hypersonics are an interesting technology, simply for one reason, and one reason only. In theory a hypersonic small missile will cost less than a submarine launched ballistic missile. So it will be cost effective to launch one at lower value targets.
That IS IT. It is a cost efficiency issue. It changes nothing from warning times, time to target, etc.
1
Internaitonal discussion of this weapon system is paramount! Otherwise it's just paranoid men with toys and no real adult oversight.
2
Sometimes literature--and, in this case, a novel published back in 1973--captures this moment best. That novel is Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow." See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity's_Rainbow
The V2 was the "hypersonic weapon" of 1944, and set the events of that novel in motion.
Everything awful and old is new again.
@Carl Ian Schwartz I might add that Cole Porter's lyric for "Anything Goes" (1934) are especially prescient:
The world has gone MAD ("mutually-assured destruction") today
And good's had today
And wrong's right today
And day's night today
The talk about hypersonic weapons sounds a lot like the promises of Star Wars during the Reagan administration. Despite predictions and assertions, not a single weapon system of any type ever resulted from the program, primarily because it's so difficult to place, operate and accurately aim any of the Star Wars technologies that were hyped at the time.
If moving through earth's dense atmosphere were so easy, or even likely to be technically possible, we'd have fleets of hypersonic passenger planes already. But we don't and none are just over the horizon.
The earth's atmosphere behaves as a turbulent dense fluid to a hypersonic object. It is not likely any current known designs will remain intact in a 15 minute flight through thousands of miles of atmosphere. As for accurate aim: let us pray. . .
The promise of hypersonic weapons (as was Reagan's Star Wars) cynically appropriated the Kennedy administration's Camelot model of human progress: "[We will} go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard," Unlike the nation's 1970 technological triumphs,
The Star Wars program in the 1980s was underwhelming, and not accidentally so.
Arms merchants and the Trump administration have usurped the Camelot promise to their Scam- a-Lot paradigm. "Promise anything and see what you can get away with." The hype on hypersonic weapons, like the atmosphere, is mostly vapor, without substance.
84
@Roy
sorry to intercept your idea. They work and they are real. It's called standoff by the Chinese.
6
@Roy
I am anything but an expert in this subject, but have read plausible conjectures that the Reagan era Star Wars rhetoric and programs were an attempt to force the financially struggling USSR to match the spending just in case something usable emerged that had to be countered, and not so much in the belief that usable weapons would really be the outcome. In short, it was allegedly designed as a sort of deception, in reality it was more an economic initiative, not a technological one.
Regrettably, I am not sure the hypersonic weapons development is analogous; it actually does sound as if it is R&D aimed to produce real, deployable weapons systems in the near future bringing all the political and military problems inherent in the technology..
5
@Roy Billions, trillions of dollars will be spent on the arms merchants - profits and pay. Some decades later quantum dynamics may kick in and we will get a weapon to the target before it even leaves the launchpad.
Stunning and deeply saddening to read that so many billions are funneled to a weapons technology intended to kill “the other guy” before he kills you.
Not working on figuring out solutions to climate change, or broadening health care or developing education-as-a-weapon against ignorance and poverty.
And the people don’t get a vote on this.
What has happened to our country?
169
@Jim So we should let our enemies develop these weapon technologies and do nothing? If they have the leverage and we have conventional, we are doomed. Which part of this don't you understand?
6
@Jim
I used to think this way. But the truth is that we need defenses systems. And an irrelevant defense system is no good to anyone.
It's a sad fact of life. But that's how it is.
On a personal note, along with being a pacifist for most of my life, I didn't fight. I never stood up for myself, because my reasoning was that acts of aggression would be taken care of by people who did that kind of thing. Quite seriously, I thought like that. Someone else would do that kind of dirty work. But not me, because I was one of the peace makers.
And we all do that. We all take our moral high horse and defend out position, because we think what we're doing is "the right way". But it isn't. There is no right way. Sometimes appeasement works. Sometimes it doesn't. But the truth is, we need defenses the same way as we need Winter clothes and locks on our doors. The same way we need vitamins and sun block and car insurance.
No defenses are ideal or perfect. But thinking that your money is better spent on hospitals and schools is just naive. Of course we need to spend money on hospitals and schools, but we need to spend money on defenses, too. And the most affluent countries in the world have the best defenses, And that, I'm afraid, is a fact of life.
7
@Jon Galt
"...our enemies" ? Who are our enemies ?
Who is creating misery for millions of Americans ?
Who is destroying our democracy ? Who is destroying the moral foundations of our country ?
Who is undermining any efforts to reserve the catastrophic results of climate change ?
We may be "doomed" but not because we won't spend billions on developing weapons to keep up with our "enemies".
11
Fine, if these warmongers want to build their newest hypersonic toy, that makes every other military system obsolete, then let them! As long as they defund every other part of the incredibly wasteful and idiotic war budget.
3
I'm thinking this is all for naught. The effects of global warming will wipe out civilization as we know it and may cause human extinction before any more destructive power can be put into operation.
Instead of finding more ways to murder people and destroy everything in sight, it would be nice if they put in an all out effort to address the real threat to humanity.....global warming.
As we blissfully go about our business, more and more species are going extinct and humans are still arrogant enough to think that won't include them. What ridiculous folly.
4
Leave it to men to find new and better ways to kill. How different this world would be if their energies were used to the betterment of this world.
6
One more step to assured self-annihilation, with the military cheering it on and stupid Americans screaming USA! USA!
5
Gee! Please, please do not tax the rich to help pay for war and its wonder weapons. Please get rid of those progressive social programs. If we can just let the sick and older people die then we can spend our money to kill, kill, kill.
4
Is this what America stands for, what it wants to be know for; designers of the most destructive killing machines in the world?
The Pentagon loaded with incompetence, false bravura and false claims, has fallen in love with the Mr. Griffin, no matter his many masters and Phd, mankind will judge him as a deadly war monger, whose only goal seems to be speeding up the end of the world.
After the disastrous, poorly informed decision making by the Pentagon’s generals and the White House the last few days, it is clear that all people in the Pentagon need some drastic re-schooling and replacement.
1
" ... or else the nation might fall behind Russia and China ..." How often have we heard this? Indeed it is the mantra of the MIC. It sucks up yet more resources from the economy. If only we could reduce some other program, such as tanks or aircraft carriers. But no, we need it all.
2
This situation - the imminent deployment of weapons that can make a surprise nuclear attack a lot more likely - really calls for a multinational treaty to either severely restrict the numbers of such weapons, or ban them (not have any at all). Of course, initiating such talks requires competent leadership that instills the trust required for other nations to sign on to such a treaty.
1
Those that perceive this as a new program should research Prompt Global Strike. One of the biggest issues was and still is discerning whether a launch is nuclear or conventional which would dictate a different proportional response.
1
It is not clear from this article that building hypersonic missiles would protect us from hypersonic missiles.
Rather than spending 2-5 billion dollars per annum to develop new weapons then more to build them, couldn't we make some friends internationally, have conversations with other world powers about these things, and decide, collectively, not to build them?
Flash back to the discussion of the middle gap of my youth. Was anyone made safer by the international expenditure of bazillions of dollars on the nuclear arms race? I don't think so.
Here in the US, having extra billions of dollars to spend on climate change, public health, and education would do more to benefit me and my neighbors than building new defense play toys, even if they have a cool name like "hypersonic."
10
Nuclear weapons production facilities are far easier to spot than their conventional counterparts. Adherence to such agreements would be nearly impossible to verify.
I'm for peace, and for WMD nonproliferation, but I can't see how this is a feasible approach to this newish and time-sensitive quagmire.
2
We need to defend our country, that is inarguable. But do we need to spend over half of our discretionary budget to accomplish that?
4
M.A.D. for those too young to know it was a common enough acronym during the Cold War. Mutually Assured Destruction. If you have it, we have to have it, to prevent you from attacking us, as we will attack you, wiping all mankind from the Earth. Crazy then, crazy now. To quote Sting "I hope the Russians love their children too."
5
At the dawn of time, Ugh and Pug quarrel over who should sleep nearest the entrance to their cave, closest to animal intruders. Ugh wins a fistfight. Pug, nurses his wounds and his anger and develops a new offensive weapon: a rock. This time it is Ugh who is knocked silly. He designs another weapon, a club, and learns how to duck from a thrown rock. Their next confrontation shows the advantages of a well-designed club. And so it goes, through bows and arrows, swords, armor, trebuchet, gunpowder and on an on.
Either humans change or the process continues until the inevitable apocalypse.
9
That’s not ‘human’ behavior; that is alpha-male behavior - aberrant since the dawn of history. Time we started doing things like normal people would.
2
Women have been warriors themselves you know, Joan of Arch, I can go on. Sure it’s mostly men in history, but women can be just as power hungry as men....
Or Cricket, one of the two.
"America needs to act quickly, says James Inhofe, the Republican senator from Oklahoma who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, or else the nation might fall behind Russia and China."
Ah, the old "gap argument." Stop me if you remember this bit from Dr. Strangelove: "I think we should look at this from the military point of view. I mean, supposing the Russkies stashes away some big bomb, see. When they come out in a hundred years they could take over. In fact, they might even try an immediate sneak attack so they could take over our mineshaft space. I think it would be extremely naive of us, Mr. President, to imagine that these new developments are going to cause any change in Soviet expansionist policy. I mean, we must be...increasingly on the alert to prevent them from taking over other mineshaft space, in order to breed more prodigiously than we do, thus, knocking us out in superior numbers when we emerge! Mr. President, we must not allow...a mine shaft gap!" - General Buck Turgidson
6
Maybe I'm just hopelessly deluded, but imagine what all these smart people could do for the world if they worked on renewable energy development, clean water, sustainable agriculture and technology to prevent climate change? Imagine if the billions wasted on weaponry could instead be diverted to education and healthcare?
What a sucker I am.
13
Goodbye Medicare for all and free tuition.
We really don’t need these cause whomever does this to us first, they will be extremely dead. Don’t worry. It may take a little longer but those ol’ fashioned nukes will do the job just fine.
There peace reestablished.
3
Not too thrilled with the lecturing tone of this article. Yes, I wish all weapons would go away and especially weapons which might make it easier for looney leaders like Trump or Xi to use thinking them super silver bullet solutions. But we do not live in a world where we can realistically chose to not pursue this development while leaving our foes free to develop them. Just as the crazy logic of nuclear deterrence is astonishingly effective (until it isn’t), so it goes for hypersonics. I’d far rather spend the money and keep China and Russia wary of using theirs than to foolishly not develop and then give them an ace card that obscoleses most of our conventional forces.
5
What makes you think that the vast amounts of nuclear weapons both China and Russia have, what makes you think that they don’t already have an “ace in the hole”. Your logic is the reason we had the Reagan MAAD logic, and as a result we now have a weapons platform that needs a trillion dollar overhaul. Think about that....
This new threat illustrates once again that vast sums of defense spending is wasted. With so much money, the Pentagon's main challenge is not priortizing limited funds, but allocating all of it before year end.
How else to explain building $11 billion warships that are completely defenseless to hypersonic missiles. Never has the term "sitting duck" been so apt.
4
"irreversible consequences"
I think the point of no return happened decades ago. It's only a matter of time.
10
A horrific weapon, without doubt part of a Fail Safe system to ensure a single use will trigger a volley that destroys mankind. On a more optimistic note, is there any indication that such a technology could also be used to knock a threatening asteroid off-course, and save the world?
2
Very soon, the effects of climate change (drought, floods, disruption of agriculture and economies, more violent weather events, unliveable heat in more places, disruption of ocean life and fish for consumption, to name a few) will require a reordering of economic priorities. Food actually may become relatively scarce and the obesity epidemic might, ironically, improve. In any case, we must begin to dismantle the financial incentives for such lavish spending on weapons and preparations for major wars. We won't survive another major war. Best not go broke while other problems are accelerating our way. Let some candidate stand on her hind legs and tell THAT to the American people. A number of us are ready to hear that.
1
You’re right, the food supply will be disrupted, water will become an expensive commodity, India is running out of water, and will be out next year or the year after, some 15 million. In the Midwest states around Kansas, there was a huge underground aquifer, that encompasses 5 states, homes outside of Dodge City their wells have run dry, some farming communities that have wells can’t use them because of the elevated nitrates from fertilizer that farmers are spreading in abundance since Trump at farmers lobbying rolled back regulations limiting nitrates. The oceans are becoming acidified, killing coral reefs, as you kill off the habitat for the small fish, the bigger species that depend on them for food die off, without herring you don’t have salmon, without krill, you don’t have herring, krill are very tiny shrimp type creatures that are at the bottom of the food chain.
It’s a shame that the world we’re leaving our children may not exist as we know it, they may well be left with a polluted planet, overpopulated, starving population. It’s too bad that there is a faction amongst us that thinks that global warming isn’t happening, or that since there’s no proof man is at fault, in their minds global warming pollution in general isn’t happening, so let’s not address it. Or that it’s the “Libs” that just want us to think that, it’s a minority of people that have stopped the or reversed even cleaning up our environment regardless of who’s at fault. Those should suffer the worst.
1
While reading the article I’m reminded of the troubled F-35 program, which the Project On Government Oversight has suggested may never be fully ready for combat. An expensive boondoggle it has enriched the defense industry and boosted the post retirement careers of men like Ryan McCarthy who worked for Lockheed Martin on the plane and likely will be the next temporary Army secretary. The expectations of this weapons system may or may not be realistic but the money to be made is very real. Ronald Reagan’s missile shield fantasy has been ongoing for over two decades and they still can’t get it right, but they did make it extremely expensive. Looks like the same cast of characters have the next big (& hugely expensive) thing to sell to the politicians and the public as necessary for “national defense”, pretty soon we’ll be able to kill each other in nanoseconds, won’t that be fun, & profitable.
3
This is hilarious. Tom Lehrer must be from the future or another world. All of the problems his songs satirized are still with us. Sixty plus years ago he knew the score.
4
In the future, directed energy weapons will reduce if not eliminate the hypersonic missile threat. They are fast, but they will never fly close to the speed of light...it isn’t science fiction to imagine, space, air, land and sea based weapons that can easily track and destroy hundreds of inbound hypersonic missiles with lasers or using microwaves...systems like this are already being tested or deployed.
2
You first have to know they’ve been fired, if there was a defense against them, do you think that they would print, currently there is no defense against hypersonic weapons. Hello......are you there....
If the article is correct and these weapons are more or less unstoppable depending on kinetic energy instead of nuclear warheads, I'm left with the question of what is wrong with them?
Wars are started by people in bunkers. War seldom was started by those on the front lines. Take away security from those who believe war is personally survivable, and it becomes less thinkable.
The Bolton's, Pompeo's and Graham's of the world may be hawks, but they aren't suicidal. Take away their bunkers and make the world a safer place.
My take is make this technology open source.
3
A bunker doesn’t do much good in an all out nuclear war either, sure you might live through the initial war, but what happens when your food runs out, a bunker becomes a lavish tomb. There would be nothing to come out too, nothing left alive, no food, the air would be contaminated, etc. basically, you’re dead, it’s just gonna take longer.
1
It's no doubt that a hypersonic weapon is an escalation in the arms race, but it's not a show stopper technology as this article suggests. And it will no doubt be the most expensive way ever developed for delivering a conventional explosive. So expensive, perhaps, that there are few targets that would warrant the great expense, even if it might equal JDAM type accuracy.
Compare and contrast this technology to the V2 Rocket developed by the Germans in WWII. According to the Wikipedia entry for 'V2 rocket': "Speed: Maximum: 5,760 km/h (3,580 mph), At impact: 2,880 km/h (1,790 mph). Flight altitude: 88 km (55 mi) maximum altitude on long-range trajectory. Operational range: 320 km (200 mi). Warhead: 1,000 kg (2,200 lb); Amatol (explosive weight: 910 kg)"
1
The funny thing here is that this guy's Star Wars tech failed! They spent 30 years and hundreds of billions in taxes proving the hard way that you can't reliably stop most ballistic missiles. Who needs a second unstoppable weapon that's slower?
Who needs anything more in a world of nukes? Just pass a UN rule that anybody using hypersonics (or germs or gas) gets attacked by every UN member. Nukes permitted. Pretty much the end of that bright idea.
The weapons industry promotes a picture of a world where treaties are worthless, only force works - contradicted by fifty years of nuclear experience, and Ronald Reagan's successful treaties that drastically cut down the number of nukes. They're just straight-up lying.
America is the one that drags OTHERS into arms races. You have by far the largest R&D budgets and ambitions. Strike a treaty to all stop development. Throw in a free agreement to stop spending $8B/yr on Star Wars (yes, still), which is more than the total tuition of the Ivy League, with enough left over to replace every lead water pipe in Michigan.
The military are very good at fearmongering to raise their revenues. Can they please switch their $6B P.R. budget (more than Hollywood's) to climate? It's the only issue that isn't generating realistic fear levels yet.
4
Accuracy in warfare is not “terrifying”; it is wonderful! Inaccurate weapons are the terrifying ones because they often miss targets and result in civilian casualties.
3
That depends on what end you’re on, are you assuming you won’t be on the receiving end, or are you hoping it’s that accurate.
With hypersonic missiles, we see quite clearly that a “Star Wars” anti-missile defense can be easily overcome. This has been pointed out by responsible analysts and politicians since its very inception.
So here we are, trillions of dollars later, more at risk, with the people who advocated this foolish strategy still kept on in positions of authority.
If ever there was a swamp to be drained, this is surely amongst the most poisonous.
2
At some point a missile will sink an aircraft carrier. Then what will the US do?
1
I just had this picture in my head. The earth in complete desertification, a toxic haze hanging in the air, and weapons, piles and piles of weapons. From the old bombs to the nuclear warheads to these hypersonic things, piled up lying around wrapped in a toxic haze with sand blowing around.
How absurd is mankind!
5
Towards what end? Is this how the meek come to inherit the Earth?
1
Because we take over before that happens, and Lynch anyone that is slightly orange, and butchers the English language.
1
Sounds like we’ll all be dead before we have any opportunity to be terrified or devastated at global destruction. What a relief! Thank you kindly world superpowers, we little humans all eternally grateful
2
At the same time, how can the Defense people justify sending a $200 million ‘dead duck’ drone over or close to hostile territory without protection. Almost all countries have access to missiles, sold by us or another country or locally developed, that will get it down. Instead of billions we should give them brains.
2
Engineers have been trying to develop hypersonic missiles for years. Mr. Griffin, the hypersonic evangelist, cut his teeth on Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars missile defense system. How did Star Wars work out? It didn’t. The Patriot anti Missile system is notoriously ineffective. Various militaries may be planning to have hypersonic systems operational in the 2020s, but don’t count on it.
1
Ballistic missiles since the 1950’s have reached hypersonic speeds, and they could not be recalled once launched..the key to these new technologies is the maneuverability of the warhead. It makes missile defense very costly, if not near impossible. In addition, it shortens the decision time to respond to a threat, given the incredible speed of the missile. That may raise the possibility of a mistake.
2
Mutually Assured Destruction has determined the actions of every country with access to hydrogen bombs and ballistic missiles since they were first engineered. As more countries acquire these technologies, the same "strategy" will prevail. One mistake and human will have engineered ourselves into extinction. I can't foresee how this is not likely to happen within the not too distant future. I'm 71 with Stage IV cancer, so with any luck I'll be converted to ashes beforehand.
2
@David Goldin: The world has many more people who believe that death is just a transition to a better place, than people who know it is only permanent oblivion.
2
You're free to believe whatever gives you comfort. Some people also believe that they'll go to Paradise and have 70 nubile virgins at their beck and call just as soon as they detonate their suicide vests.
In 1948, Peenemünde was solidly in the control of Eastern Germany forces, after it was captured at the end of WW2 by the Red Army. The dismantling and removal of the mentioned wind tunnels from Peenemünde would have had to have taken place well before.
2
I’m not too worried. Every weapon has many Achilles heels and, while a hypersonic missile may cover in minutes the distance to its global target, it may take hours or days to ready the weapon, giving signals intelligence and other resources time to gauge enemy intentions.
When Soviet Hind helicopters first arrived on the scene in Afghanistan, the mujaheddin were at their mercy, having no way to respond and facing pointless death by standing their ground. So, they infiltrated the Soviet-held territory and attacked the helicopter base in a snowstorm while the helicopters were grounded.
Little is straightforward or predestined in war.
1
i like to see our most advanced weapons technology revealed only if and when there is a serious armed conflict. we only needed two bombs to end WW II.
that said, i read articles like this one with deep suspicion. who is allowing access, leaking information, guiding inquiry? who is eager for article end paragraphs that raise fears of the lack of diplomacy and the headlong push for a poker winning hand of new technology?
people: are brains are like petri dishes, incubators of induced opinion ... and if someone puts a new bacillus in it through news, media, entertainment, tweet, do you really know how it will grow in your own mind?
beware. we love to believe in doughty investigative journalism, digging up an impartial independent and unbiased view of the facts. but journalists have phones, sources, email; they read and hear what people are willing to disclose; they write what they are allowed to find out.
who conceived of these weapons originally? where did public information about them first become available? if the chinese can successfully test a mach 5 weapon, what are the specifics of the weapon we tested? who's ahead, who's behind?
ask yourself: what does this article lead me to conclude? then ask yourself, why would someone want me to reach that conclusion?
good luck.
2
As a founding member of Cucarachas Uber Alles, I endorse this initiative for which there is no defense at hand, and also endorse the headlong greenhouse heat death of current species now inhabiting this Earth. We, the survivors, keep our heads down and will prevail.
4
The American dependency on a military economy and the development of more and more deadly weapons has me constantly sick to my stomach. The idea that my taxes pay for this is unfathomable.
3
Oh well I guess that's the end of us, then. Might as well just get them built and launched ASAP, before the other guy does.
No point in pretending that's what's not going to happen.
Besides, let's look at the plus side: there will be some survivors. Out of seven billion, if there's one billion left that's a nice number with all the tech that'll be left. We could set up a nice planet with AI and one billion people.
It'd sort out so many problems, too. The forests would come back, the oceans would re-stock, the air would clear (after the initial poison cloud, anyway) and we'd all have a lot more space.
I mean, seriously. What's at the root of climate change and global warming? Industry? Of course not. It's the over population that needs the industry.
I say let's get it over and done with so we can get on with Humans version 2.0
5
Hypersonic missiles, sounds great. What can go wrong? One more reason that we, aka humanity, ain’t making it through this century.
2
A variant of this concept is nuclear depositories orbiting the earth that simply fire their missiles downward at the appropriate orbit location. There is no limit to man's ability to conceive of ways to murder each other and one day it will happen by plan or accident on a massive scale.
1
I don’t want to pour billions of dollars more into a weapon we probably won’t use. But, I also don’t want to be holding bows and arrows while Russia and China are holding rifles at us. That’s the disparity here. This isn’t a case of insanely building more aircraft carriers than the world has combined. This is progress, and if we don’t invest, we’re going to lose military superiority.
It’s the real world as it is now, You have keep your technology edge over your adversaries.
No one wants to be put at risk of coercion to the Chinese and Russians.
Someday humans won’t have to resort to violence. Unfortunately we have not evolved to that point. Still several hundred years off.
Why are we so keen to destroy?
The nature of this particular weapon is worrying, especially given current leadership of our country and others. It seems to me to be likely to contribute to geopolitical instability, and we have enough of that already.
The idea that France is collaborating with Russia on hypersonics is ... odd. Meanwhile I haven’t seen much interest displayed by US leadership to keep whatever tech we develop to ourselves in the face of persistent and ubiquitous Chinese spying.
It is hard to imagine the post hypersonic world, most especially after the tech becomes more widespread. Imagine what a bloody-minded leader without much compunction might do with these. Anywhere people that leader doesn’t like might gather - for a conference, a negotiation, to edit a publication collaboratively - might be under threat from anywhere.
On another note, the writer of this piece made me laugh by using the verb ‘ladle’ when discussing Pentagon expenditures.
1
So instead of curing cancer and coming-up with a solution to climate change our national security scientists have found a way to make unstoppable nuclear warheads.
They should rename national security to national insecurity.
2
This read has kicked my thoughts over about the uselessness of WMDs. Of what use is a destroyed and radioactive territory to any aggressor? The only real purpose of an arms race is deterrence. If one side unilaterally disarms, what’s left for the other? Perhaps an opportunity to divert badly needed resources toward a more positive goal.
Impressive, I can see the value of such a speedy weapon to any lesser deity unable to conjure up a bolt of lightning strike on their own. The greater gods are all no doubt yawning and slightly rumbling at the impudence.
The least we could do is make Dr. Strangelove required watching in schools.
1
Since thre are many nations involved in developing these weapons and the weapons seem impossible to stop, the possible chances of WWIII destroying civilization before global warming finishes everybody off becomes somewhat greater. So this justifies Trump's lack of interest in trying to reverse global warming. It's not worth the effort.
1
So many responses here favor not arming ourselves. In an ideal world, that's wonderful.
We don't live in an ideal world.
What then do you suggest we do about Russia, China, and others moving forward with this technology?
3
@DoctorHeel
Quite obviously, since having the missiles is no defense against being attacked and the only defense is striking first we had better each write our suicide note and attempt to murder everybody else who might strike us. No doubt this will strike everybody as the only solution so ear plugs to diminish the sounds of explosions is most advisable.
The recently accelerated lunar program should not be overlooked in this context either. The moon represents the ultimate high ground for the military. Kinetic tungsten weapons launched from on high have the potential to have the same effect on earth as a nuclear weapon, and would not be seen coming!
2
"This is a country that can do anything we need to do that physics allows. We just need to get on with it.”
Does physics allow us to scrap the "military-industrial complex" and put the money and effort towards solving climate change and income inequality?
16
After all, you have to admit that we need these weapons much more than we need schools, hospitals, health care, roads, bridges, public transportation, teachers, etc. etc.
14
These weapons are exactly what we need when faced with the 6'th great extinction event.
9
There goes Trump’s 10 minutes.
And the liberals are worried about climate change. Bah!
3
Thank God I'm old!
6
I’m not, but I laughed.
Reality Check arms race goes back all way to stone age.Problem is we fail to learn lessons of past empires. Last attempt to freedom was roman empire. By way wasnt concured but fell to its own dismise by mislead representation. Agun 7 deadly sins got them . America better spent its fortune on building a mass tansit system free from oil then building weapons of future . Present day arms destroy millions of people in hands of misguided leaders. Germany an japan ruined its own people by the use weapons .World must take lessons of past an assure the future generations we wont be fooled agun.
1
Five masters degrees and a PhD and Micheal Griffin still just likes to blow things up.
14
One could imagine that is how the world ends returning earth to a burnout cinder like so many planets before it
5
Man, our species has some dumb, stilted priorities.
7
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@Dan,
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Thats why Mankind will self-extinct w/in 500 yrs
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We'v worked our way into this current Final Dark Age starting 1972-74 : Nam, Nixon & the fall of the US.
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Now we'r wresting w/ Climate Disruption & the return of the plagues, Ebola for one & anti-biotic resistance
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I am glad we are developing these but with the hot headed bullies the GOP elect we are doomed. Like Trump they will cause chaos and be ready to wipe out civilization. And the churches support this bully behavior. Fake.
2
There's lots of "cool stuff" in this article (emphasis on sarcasm for the word "cool").
1) "The 9 p.m. flight created a trailing sonic boom over the Pacific, which topped out at an estimated 175 decibels, well above the threshold of causing physical pain."
You don't have to hit anything. Just fly it over your enemies and blow out their eardrums. A noise that loud will take the fight right out of you.
2) Back when I used to play Foosball, someone developed a new shot called a rollover, or snake shot. A well-executed snake shot is too fast for the goalie to respond to, so all the goalie can do is to randomize their defense, covering 2 of the 3 zones and allowing 1 of 3 shots to score. Does this sound familiar?
3) All is not lost! These might be fast enough to knock down a UFO. The little green men will have to go joyriding around someone else's planet for a change.
1
You go back to the Moon, establish a permanent presence there, then you can basically throw rocks at your enemies. This obsoletes any missile technology. Always take the high ground.
2
It's not very comforting to know that the man leading the Armed Services Committee is an ignorant science denier.
2
"...five master’s degrees and a doctorate in aerospace engineering, he was the chief technology officer..."
An excellent example of someone over-credentialed but in reality under-educated.
8
Is the 1,150 mph figure a typo? Something 15 times the speed of sound would be ten times that fast.
5
As Pogo once said, "We have met the enemyand he is us."
6
Hypersonics will hasten the development of space based laser weapons.
1
Trump cannot send missles that might kill 150 people. Yet, he is all warm and fuzzy for hypersonics where the ultimate death toll could be in the millions. Picture him with the open briefcase having to decide whether to push the button or not. Isn't it interesting that after the use of nuclear arms in Japan, all efforts were focused on never using them again. But, like the holocaust, time erases such thoughts from our memories. And the little boys playing with their weapons' erector sets take over. My hope: that there is a species in the universe that will intervene and make all these weapons systems non functional and announce to the world "We are the _______ . We will not stand by and let you destroy life on this planet. " For the hard work is not in developing such weapons. The hard work is finding a way NOT to use them. And I wonder....with all the denial and the 'climate change is a hoax' talk, has the increasing temperature of the planet been factored in to the functioning of this weapon over its expected lifetime? Or will these weapons self destruct after a few years because the atmosphere has gotten too hot? Wouldn't it be ironic if another country's (France or China) worked, but ours stopped functioning because the weapon developers were told NOT to factor in climate change effects?
1
Thanks for something else to keep me awake at night.
3
We will just get under our school desks, right?
4
I do remember this drill and how safe it made me feel, but we went to the school basement for nuclear attacks and under our desks for earthquakes.
1
Hey, at least we won’t need to waste all that money on early warning systems now.
“American military researchers had a hard time figuring out how to reassemble and operate it, so they recruited some German scientists stateside.”
Wernher von Braun wasn’t just any old German scientist, and he certainly wasn’t stateside when we extracted him from Europe. He did get himself a sweet gig running NASA for all his troubles, though.
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
1
Always enough money to destroy Earth. Never any money to save it. The Devil runs around worried about unborn fetuses while making weapons of mass destruction. So sick.
12
Thank you for introducing us to the next generation of Dr. Strangeloves.
It does however remain the case and likely will for a few years that a single Trident submarine can destroy any nation on Earth, including the United States.
However terrible the thought, we do have a deterrent.
2
In the immortal words of Rodney King, "Can't we all just get along?"
This article made me weary. 22 years in the Air Force, Vietnam vet, retired colonel, most productive years supporting spy satellites, followed by 24 years as Boeing engineer, 13 years on the B-1B nuclear bomber, followed by 11 years on the F-22 fighter. This article brings "Doctor Strangelove" to mind. I am not religious, but Hello, Armageddon.
4
More ways to kill each other, rather than more ways to understand and live peacefully with each other.
5
Nonsense.
Beginning when humans first discovered how to make and use fire along with stone and wood weapons the imminent demise of the one and only biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit human race species that began in Africa 300, 000 years ago due to armed conflicts haa been forecast.
But we African primate apes are bound by our nature and nurture to crave fat, salt, sugar,habitat, water, kin and sex by any means neccessary including conflict and cooperation.
The art and nature of human warfare has evolved over time since it's zenith in two 20th Century world wars making the next doomsday weapon so horrifying that they are either never used in any significant way or they are severely regulated.
Infectious and chronic disease along with climate change have always been the greatest danger to ending the human race as we know for millennia.
' We are sich stuff as dreans are made upon and our life is rounded with a sleep. ' The Tempest' Act IV Scene I. William Shakespeare
1
These things need to be banned. There is no room for error. At least President Trump had time to change his mind this time. What will happen with hypersonics...?
1
People who work on theses projects must be so proud.
3
I can’t remember reading anything so discouraging as this article....
3
The fact is that the Chinese and Russians used the eight years of the sainted Barack Obama’s feckless administration to leap far ahead of the United States in this critical first strike technology.
Democrats, true to type, would prefer that we defend our liberty with wind farms and solar panels.
5
@EGD The point of the article is that you can’t defend against these weapons—our anti-missle systems are just as useless as wind farms and solar panels. But thankfully America is currently surrounded by a bubble of Republican bluster and hubris, which we know from long experience is truly impenetrable.
Sorry that you could not read the fact that testing was going on during the past administration. This effort has been going on for over a decade with both successful and failed tests. It did not just appear two years ago and turn into a program under Mattis.
@EGD
Exactly. Where is a realistic cogent response addressing the need to be proactive in defense? It's just pie in the sky everyone just get along...not everyone wants to allow us to exist.
It is BECAUSE of our military that we can have such strong opinions and air them. Not in SPITE of.
2
With these missiles the hot headed bully GOP will destroy humanity faster. And the the American religious groups support Trump and the GOP . Shows you they are fake religions. I am glad i am older now when these are developed we won’t be around long with future GOP in office.
Yuge waste of money. Again.
1
How wonderful...we can kill each other faster than ever before.
But we find it impossible to figure out a way to live with others. Must be there isn’t as much money to be made in peaceful pursuits.
4
There's no surer way to start the arms race this article worries about than shining a bright light on the technology in question in the New York Times.
@AB
That ship sailed years ago, and might be sunk by one or two of these things. That same ship might also be sunk by a barrage of more mundane cruise missiles, which is why these might be less of a big deal for some of the more likely great power conflict scenarios - limited war fought mostly as an air-sea battle - than first appears.
It sounds like the U.S. has fallen behind on this.
How the heck can we spend $700 billion per year on defense and fall behind on ANYTHING?
3
My work is done
Why wait
“Hypersonic missiles are also ideal for waging a decapitation strike — assassinating a country’s top military or political officials. “Instant leader-killers,”
You’d think some one up top would question the utility of starting a new arms race that makes all those bunkers they have dug to protect THEMSELVES obsolete. Stanely Kubrick got it right with his film Dr. Strangelove, go see it now!
1
The United States losses to Russia in a cyber warfare attack and these people go off to La La Land. I guess their motto is "Why spend millions when you can spend billions?"
1
Of course we need to build these and we need to build them to be faster and more powerful than any others. We need enough that we can promise certain delivery of robust hellfire to any nation stupid enough to use one of these weapons. If they build 10,000, we build 100,000. Yes, obviously this is a losing game of squandering resources but do you really want to trust the Chinese? How about the Iranians? Russians?
No nation has to destroy the world to destroy its enemy when they can push the enemy to destroy itself. Take out enough of the power grids and watch America descend into savage pandemonium. Imagine how you’ll function without fuel, water, food, medications or any viable means of obtaining those short of taking what you need from others who have it. You can’t call for help without electronic communication and no one could get to you even if anyone cared enough to come to your rescue. Are you going to give me your last peanut butter sandwich? No, you’re not.
Yes, yes, it’s all a dystopian horror show but that doesn’t mitigate the terrible risk of losing this battle.
2
“Pro lifers” will spend trillions on instruments of death but ZERO dollars on health care, education, roads and bridges, clean energy, clean water and air or anything else that will protect the lives of living breathing humans! The ability to oppress women and kill makes them feel like men.... They are dangerous. Wake up America.
3
Frightening enough with stooges Bolton, Pompeo, Abrams, etal. in charge. Now this. Seems to me, again, this is all about the money and neoliberal capitalism.
1
The human race at it's worst rushing to destroy ourselves and our biosphere.
3
Will humanity ever find a way to stop having to spend unfathomable amounts of time and money in zero-sum arms races? Or is it just a pathological tic at this point?
2
Why does 'mankind' (that's all men and not very kind) insist on spending money we sorely need to help people on killing people instead?
I truly am grateful I'm getting old and won't see a war using these kinds of weapons - if climate change doesn't get 'mankind' first.
Just think. If we could use this money to stop/slow down climate change, to find ways to feed the planet without ruining the earth, to find ways to give the thirsty, water......to learn to live with our ecosystem peacefully instead of building weaponry of death we really could call ourselves 'mankind'. Instead we must call ourselves just plain stupid.
What is the matter with men? Truly. What is the matter with them? To get all excited over such murderous weapons. Sick.
2
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@sophia,
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Greed & Hubris
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Once again, technological know-how is proceeding hypersonically faster than the wisdom needed to understand its implications.
2021: A Space Idiocy
Whether it's the genius of using a tapir femur or a tapered glide vehicle, humanity's genius to invent new modes for its destruction is also its tragedy - unstoppable, like the hypersonic destroyers of worlds it now builds.
2
Soon then, everyone will be dead and climate change will be a forgotten footnote of the past.
2
Here I'm weeping in my coffee, for the planet and all it's inhabitants. We're all doomed.
4
“Instant leader-killers” - ha. Heard that baloney before, when the military thought they were going to take out Saddam Hussein while he was at a theater. Supposedly super-accurate weapons missed, and then we had to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives, to clean up.
Woe comes to those who think weapons can solve all problems.
1
Will these things stop cyber warfare? Or terrorist sabotage?
The winner of the next war will be he who pulls the other guy's plug first.
"I am guided by the beauty of our weapons"
- Leonard Cohen
This explains why we hear nothing from worlds in outer space. The advance of science becomes suicidal.
2
Hypersonic weapons can’t strike or disable ballistic Missile subs and therefor do not change the equation when it comes to MAD. What they do is make it more likely we’ll blow ourselves up because of foolish thinking that you can get away with a first strike.
2
@Mike West
Yes they can...
Here is a fun question: If a nuke goes off on US soil, who do we hit back?
Back around 1980, a college physics professor decided to see how long it would take a complete novice to design a working nuclear weapon. He chose a Freshman engineering student and told him to go to the library (paper books, not the web) and come up with a design for a nuke.
The kid was back in 40 hours with a design that the professor determined absolutely would work. In fact, it was the same basic design as used in the Little Boy nuke used on Hiroshima.
All of the working parts could be obtained or created through ordinary hardware store type sources. It was designed to be detonated by someone hitting it with a hammer, and we know that it would be no problem to find volunteers.
The only part that would be difficult to obtain was the fissile material. Get some of that and you are a hundred dollars or so away from a nuke.
So, assuming a nuke goes off in the US, who do we assume did it?
We profess, as Americans, to be the most religious people in the World, and yet we continually build ever more deadly weapons of war. Instead of any moral code we follow the desires of the rich to expand their riches and power over other people. We do not provide for people who cannot make us richer and more powerful. This is an error, for when we are called to save ourselves from the climatic changes that are obvious everywhere, and which will come within the next 15-20 years if not sooner we will find that our new weapons will not help us. Better I think that we follow the Prophet Isaiah who wrote in the Old Testament, Chapter 2, V 4, 'And he shall judge between the nations and reprove many peoples, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift the sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.'
2
If you’re wondering why it matters that we have a silly child of a President, a warhawk NSA head, a DOE boss with an ag degree who doesn’t know what DOE does, and our scientific and intelligence services constantly under pressure to skip the science and say what they’re told to say, this is why it matters.
Or if that don’t float your boat, I give you the history of the F-35.
3
@Robert
I'm assuming you didn't read the part of the article that indicated Obama's significant role in this?
Of course not.
This must be the technology that has been sighted by fighter pilots and caused a new wave of excitement about UFOs?
excellent piece. I've read some about this technology here and there but there are some details I've not heard of anywhere else. but I didnt know the head cheerleader was. when i heard it was the same guy who headed the laughably idiotic SDI ie Star Wars boondoggle, 100% of its credibility was lost.
anyone who understood any of the real-world engineering details of that program knew it was designed to sell a multi-billion dollar boondoggle to Bonzo's co-star who didnt have enough brain cells to know that while a "peace shield" sounds good to a 10 year old boy, it was an utterly idiotic, undoable, destabilizing and completely unfeasible Rube Goldberg concept.
and what did republicans after $25B in wasted research when the OTA finally had enough evidence to prove it so?
they defunded it. better than let the light of day disinfect their lies. I still have the publications which ridicule both SDI and its sister boondoggle Anti- Satellite weapons.
and like writer states regards how technology progresses before the policy implications are thought thru, both SDI and ASAT programs would have been far more destabilizing than negotiations.
want proof? after 35 years of SDI malarky and about $50B in wasted taxpayer money all we really have is terminal and limited reentry-phase interceptors that work half the time. maybe, no matter what the Isrealis claim their shootdown rate to be.
at least all the defense contractors were able to put their kids thru college and retire.
Boys and their toys.
The human species is programmed to self destruct. War has been in our DNA since the first caveman hit his perceived threat over the head with a club. It's only a matter of (a short) time now.
2
HBO’s “Chernobyl” says everything you need to know about scientific hubris. Eventually all systems fail, the more powerful the system the more catastrophic the failure.
It wasn’t a hypersonic weapon that took down the Twin Towers. It was a couple of dudes with box cutters. Yet, two endless wars, tens of thousands dead, and $5 trillion squandered.
We are governed by fools.
7
As JFK said during the Cuban Missile Crisis, "And we call ourselves civilized..."
2
To counter such a weapon we would need to create a system that could detect and react far faster than humans are capable. We could call it 'Skynet' and put our hopes of survival in it's computerized hands.
Oh wait...that didn't work out so well in the movie. John Conner, where are you?
3
For millennia, we humans have been working on "new and improved" methods of killing others, which invariably becoming obsolete, in addition to being immoral and a waste of money, effort and intellectual capacity.
Nobody "wins a war". There are just "losers" and "even bigger losers."
Way back in the day, the "super weapon" was the neutron bomb, which would kill all the people at the location of an attack, but would not damage any of the physical assets.
We humans have banned other forms of weapons, such as chemical and biological weapons, which bans are respected for the most part.
We would be wise to work out a ban on hypersonic weapons.
Unfortunately, I do not expect that this incompetent administration has the wits to understand that simple idea.
1
How is it that France (member of NATO) is working with the Russians and we are told to be afraid of the Russian's development of these weapons--the false fear mongering is astonishingly transparent. Another way for keep the dollar the world's reserve currency.
1
This is an important topic that has far wider implications for our military that the article did not have space to enumerate.
Our military has near-peer rivals, regional rivals and non-state rivals. How we react to any of these might be dramatically changed if hyper-sonic weapons become cheap and abundant. In addition to the increased vulnerability of any visible high-value target, an extreme separation of sensor and shooter will be possible. This has implications for the roles of distant bases, forces at sea and even how we share responsibilities with our allies.
For example, a strike drone of the future might carry no weapons, fly higher, loiter longer and be harder to detect from the ground. Many missions, particularly those with a low likelihood of firing a weapon, could instead rely on a distant ship to launch a hyper-sonic missile guided by, for example, a targeting laser on the drone. There would be far less benefit to a base close to where the drones patrol, which might in turn allow such drones to operate from ships or permanent allied air bases. Eliminating the costs and risks of building and defending an operating base in a conflict zone could have game-changing benefits, including political ones.
The proliferation of hyper-sonic weapons may be a much-needed imperative to rethink almost everything our military does, not just how we would deter or fight World War III.
One does not even need to read the article for a just response: if only we used our resources and imagination for peaceful causes to where might we arrive? This technology is about killing: tyrants, demagogues and other men (rarely a woman) having their sons kill the sons of other men.
1
Let me just be the first to point out that holding five masters degrees and a doctorate doesn’t make one intelligent. Some might argue the exact opposite.
1
@T. Rivers
Since when is being educated stupid?
As I read this article, lyrics from a recently released song by Sam Fender kept running thru my brain:
Hypersonic Missiles
Dutch kids huff balloons in the parking lot
The Golden Arches illuminate the business park
I eat myself to death, feed the corporate machine
I watch the movies, recite every line and scene
God bless America and all of its allies
I'm not the first to live with wool over my eyes
I am so blissfully unaware of everything
Kids in Gaza are bombed while I'm just out of it
The tensions of the world are rising higher
We're probably due another war with all this ire
I'm not smart enough to change a thing
I have no answers, only questions, don't you ask a thing
All the silver tongued suits and cartoons that rule my world
Are saying it's a high time for hyper sonic missiles
When the bombs drop, darling
Can you say that you've lived your life?
Oh, this is a high time for hyper sonic missiles.....
1
A lot of fanfare, hype, and francy war nerd branding for what appear to be a slight upgrade on ballistic missiles, which have been around for more than 50 years.
This is silly. We are already way behind in hypersonics. We should just leapfrog that and create the “Rods of God.”
Rods of God - imagine a rod of tungsten the size of a telephone pole raining down from space at Mach 25, destroying anything anywhere in the world with the force of a small tactical nuke by sheer kinetic energy.
We are the only country that can do it because thanks to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, we have reusable rocket launch technology. Getting those rods up there is just a matter of fuel cost.
We can have thousands of these rods orbiting the earth in orbits that could hit anything within a few minutes - faster than a hypersonic missile.
2
More important would be having the capability of preventing the Chinese & Russians from stealing our technological advances. The CIA & FBI are a total failure in accomplishing this goal.
1
This article is so naive, it’s painful. Do you really believe that Putin (Putin!) would abide by a treaty limiting development of hypersonic weapons. And besides, if their claims are true and both the Russians and the Chinese have successfully tested weapons, it’s too late. The cat’s out of the bag.
The SALT treaties were only possible once the US and the Soviets has developed full nuclear arsenals. And, as the name implies, they were about limiting, not banning.
Do you think either country would have been wise to forgo development of nuclear weapons in the hope that the other did too? That’s nonsense and horrible game theory.
It’s called “mutually assured destruction” for a reason - because it only works if the threat is mutual.
Climate change is unstoppable and will blanket suffering in a way unfathomable by any weapon designer
1
At least these powerful new weapons will be in the hands of reasonable and honest men, such as Donald Trump and his friend and ally, Vladimir Putin.
1
The sad truth is that should the leaders of this world, in their race to outdo one another in weaponry, totally destroy life on the planet, the solar system, much less the universe, would not even register a blip.
Folks, this place is all we got. Do you feel confident in leaving its fate to the likes of trump?
1
It is sad that such knowledge end up serving destruction and death, i wish it wasn't the case.
Am I the only one who is getting tired of this generation of people - born in a few years from the late 1940s to the early 1950s - running everything and making decisions for us. Somebody who is 40 should have Griffin's job. He's just another Steve Bannon.
Hypersonic speeds combined with AI should be discussed as well
Will the new hypersonic missiles be run by AI without human input or will a human actually make the decision to fire these missiles?
1
What I find incredulous is understanding the reasoning behind creating US Space Command. Delivering hypersonic weapons effectively is hilarious given the DOD happy talk about using current weapon delivery systems. DARPA & DOD would have us believe by publication obfuscation these weapons are simply very fast super weapons like other guided missiles. They require a velocity boost phase all the while fighting our atmosphere toward their target only faster. Truth be told, hypersonic technology is the most practical argument and reason for weaponizing space. These supposedly small mass 500 pound hyper weapons would best be launched from satellites. Launching would include using earth’s orbital rotation and satellite altitude in a slingshotting scenario creating a massive velocity boost. Space Command would then deliver deadly hyper weapon MIRV showers in the atmosphere over targets not one. Slashing overhead as an air bursts of acoustic energy covering wide areas. fissionable material would be vaporized as part of the friction caused by the acoustic particle wave.
Remember The Chelyabinsk 66 ft meteor a superbolide that entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia on 15 February 2013? It caused massive damage.
All of this delivered from multi geosynchronous orbital sentry launch platforms maintained over US airspace.
Now, Really, do think launching hypersonic weapons from 70 year old B52s, or 30 year old B1Bs or Stealth platforms visible after hypersonic shock waves is the plan?
1
Our race is doomed. Imagine if we were a species that put this kind of effort into sustainability and taking care of each other and the planet. This speaks volumes...
it is important to note that "mired in legacy thinking" is 90 percent of the source of the Pentagon's bureaucratic inertia.
hypersonics, like drones, disrupt the dominant power center in the Pentagon—all things WW II mythology air warfare.
hypersonics remove the need for a manned delivery system of 'smart' airborne weapons and are scalable—imagine a hypersonic weapon than can deliver a truly surgical strike down to an individual level.
instead of taking out an entire compound in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas to get at an individual "high value target" along with a dozen innocents you could wait for the target to walk outside and reduce the potential for collateral damage.
1
Nothing is unstoppable eventually! Weapons factories are always looking for ways to defeat the latest “ unstoppable “ weaponry. The tank is a classic example as it was armored up with thicker and thicker steel plate only to be penetrated by new technology in the form of tungsten steel darts, shaped H.E. Projectiles and mines. The catch is to develop, and then use, an unstoppable weapon before countermeasures can be developed...
1
Get out of the merry go round game.
Anything we make is always stolen, reproduced, and made ready to be used against us. Then, we spend more money inventing more weapons that are stolen, and so on and so forth.
We should put the money towards intellectual security and also, defense. (What good is the Hyper-sonic to them if it will never reach its target?)
Why spend our tax dollars inventing weapons that our enemies can steal and use to kill us ?
"...1,150 miles per hour ..." The SR-71 flew at 2,193.2 mph, and it was sixties technology. How could they make a weapon so slow?
1
What would happen if the same money and energy was put into educating children from underserved communities and they were mentored into STEM, technology and macro international business disruption? We dismember the USSR with military spending- that lesson has been learned. Next time they'll use the weapons. Pick your battles. America, step up and change your game. One good physicist with stop this thrown rock and render its industry obsolete. Grow up, the war is in the physics and business labs- not in an arms war.
If we treated other countries nicely and just had a modest military and relied on coalitions, we wouldn't have to worry about terrorism or being attacked by other countries. Instead, we are warmongering jerks who insist on spreading fear around the world and killing many people with our weapons. Then, those we terrorize naturally want to destroy us. These weapons make us less safe.
Let's take all of this money and rebuild towns that are falling apart, invest in education and small businesses. Say no to weapons, violence, fear, and terror. Love the rest of the world and we will be safer.
In the mean time, it didn’t take one missile fired to upend our election process, just well trained hackers.
If only there was someone like him with a tenth of the budget, or $1.7 billion, dedicated fanatically to preschool education for free— a baby hawk—wanting to show of the supremacy of our dedication to children. But these war harks one give up one red cent to making American Education for babies Great Again. When they mean great, they mean weapons, not children.
The last humans on Earth are likely going to die in the aftermath of a war accidentally escalated to a nuclear level, caused at some root level by our climate crisis. Alrighty then, I’m going to go make some morning coffee.
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I haven’t read all the comments, so forgive me if someone else pointed this out already; however, this seems like an obvious miscalculation:
>The missiles’ kinetic energy at the time of impact, at speeds of at least 1,150 miles per hour<
1
Everyone thought "Starwars" defense was dead. Only way to have a shot at stopping these will be some type of laser technology delivered from space where the curvature of the earth is not a problem and you can target the weapon virtually as soon as it is launched.
what a shame to spend all that money, brains and time on weapons. What about developing better tools to deal with poverty, health issues and pollution? This is of course true for all countries, not just USA.
2
Russia has less than half our population. The EU has 750 million people. China is at their border. They still believe they are a major world power flexing their muscles and influencing elections. Putin says nukes give him the power. Russia has been bragging about their hyper-sonic missles for several years now can they afford them?
The last global arms race ended with the collapse of the USSR. How will this one end? When the big one is spotted headed our direction with world ending bigness don't we want to end the threat with panache? Why not go bigger?
War is a racket, politics is a racket, entertainment is a racket, oil is a racket. These days everything’s part of the same racket, and it’s getting very hard to believe that the the powers that be can be stopped from destroying us all with their greed.
3
“A screaming comes across the sky.” — Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
What more proof do you need that our species, or at least, it's leaders are insane ? Come on USA, lead by doing something equally difficult and expensive to IMPROVE the outcome for our planet and all beings that live on it.
2
Griffin is a modern-day Edward Teller who bequeathed us the hydrogen bomb. This is why we need to repair and replace treaties like the INF (Intermediate Nuclear Force) treaty with Russia and the Iran nuclear accord that we’ve abandoned and now face an arms race with Russia and are on the brink of war with Iran. There is only one beneficiary of such recklessness—the “military-industrial complex (aka “the merchants of death”).
1
I worked in the nuclear weapons complex for some years.
I left because my conscience would not let me stay.
I consider myself a person who sold his soul to the devil for money during the time I worked there.
I realize that our country has to work on such weapons as mentioned in the article, though I wish it wasn't so.
I was raised in the 1950's being told to hide under a desk in the event of a nuclear attack and I'm sure my naive teachers believed that would somehow save us.
Now, 65 years later, the specter of this technology hangs over the heads of our children.
I speak out when I can, there is little else to be done.
I am convinced that our people who work on these systems do not want them to be used.
However, technology that we develop has ended up in the hands of actors who use it against us, as witnessed in the Middle East conflicts.
I believe someday, a rogue actor such as a terrorist group, will detonate a nuclear weapon in our country.
The world will see that you can't hide under a desk.
Those who think the 911 cleanup was daunting should read about Chernobyl. Estimates show some areas contaminated for thousands of years.
You cannot rebuild on land contaminated as such.
Now extrapolate to multiple nuclear events, such as an attack, and you will understand the slogan I saw on a poster when I worked:
Building Better Bombs For No Tomorrow
Black humor, for sure, but totally unfunny.
2
These are incredible first strike weapons. However there will be snafus until they are thoroughly tested, which will take time. China and Russia more than the US will initially have missiles that are just a teensy weentsy bit off spec, which at these speeds means catastrophe.
I am not in general familiar with personnel in this area, but recognize some of these bums. Inhoffe, Griffin and Shanahan, all of whom are passionate about how they know these missiles are scientifically and technologically excellent, are climate change deniers. They have zero credibility in either science or technology. Perhaps they should demonstrate a better understanding of such matters before they lead us charging down this rat hole.
Note that there are already developed counters to these hypersonic missiles such as ballistic missile submarines, strategic bombers on patrol, and other forms of distributed assets.
2
I wonder what risks hypersonic missiles pose to concentrating much of our upper defense echelon in one building, the Pentagon. Should the top of the defense bureaucracy be dispersed or, if possible, lodged securely underground? I'd like to see the
Times look into this.
2
@RG You make a case for or ensuring that military leaders remain together in the same location. It might concentrate their minds on the enormity of their plans for global destruction.
The US developing hypersonic weapons pell-mell somehow always complains that developing an 80 mpg car is JUST TOO HARD
2
How are we going to pay for all this? I guess we’ll get some more loans from China.
1
I like how “we can do anything” means we can destroy anything in new, exciting and disruptive ways. Echoing several other posted comments, why don’t we spend 15bil researching how we can control the weather as a weapon and then, boom, we have a reverse dual use technology.
1
We, the US, will learn this when one slams into one of our multi-billion dollar aircraft carriers and sinks it.
That's what learning feels like in America.
2
Many years ago the anti-nuclear weapons group SANE took out an ad in The Times when the anti-ballistic missile system was being considered for funding.
The ad pictured a bunch of generals playing with toy missiles and the headline was "Now, from the same people who brought you the Vietnam War, the ABM" and the subheadline "They're mad; they're absolutely mad" (For those who don't remember, "mad" not only referred to their states of mind but also that wonderful policy of mutually assured destruction).
1
@Steve M.A.D. Thats when I knew for sure that our leaders were insane. That's when they decided it was better to eradicate life on Earth than lose the empire game.
Homeless U.S. citizens without health benefits should be grateful that they live in a country that can protect them with hypersonic missiles, albeit in tents.
2
We are a damaged and faulty species, an experiment that, despite the fact that we're capable of feeling empathy, of being altruistic and caring, of loving, has failed miserably because we're also capable of horrendous acts of evil. It may be a fitting ending to the human species if we were to destroy ourselves using such horrific weaponry.
2
There is no choice but to invest in research. You cannot trust what the Russians and Chinese will do because they are closed societies. No nation can risk be caught unprepared given the lead time to develop such a weapon.
Note the repeated role of Bolton as a force favoring extremist behavior: "John Bolton, the national security adviser, was a key architect in 2002 of America’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, which limited both nations’ ability to try to block ballistic missiles."
The writer of this article sounds a little bit too excited by these new WMDs. Men and their toys indeed. And we can't afford food stamps.
1
A ship killing missile is launched by a non state actor.
It sinks one of our surface fleet.
What do we do with the rest of the targets?
Enough money would allow the weapon to be diverted from a state command.
A pitifully small sum. Perhaps a supernatural belief?
We have moved to being a driver at 30 MPH to one at 300 MPH where the window for decision making is unforgiving. We have politicians and military leaders working within an infrastructure that still operates, in many ways, like we are still living in the 1940's traveling at 30 MPH. Terrifying.
2
These are not “defensive” weapons. They are offensive weapons. And rather useless when an administration is unable to visualize any coherent policy!
Second, none of these well to do eggheads make money from programs designed to mitigate terrorism by improving lives of ordinary people. But of course, neither would Boeing or GE.
2
A hypersonic missile capable of striking a nuclear weapons facility, a nuclear power plant or even a nuclear powered submarine while in port would be at least the equivalent of a dirty nuclear bomb and contaminate large areas. Its potential to disrupt life and society are every bit as scary as nuclear weapons. Countries that use nuclear reactors located near major cities to generate electric power are particularly vulnerable. Think not one, but dozens of Chernobyls.
1
I think this makes the answer to Fermi’s paradox so much clearer. We will never find extraterrestrial life because of the great filter of our own violent hubris. We will all wipe ourselves out.
2
How will the automated defense system of any target country distinguish between a flock of incoming kinetic-damage hypers from an unknown enemy, and incoming thermonuclear hypers?
Wouldn't the decision be to assume the worst, and automatically launch a nuke counter-attack on all possible enemies before the ability to counter-attack was lost?
I can understand now why your tech billionaires are buying and hardening properties at the end of remote valleys here in New Zealand.
We must revolutionize the speed of death and destruction. Time is money! Arms merchants create the very problem they seek funds to defend against. I long for the day when technology is used for positive purposes.
3
Homeless U.S. citizens without health benefits should be grateful that the live in a country that as a superpower can protect them with hypersonic missiles. They can sleep peacefully, albeit in tents.
5
We have never had a shortage of new and better ways to kill one another. What has changed is that we had humans who were anthropocentric in charge of our government, dare I say intelligent, even a bit compassionate. Today we have corporate, profit driven sociopaths in charge of our government who give no hoots about people. Waging war with weapons that have half-lives numbering in the thousands of years is at least one way to erase our concerns about climate change. Between a president who is extorting Congress with the threat of inhumane abuse of immigrants or nuclear war, It this is what we have become, I say let the missiles fly. Just make sure one or two of them target the people pushing these choices.
Clearly, pressuring our government to make sane choices is out of the question. There is no longer a mechanism for that.
Will human beings inevitably find new ways to self-destruct? Answer: Yes. Will we self-destruct? Answer: No, anyone?
What an absolute massive waste of resources. We all sit back and scratch our heads wondering how we can invest in our people while these projects just continue to get the green light. Our debt will eventually bring this country to our knees on the backs of projects like these.
1
Here goes the military industrial complex again, chasing a supposed weapons gap that doesn’t exist. It was proven that many of those missiles trotted out in Russian parades were cardboard fakes. That a country like Russia that has the economy of Texas is capable of producing this technology is absurd. As for the Chinese, they are basically a country of peasants trying to grow enough food to survive.
Now with the consolidation of defense contractors, there are basically three now, they require a new boogeyman to justify their expensive programs.
So a missile comes in fast, big deal, the threat of a old tech nuclear response is still a very viable deterrent. Being vaporized and destroying the earth’s environment globally is still the ultimate answer.
This program makes as much sense a super sonic business jets.
Why are these boy toys still allowed again? We teach 5 year olds to negotiate instead of fight but we allow global leaders to play war games with physical consequences? What exactly is the UN for? I get that it's a "guy" thing to fight to the death and all but you military types need to take that away from the general public who are not interested in being dragged into your dramas.
1
When you think of the warning time being brought down from, say, the current half hour to a few minutes - in the real world I'd say that makes absolutely no difference.
Consider the closest thing we've come to some kind of real live cataclysm, 9/11, wherein it took our esteemed president half an hour to stop reading a kids book. In the middle of a week day with, presumably all the military running. And STILL responder jets either weren't deployed or took HOURS.
So the whole "ohh its terribly much faster than we can handle" has been the governing principle in reality since I'd say the early 1960s ICBM era.
The current race to speed is a bit of a farce, hi-tech theater performance rather than any kind of game changer. What an expensive show.
2
Meanwhile, my sister, a gradeschool teacher in PA, has to spend her own money to buy paper and pens for her students.
Teachers are going on strike to get an extra 1% raise on a yearly salary of 38,000....while these madmen spend 100 million dollars on a single test flight for a weapon that will be deterred.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Human beings, who have developed the capacity for self-awareness and rationality, who exert claims to having a "soul" and to experience "spirituality", are one of the very few species in the animal kingdom that is actively engaged in its own self-destruction, and actively and mindlessly destroying the environment and other living species as well.
2
This is a country that can do anything we need to do that physics allow.
An insane philosophy that will speed up the extinction of mankind. What would happen if we used all this time, energy and money to develop tools to help people's lives?
1
"however, that it threatens to outpace any real discussion about the potential perils of such weapons"
Slightly delusional there. That's not the way international relations work in this reality. Refusing to develop a weapon because it's "inhumane" or "unfair" means nothing to Russia, China, and their ilk.
The larger question is how to limit the threat that comes from allowing the national broadcast networks to disengage from their policy of avoiding the legal requirement of public interest broadcasting. More and more sophisticated weaponry is a joke when computer control that is the mandatory element is easily subverted. In combination with the fact we have an ignorant and disinterested electorate...maybe there's an even deeper problem. Fortunately China will have the answers.
The real arms race is a race and war of words, the hyperbole of the NYT, CNN and other media who don't understand how technology advances have changed modern warfare.
The United States has been conducting research and development of hypersonic weapons for decades. This did not suddenly appear as an imminent threat. China and Russia are moving at high speed to develop both strategic and tactical weapons including nuclear weapons, missiles and hypersonic weapons of all types. The U.S. is now preparing to mount rail guns and high-powered lasers on American warships.
Now the NYT is proclaiming that we're engaged in an unstoppable arms race that jeopardizes the status quo and will, in fact, encourage Russia and China to expand their growing arsenals.
The arms race has always been in effect and quantum leaps in advanced technology/electronics and computers has made weapons vastly more effective. Additionally technology advances are all too easily shared or stolen making the proliferation of new weapons ever more easy.
Yes, we are in an arms race. It's not new and not sudden. Our enemies are always seeking strategic advantage to find new advantages over the United States. North Korea threatens with missiles. China wants to end American hegemony in the Pacific and throw the U.S. back to Hawaii and threaten the U.S. with advanced weapons. Russia too is developing new technology.
Must we wait for them to have technological advantage and strike us with impunity? Pearl Harbor?
3
I found myself thinking back to science fiction i read way back in HS. In Heinlein's Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, the revolutionaries of the moon colonies fired payloads of ore (from catapults, intended for processing on earth) on Cheyenne Mountain. People came out to watch the fun. But the hypersonic impacts had the results of nucs.
I remember reading later that R.A. had relocated to Colorado from California to evade the nuclear threat, only to have the SAC command center built in his backyard. So he dropped rocks on it.
Fear and greed make powerful bedfellows which the military industrial complex happily leverages to their own benefit at our expense. They are what we should fear.
1
"If true, that would mean a Russian aircraft or ship firing one of them near Bermuda could strike the Pentagon, some 800 miles away, in five minutes. "
Russian submarines used to patrol just off our coast. That is just twelve miles away. So conventional missiles would do just fine. The time to hit the Pentagon would be less than a minute.
2
So 3 nations are developing these miraculous, unbeatable weapons. Note that these are the 3 developed nations that “can’t afford” medical care for all citizens.
2
The Dan Winters photo of Daniel Marren is striking. The grain of the tunnel, the black of the depths, the Halo lighting, and the positioning of the subject are all beautiful. The depth feels almost Hitchcock-esque. It's fitting for the horror of a story that juxtaposes human strategic error with human scientific progress.
1
This article is more of a sales pitch than a discussion of reality. Existing missiles are already very hard to stop and carry all the threats described here to people and things like aircraft carriers. Hypersonic missiles require a huge amount of energy and fuel and will be very very expensive. All these fancy materials are needed because they have to be very light to be able to get anywhere before their fuel is gone and yet must avoid burning up in flight.
2
The irony is that most of us will be dead from some preventable cause (pandemic, climate change, etc) as we cry poor re: research finding while we spend oodles of money arming ourselves to the teeth.
1
There's always money, it seems, for weapons and the capabilities to destroy humanity. Why isn't there money to make the human condition better? Going to battle should never be an option nor should it become our collective dream.
How much more can humanity bear before we do go extinct? We've been duped to believe that humans are intelligent creatures. We are not.
Great. A weapon that travels so fast, makes reasoned responses impossible. Just what the world needs.
1
Putin warned that the development of hypersonic weapons was greatly accelerated by the spread of missile defense umbrellas. We over used that as a quick easy solution. That only provided 8-9 years of relief, followed by a permanent harm to global security in the form of hypersonic weapons.
Why is there no mention of the Chinese and Iranian hypersonic missiles and potential--in fact, very real--threat posed to US naval forces in the Gulf? This is certainly one factor mitigating against Trump's desire for a war. The losses to US ships could be catastrophic.
While our species has great technological prowess, our emotional intelligence is still stuck in the caves. As the climate destabilizes, food shortages due to crop failures will put pressure on governments to do something. Asia’s massive population makes a China / India conflict almost a certainty. Nuking your neighbor doesn’t make sense when you want their land for agriculture. That’s where these hypersonic weapons make perfect sense. Target military command and control plus the leadership and you can take what you need. Except of course the fog of war will create unintended consequences that in a scenario like this one suggest that scorched earth will be the final result.
This discussion of hypersonic missiles if full with hyperbolic assertions. Certainly if everything works perfectly according to the weapons planners, they are invincible. But they don't and they aren't. Hyperbolic missiles will not end Mutually Assure Destruction or create rational first-strike logic. That is the same mistaken thinking that led us to chase the Star-Wars program of Reagon for an "umbrella-like " shield to protect us. This article is another alarmist call to spend hundreds of billions of dollars planning for worst-case scenarios. It is weirid that environmentalists are always criticized for and asked to justify their worst-case scenarios while military planners are rewarded for them with new contracts.
Such is the nature of the universe...conflict. There is an underlying reason why humankind continues to develop more-advanced weapons...because it’s needed.
Enrico Fermi was almost certainly correct. Humans will destroy the Earth as we know it within two centuries of 1945.
1
I don’t think the Russians have these weapons although Vlad claimed they do.
I’m concerned about our vulnerable aircraft carriers, too.
But I think flack would destroy a hypersonic, if the weapon flew right into it.
This is horrific and portends the end of the human race. We keep forgetting that every advance in military weapons will eventually be matched by our enemies - including current ‘friends’ of convenience. We may think it doesn’t matter because we have an advance, hence the ‘arms race’, but as weapons get ever deadlier, all it takes is a single use on either side to unleash a catastrophe. Secrets are increasingly easy to steal in our wired world, when we’re not actively arming other countries both to make lucrative dollars and avoid engaging our own forces.
1
“The missiles’ kinetic energy at the time of impact, at speeds of at least 1,150 miles per hour, makes them powerful enough to penetrate any building material or armored plating with the force of three to four tons of TNT.”
Is the mph off by a factor of 10?
2
There is a solution. The US needs to give up its habit of bullying other nations and work towards international collaboration. And the press has been too compliant. Once the US decides to treat some country as a threat and a danger, the press falls in and tells the American people that the danger is real.
But the real danger comes from the US. The US is in the habit of "calling the shots" thousands of miles from its own borders and other nations do not want the US calling the shots in areas which are very near their borders and far from America's.
And, some of these other nations also have missiles and nuclear weapons. So beware America. Your aggressiveness is your main danger.
Just think what all these scientific minds, money and effort could be doing to generate hypersonic health care and cures, hypersonic infrastructure and hypersonic cleaner energy. Oh well.
1
Yes the internet was originally called arpanet. Also a defense project. Which ironically later allowed the theft of our defense and scientific research. Now the internet has morphed into its own monster without any policy or controls. For both good and nefariousness. The doomsday clock keeps getting set ahead. This time there won’t be any Roosevelt or Churchill to lead us. Instead we may have Donald trump and Boris Johnson. Which can be a scary as these missiles
It could unsomble transfer of Military tech for Civilian use. Like SR-71 Blackbird Spy plane the fastest plane being used in flying Molson Ice Beer commercials. One day Hypersonic vehicles can be used for Pizza Home Delivery half away across the Planet.
2
Once we have the ultimate weapon, we can stop building conventional weapons. This should save the pentagon a fortune.
1
Healthcare is too expensive. Education is too expensive. Confronting climate change? Too expensive. Infrastructure? Who has money for that. But when It comes to our insatiable desire to wipe ourselves out? That money spigot never closes.
1
The shared lack of control among Bolton, Pompeo, Trump and hypersonic weapons, has the soothing consequence of showing us how good we have it right now. Just wait...
Weapons that can't be evaded and leave almost no time to react are just what we need these days. Especially when they get smaller (shoulder fired?), then it'll be really exciting. It's nerve racking enough now, to check the news and wonder what catastrophe is going to be smeared across the news pages/ Will we even have the time to check the news in a world of hypersonic weapons? Gee, it's just so interesting to think about.
BTW, Star Wars worked out really well too.
2
All I can say after the endless barrage of bad news, and long term trends, is I'm glad I don't have kids. I'm also doing my part in not contributing to the one factor that is driving every single trend, the one no one wants to discuss, overpopulation.
3
Incredible! Fantastic, now if we could just work on some things to help mankind.
1
"The missiles’ kinetic energy at the time of impact, at speeds of at least 1,150 miles per hour, makes them powerful enough to penetrate any building material or armored plating with the force of three to four tons of TNT."
Surely this is not right. A bullet travels at about 1,700 mph.
This stuff gets shoved down Politicians and sometimes even the People's throats as if there "Is no alternative" but right now other countries will still follow our lead. If we started on a measured course of global reduction in WMD's then we could start to turn things around. This is part of a WMD plan because nukes can be put on these things as said in this story. We need to start now by having global discussions with all nations about where our future is going for all humanity.
This article reinforces the concept that large surface ship are ideal to fight WW2 again, and at present in a shooting war are floating coffins.
1
What will happen to the species that puts all of it's technical effort into weapons to kill each other but can find no reason to implement sustainable energy policies where the technology is already available? I suppose when most people are insane it seems like the consensus is correct.
Clearly this is a revolution in military technology. Once fully developed it is hard to see the utility of aircraft carriers, manned jet aircraft and most land based combat systems. All you need are thousands of these deadly hypersonic missiles that can destroy just about anything from bases in North America. Combine these systems with new and rapidly improving artificial intelligence and the human race is out of the war business. That sounds like a good thing unless one considers an international war between competing superpowers. What happens if they sink our entire carrier fleets? What if an adversary creates continent wide no fly zones? The ultimate problem is that this is just the beginning. Wait and see what comes after these weapons.
1
It sounds like the name of a surfboard (and probably is). As Isaac Newton's third law states, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." I think this applies here (ar least partially). It stands to reason, sicnce this 10,000mph missile exists, there is most likely a defensive weapon which is faster. Like the Phalanx anti-missile system on board all U.S. Navy destroyers.
There seems to be no limits to the imagination when it comes to developing new forms of destruction. Meanwhile we continue to trade with China and Russia and build up their economies while they too expand their military. Our leaders have presented us with quite the choice. Be destroyed instantly by hypersonic or nuclear weapons, or more slowly by the impacts of climate change. Either way I think Yoko Ono got it right, "Psychotic builds a castle and neurotic lives in it."
1
"the priority in Washington right now is to get our versions built"
The priority should be to figure out how to make rapid detectors and effective interceptors.
The general problem is what to do when science makes possible a new class of weapons. Should you stop unilaterally, thus risking falling behind others? Should you attempt to negotiate an arms treaty? Should you try to gain a military advantage by rushing forward? So long as big countries are threatening each other I don’t see any alternative to plunging ahead. I hope I’m wrong.
1
I am less concerned by the development of hypersonic weaponry than the security used to protect the research. Time and again American technology sets the standard, only to be stolen by China and Russia. What assurance do we have that this multi-billion dollar research is not already being misappropriated when American computer systems are routinely hacked and its most sensitive secrets routinely downloaded and accessed by slipshod contractors?
1
This article seems a little over the top. Reagan’s Star Wars to the contrary, we don’t have effective defenses against current missile attacks either. Reaction time from a submarine-launched attack wouldn’t be very different from what’s discussed here.
None of that is going to stop the weapons industry. We can have a whole new generation of attack weapons. Then with the reduced reaction time argument we can have a whole new generation of space-based, AI-controlled defensive systems. God knows what they’ll shoot down.
None of that seems to eliminate the risk, which keeps the peace today, that a first strike wouldn’t be 100% effective. It’s significant that one of the active promoters here cut his teeth on the Star Wars boondoggle.
Maybe we can get some kind of arms control agreement here, since we seem to have broken the craziness barrier.
1
You mentioned Star Wars technology. And the testing issues we are going through. I suggest we use the Cheney theory. If failed testing is causing problems before deployment, STOP TESTING. DEPLOY
This article has it wrong, the world came to an agreement and other treaties on conventional WMDs only after rival nations had them successfully deployed for a few years and some were used in wars, eg chemical weapons in WWI and nukes in WWII. It is not surprising that the hypersonic weapons are not openly discussed yet because a large chunk of them are classified.
And for people who are saying give peace a chance, a noble sentiment indeed but until the world has the Putins, the Kims, and the Xis, you have to have your own Regans or Kennedys to counter them.
3
This is a game changer for China and Russia. Thanks to Obama, the USA did not invest in this technology as China and Russia have. China goes into full blown production in 2020 with completion in 2022. One can take over the world with this technology and I would not bet against China not making the first steps to do just that.
1
Let us not forget the Trump administration on Feb. 1 of this year suspended one of the last major nuclear arms control treaties with Russia, who asked for but were denied their request to have substantial discussions. We may not trust or agree with the Russians on most matters, but this most important matter of all, on which the fate of the world depends, should never be simply dismissed without discussion that the other side is willing to have them.
1
So why should we trust the Russians? Even Trump, who supposedly is their buddy according to the liberal media, does not.
John Maynard Keynes observed in 1923 that, as individuals, "In the long run, we are all dead."
However, the odds increase daily that his maxim may be short-circuited by fact that our entire species may be dead in the short run.
Seems there is always taxpayer money for these weapons of war and little money for infrastructure, health care, etc.
Shouldn’t taxpayers be allowed to choose how their money is spent?
31
We already decide. We decide through elections.
1
Sure thing!
Let’s ask the people of Russia and China how they feel about their respective ‘elected’ governments spending billions (rubles and yuan, respectively) on these dangerous weapons!
That would be socialism.
1
I don't get it. What is it that this technology really affords us, other than dialing up the kinetic 'punch' that can be delivered at impact by such a device? It seems like Michael Griffin is a guy who knows how to use a hammer and is trying to pound more nails. What are we trying to solve for here that the military industrial complex hasn't done a hundred times over?
50 years ago we resolved as a nation to put a man on the moon, even though we didn't know how to do it, or if we could. We marshaled 450,000 personnel between NASA employees and contractors, AND spent less money and far fewer lives actually achieving that goal than we did in fighting an ill conceived war in Vietnam that we couldn't even define what success looked like (17 lives lost during actual attempts or in-space space flight by NASA versus 58,220 fatalities and 304,000 physically wounded in Vietnam).
Achieving this objective, (whatever THAT is) isn't bold, it isn't innovative and it doesn't solve a real problem, for our nation or the planet. It's a cheap pet trick.
Let's take the brain power we spend on countless DOD projects like these an re-direct it to the real problem facing the nation and the planet, global climate change. Because I do agree with Griffin that 'This country can do anything we need to do that physics allows. We just need to get on with it".
7
This technology is probably already advanced enough to make a hardened re-entry vehicle that can be steered into an aircraft carrier
Famine, disease, overpopulation, under education, and looming environmental disaster - and what are we spending our billions on? It is a crime for which we will be held accountable, one way or another.
15
Overpopulation is the factor that drives all the others you mention, and most every large issue.
Just as developing the latest in the never ending line of super-weapons requires immense creativity, effort and resources, it will take even a higher volume of these laudable human traits to banish our ineluctable attraction to the culture and methods of self-annihilation. Just because this challenge is always seemingly just out of reach for us, there is no reason not to follow JFK’s admonition ‘to go to the moon...not because it is easy, but because it is hard’. How morbidly ironic it is that we are credibly discussing a spin-off aerospace technology that is this ghoulish. As we approach the 50th anniversary of mankind’s greatest technological achievement in the summer of 1969, one would hope that landing on the moon back then should have served as the branch point in our evolution to a more peaceful species.
Maybe advanced civilizations are truly meant to self-extinguish rather than flourish forever in peaceful pursuit of more noble ideals that all too rarely occupy our fantasies less vividly than the next weapon to supersede all other weapons. Pity this should be our driving impulse; but the universe is a violent place. Why would our exclusive, sentient version of that universal order be so out of step with the actual physics, chemistry, and biology that produced us? This is the question that we should be meditating upon right now—because it is ‘hard’ yet essential for us to do so.
5
Good article, but it overstates the invulnerability and the technical challenges with accuracy. Hypersonic weapons will be able to avoid exoatmospheric defense systems (GMD, Aegis) and their relatively low altitude will keep them below the horizon until close to their targets. However, they will get VERY hot, meaning they will be visible to both airborne and space based IR sensors from much greater distances than surface based radars. Navigation can be done inertially but the ionization will likely preclude GPS. Control can be done, but not with traditional fins. On board target tracking sensors will not be able to operate through the extreme temperatures. Together, these will limit the limit possible accuracy to well beyond what conventional weapons achieve today. Technology can mitigate some of these challenges, but you won't find these weapons designated to fly through windows.
Defenses are possible with existing technology. We just need to get started.
7
Inertial guidance with laser ring gyros is probably approaching quantum perfection.
The Fermi Paradox seems very credible.
2
No discussion of HEL? (high energy Laser) I would think the tests at Dugway last year would allow for some defense of these as well as most other threats, especially if space based....
A vehicle moving as quickly as Mach 15 to Mach 20 will likely move out of the range of an HGSO, space-based, laser defense system before it can cause sufficient damage to disrupt the vehicle's trajectory. Not only that, but at those speeds, the heat generated by the vehicle moving through the air will be far hotter than the heat directed by any remote laser. The vehicle will be designed to withstand heat; that was one of the points of the article. A space-based laser wouldn't have the necessary power to generate heat in excess of that which the vehicle can withstand.
1
Thank you for this most interesting and enlightened article.
This just reaffirms my believe that humans will destroy this planet and make it uninhabitable one way or the other.
Darwin's law of "survival of the fittest" and I may add the most strong willed and powerful will win at the end. Little do they realize in the end they are also doomed. I am in the sunset of my life and, if I am lucky enough, will be deceased and not see or experience this kind of cataglysm.
Again thank you for this most informative article. I do feel for the younger generations because of what do they have to look forward to, mainly more chaos and uncertainty.
16
With the deployment of hypersonic weapons one important aspect of waging war is lost, i.e. the human capacity for humans to respond in a timely manner. There is no doubt the these weapons will require A.I. to make the decisions about how, when, where, and what to strike when a nearly instantaneous response is required. The human mind simply cannot process or evaluate the fate of its nation in real time with this new technology. The only question left for humans to answer in such a scenario would be the 'why' question. Unfortunately that answer would come operative after the fact. The new role for humans would be armchair pundits and historians of the aftermath.
2
The most deeply disturbing concept this technology has unleashed is the use it or lose it mindset that would propel far more aggressive behavior on the part of world leaders in possession of such weapons.
With or without advanced artificial intellegence systems in place, the world will be a far more dangerous, unstable place. AI systems will always have built-in standard errors of measurement in their operating systems; vanishingly small errors can lead to catastrophic outcomes.
3
Horses, gun powder, atomic bombs...hypersonic missiles. Perhaps the debate is more public about the implications of developing a new weapon system than in the past but in the end the result will be the same. If the option is for the US to develop a new technology first as opposed to adversaries like China and Russia, I say full speed ahead.
6
Michael Griffin’s celebration of the Manhattan project is misplaced because its a poor research model. Evidence shows (sorry I don’t have the links) that singular pursuits, in particular those like the atomic bomb, slow scientific progress. The Manhattan project, for example, drained so many resources from disparate scientific projects that it set those other projects back further than building an atomic bomb set science forward. The mentality of emergency allocations, research guided by single decision-makers, will keep America competitive only in the short term. Letting scientists follow their leads and respond to their discoveries will ensure better long term results.
4
@Aaron: The Manhattan project was technological, more than scientific. It implemented and scaled up physics already discovered.
5
@Aaron
Dropping two atomic bombs developed as part of the Manhattan Project ended WWII. In doing so it is estimated that nearly a million American casualties were averted from the alternative invasion of Japan and the prolonged campaign that would have been necessary for them to surrender.
Your "singular pursuit" theory ignores the unnecessary and senseless death of hundreds of thousands of sons, husbands and fathers that dropping the bomb precluded. It ignores the contributions each one of them were permitted as a consequence to impart not only to America but the world. It also ignores the opportunity ending the war on American terms presented scientists to "follow their leads" and in fact realize the astounding discoveries since its end. Discoveries that would have otherwise been delayed if not impossible to realize.
2
The moon shots also produced very little science. About the same as an average high school science fair, according to Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg.
Let us not forget that targeted disinformation, spread through social media, has been a far more effective and efficient weapon against free democracies throughout the world than has any weapon system ever developed. We must also recognize that massive displacement of entire populations from climate change will be far more destructive than traditional causes of war. Although those issues demand our full and urgent attention, to fail to develop hypersonic weapons would be a grave error. The first strike incentive posed by them can only be countered by massive deployment on our part. Only then will others be willing to negotiate limits in their use.
Although hypersonic weapons could be equipped with nuclear warheads, there’s hardly any advantage to doing so. The strength of hypersonic weapons is in their tactical use. How much more effective to target critical infrastructure than entire cities? We aren’t talking about weapons of mass destruction. Decentralized, multiply redundant forms of infrastructure, military and governance have always provided an advantage in times of war. Only by thinking that way in times of peace can we make hypersonic weapons obsolete.
5
"Marren seemed both thrilled and harried by the rising tempo at his laboratory in recent months. A jovial 55-year-old who speaks carefully but excitedly about his work...."
Oh, what fun! Ain't no Oppenheimers here.
9
The key word is "physics," as in the laws of physics. Our potential adversaries know these laws as well as we do and, like us, are racing to exploit them.
The problem then reduces to the fundamental question of modern military policy: is the world a safer place when we have the same capabilities as those who intend us harm, or are we safer when they have those capabilities and we do not?
Sadly, there is no way around the laws of physics and there is no way to strike a bargain if you have no bargaining chips.
8
The US had better start thinking about diplomatic controls now, because we are not going to be first, or best, at hypersonics. The reason is simple. Other countries' weapon industries are designed to meet their military needs. The US weapon industry is designed to make defense companies' CEOs and stockholders richer.
22
Endemic corruption in Russian and Chinese industry is at least as significant as in ours. At least in the U.S., losing one’s head is only figurative rather than literal. An American scientist is more likely to report a problem, rather than to try to sweep it under the rug.
1
I’m sure Jared is already on it.
Actually, these hypersonic weapons could render a second tier status for nuclear weapons. The operational refraction time for such a super fast weapon would definitely be more useful and available for making a quick point with an opponent. Operational rules would curb nuclear warheads from being used.
2
@DENOTE MORDANT
So, suppose a big blast goes off out of nowhere in downtown Omaha and wipes out a good section of the city. We don't know what did it, but somebody thinks they saw a streak in the sky and heard a sonic boom before it went off.
Who do we hit back? With what?
Sure, nukes will be "second tier". Sounds good.
The real threat to every nation today is the accelerating rise of CO2 we are responsible for creating in our atmosphere, and its effect on climate and in acidifying the oceans. Like the original developers of "wonder weapons" in World War 2, we will find that they will not protect us in a world with too many weapons, and not enough common sense.
19
We have existing technology, which would put a damper on the urgent need for a Hypersonic Arms Race. Its called Comprehensive Family Planning. Human Overpopulation beyond sustainable limits is the most fundamental threat to life on this planet. All other issues are but symptoms; including another arms race.
16
@John Warnock
By the end of the century China's population will be reduced by 400 million from todays numbers and the rest of the world population will stop growing.
Sounds like we'll be doing ok without dire end of world fantasies.
@John Warnock the world’s growth is slowing and will soon start depopulation soon in many places.
@John Warnock Thomas Malthis would appreciate your comment.
1
Mankind -- and I stress "man" -- will not be happy until all human life on the planet is dead or compromised beyond repair. Humans going into space and populating other planets will only pollute the universe. Technologically, it is feasible but to what end? Griffin may have five master's degrees but the world would have been better served if one of them was in the humanities.
87
We are seeing the end of a golden era. It may not seem like a golden era, but it is inevitable that these new weapons will be used. Will this be the end of civilization?
4
I don't see any meaningful discussion of the technical difficulties of guidance, navigation and control for long-range versions of these hypersonic weapons.
4
This whole focus on “disrupting” technologies is growing tired... why not focus on “stabilizing” technologies, like renewable energies and waste management? As an engineer with an ear to the ground for different funding opportunities, I’m constantly disappointed by how easy it is to win a weapons contract.
55
When weapons of mass destruction follow the same trajectory as computers have (from room to palm size) and so wind up in the hands of dark-hearted individuals (I.e., all of us), we better take what may be our final opportunity to get down on our knees to ask our Creator to save us from ourselves. It is the Tower of Babel all over again.
6
@ehillesum Why get down on our knees. Christians claim God already "has a plan for that."
There's a higher priority still- information security, so our military secrets are not stolen as they have been in the past.
6
We are in a renewed arms race simply because of a recent confluence of science and technology that makes hypersonic weapons feasible. America can not afford not to develop the technology because we know that other nations, less restrained in their quest for global hegemony, have access to the same confluence that we do. History has taught us that restraint on the global stage can only be created and maintained from a position of overwhelming strength.
11
@Jack Its not just that. We've got folks in the administration and congress, apparently since they won't stand up to the administration or do their job i.e. oversight, who aren't thinking with a wide perspective on things. We have diplomatic tools and other tools that we need to start using. Other countries take their cues from US as it said in this news story. Eventually things will deteriorate and the weapons will be retired or used. Lets just hope the former.
3
@Jack
“...from a position of overwhelming strength “
Surely other countries are thinking the same way. Where does this madness end?
In particle physics, we construct large computer simulation codes to predict the results of complex experiments. If the principal powers were to jointly construct a general simulation of weapons, targets, civilian damage, and run these codes under psychological panic and expected paranoia, then show the results to all, the rich nations (with more to lose in an even exchange) would find a solution to reducing these weapons.
11
@John If nations were always as logical as you describe, there would be no war. But nations often act against their own interest, sometimes even suicidally (e.g. Japan in WW II).
4
The technological abilities of humans is far, far greater than our ability to understand how to use what we’ve created, what the unknown effects might be and how to avoid mistakes in use. And our sense of morals simply has not developed alongside our technological ability. Our technology advances at lightning speed while an ancient Greek, if he appeared today somehow from thousands of years ago, could easily understand that we have made NO progress ethically/morally. This lag will eventually kill all of us.
61
Maybe hypersonic weapons would not be so bad. The damage area would be smaller per weapon than with nuclear weapons and no lethal radiation.
5
This crucially important article lacks adequate discussion of one of the most dangerous implications of hypersonics: how the compressed decision time between detection of launch and impact on one's territory gives rival countries high incentives to program their responses in artificial intelligence (AI) systems -- even autonomous ones without humans in the loop.
475
@Seyom Brown Cool! A better, faster Doomsday Machine, unencumbered by slow-as-molasses humans making subjective nonrational judgment calls.
39
@MayberryMachiavellian
the genie has been out of the bottle since Trinity...we are about to enter the 21st century version of mutually assured destruction.
4
@MayberryMachiavellian Until they malfunction, or are tricked by malicious 3rd parties.
6
Neat-O!
Since advancing wind and solar energy sources seem to be much, much too hard for these "brilliant" scientists and engineers, let's reorganize the U.S.economy to make this new weapon!
Indeed, it sounds like a no brainer.
605
@Avenue B
Why blame the scientists and engineers? The brilliant ones do look for cutting-edge challenges. That is the definition of "brilliance" they have been trained and conditioned to accept in their fields. And that is where they find employment, money and security - thanks to the political priorities of the university-military-industrial complex. They didn't create this system, which is already organized to make this and other weapons of self-destruction. Neither are they simple cogs in the machine. They have free will, but like all of us, they are conditioned to limit their consideration of other possibilities.
13
@Avenue B: On Avenue A, the blame is put on the politicians who make the decisions.
Will you vote for a government that will tax carbon emitters - and raise the price of goodies - and allocate revenues for alt-energy rather than medicare for all, or a guaranteed annual income?
Anyway, the Russians and Chinese are building them and we can't have a hyper-sonic missile gap. Dr. Strangelove knew!
5
@Avenue B it's not the scientists and engineers, it's the politicians
4
All Americans should consider how, in what is still called a democracy, billions of tax dollars and scientific expertise have been spent on yet another class of WMD that will end civilization - all without any public discussion, let alone public approval.
Congress: when are you going to do oversight of the military industrial complex, and did you have any intention of informing constituents that our tax dollars are being spent on destruction of the planet rather than saving it.
Thank you, New York Times and Center for Public Integrity for doing the work of the free press. We need you.
851
@TFB in fairness, these are not WMDs (weapons of *mass* destruction), just very fast normal - sized bombs.
25
FROM: Greedy Oligarchs in Power
TO: Rabble of USA & beyond
In old GI parlance, when we need to hear from you the unwashed we'll hire a lobbyist propaganda mill to churn out the opinions we want you to have.
Until then just stay out of the way as we secure our fortunes.
109
@TFB, don't let them tell you otherwise: there's no such thing as a "limited" war. The last 80 years prove it.
27
You don’t need a hypersonic missile to sink or disable one of “America’s 11 multibillion-dollar aircraft carriers.” Because it’s politically impossible to state the truth, our Navy continues to act as if this were still WWII. Today, with GPS and satellite imagery, anyone can locate our carriers and cheap GPS guided missiles can hit them.
It’s been many years since someone first said, “There’s only two kinds of ships, submarine and targets.”
565
@Charlierf
The Chinese have surfaced a SONG class sub (diesel electric) that was undetected near one of our Pacific fleets a few years back. All it takes is one nuclear tipped torpedo or cruise missile.
They have land based standoff missiles that are good to about 1500 miles. The F18 has a radius of less than 1/2 of that.
The Carrier fleet good at projecting power in some places. But with the technology today, it's as was illustrated with the sinking of a battleship by air power before WWII, a very big target.
59
@Charlierf
You are correct that is why carriers travel in fleets of ships and subs that are there to protect the carriers.
8
@Charlierf: In WWII, at least in the Pacific Theater, Carriers went head to head. The US Navy is in the post-WWII mode of thinking in which the Third World Countries that were attacked by the US didn't have the ability to attack these "flat tops," but even Iran can do so now.
Battleships were commissioned far after they were superceeded by carriers and now "supercarriers" and their escort vessels are justified to employ the excessive numbers of senior commissioned officers who otherwise would be surplus to requirements.
16
"America needs to act quickly, says James Inhofe,..."
....The same James Inhofe who claims that global warming is a hoax and rejects the scientific consensus regarding humans contributing to climate change is all excited for America to spend untold billions on a new weapons system.
Yes indeed, a proud Republican.
997
@Alan R Brock
Wasn't he the genius who brought a snowball into the Senate and rolled it down the aisle to 'prove' global warming was a hoax? Yes, he is one to listen to alright..
138
@Alan R Brock
Oklahoma has a Naval airbase and a Coast Guard Station. We must protect these vital assets in this land locked state!
25
@Plennie the same James Inhofe that landed his personal airplane he was flying on a clearly closed runway with workers and equipment on it.
31
President Eisenhower said it best. "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children....This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from an iron cross." Those making the money and addicted to the power still refuse to listen. We could be the remarkable species that actively pursues our own extinction.
1325
As someone who lives in the West because last century the USSR occupied his family's country and almost wiped out its language and culture, I'm aware that being unprepared to defend one's country can lead to worse outcomes than hunger and poverty.
96
@Fred
Yes but it creates a demand for Trump and Kirchner condos That is what is really important in America. The accumulating of immense wealth trump everything.
31
@Mondo Man
It’s relevant to note that is was not the guns per se that toppled the USSR, it was a political collapse caused by the excessive military spending and deteriorating quality of life. With the combined forces of US government spending on weapons and high wealth inequality, the US could could have the experience. From this perspective, President Trump’s election is not an anomaly, but a harbinger of societal disruption.
181
Jesus wept.
After all these decades, from Gulf of Tonkin to Gulf of Oman, We The People pay, in blood and treasure, for the fears, insecurities, greed and mental diseases of old white men.
Behold! Your children are expendable. Your health and welfare are not merely expendable, but sacrificed at the altar of trillions which buy the old white men.
World without end...wait...
42
Every machine , tool is being computerized. Mastering these will rule ultimately.( lets remember US election)
There were many deadly weapons already, most of them even became outdated without a single use. When time comes even single piece of stone becomes worthy than thousand missiles.
What is the idea behind this race?
Some nations may be waiting ready to copy it.
how about supersonic travel? Making air travel safe and sound.
1
Fascinating and scary. The same way that military aircraft doomed the battleship, these hypersonic spears could doom our fleet of 11 attack carriers. America's attack carrier groups are our most effective projection of power around the world. One hit by a hypersonic missile could take one of our floating airbases out of the game. A coordinated assault on all 11 would be crippling. Depending on how successful China and Russia are in developing hypersonic weapons, I would expect to see the end of the dominance of attack carrier.
2
@Scott B only if they work and if no defense is developed. I read that article and did not see much evidence for the first yet and only assumptions about the latter. but if they do work as advertised, then there may be less need for power projection by manned aircraft flown from flight decks. drones will rule the future battlefield anyway, they will have to as aircraft have already reached the limit of performance that humans can endure in the cockpit.
1
@Scott B
The author devoted one sentence to this threat. Our Pacific fleet will look like the Maginot line did to the German Panzers. Complete game changer. How do we project airpower into western Pacific or the "Persian" Gulf without carriers?
Our Navy will either need to be submarine based, OR we will need Aegis style defenses (e.g. Phalanx CISW v.5.0) against these weapons. Lotsa luck, DARPA. Maybe we can get Dr. Strange to help us cloud their minds.
1
@local fair point. The automation of war may obviate the need to aircraft carriers. Maybe we can turn them into affordable housing in seaport cities.
It seems logical that one could use a hypersonic missile to shoot down another. Satellites could detect when one is launched.
@LiquidLight: we have enough trouble trying to shoot down sub- or supersonic missiles. Locating the missile in order to intercept it will be almost impossible.
$2-$5 Billion for the SDI guy's newest folly? Congress, don't even think about lamenting that there is no money for Social Security and Medicare...Let's vote Inhofe and his ilk OUTtahere!
9
We just spend $13 billion building the first Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carrier. Looks like technology in the name of hypersonic missiles just made every one of our 11 attack carriers vulnerable.
I suspect that our carriers will go away the same way battleships did once it was shown that they couldn't stop a concerted airborne attack.
5
For a rival of the US looking to shake up the current balance, one approach could be begin a weapons program to goad the US into a supposed arms race -- I don't suppose there would be much reluctance to take the bait -- and then save on development costs by devoting my efforts and budget to stealing the resulting US designs, perhaps even making incremental improvements while benefiting from the major technical breakthroughs.
Thanks for doing the heavy lifting, Uncle Sam!
7
I'm sure there are high-tech weapons systems we have built that work the way they were supposed to and came in on time and within budget.
But on the other hand, we built Coast Guard ships that couldn't go to sea, we have littoral combat ships that can't survive in intensive combat, the super-sophisticated Zumwalt class destroyer that cost so much it was cancelled with only two ships, and the problem-plagued F35. Our ability to build hyper-expensive systems that don't work quite right is not in doubt.
This time will be different, right? The military-industrial complex will design a miracle weapon that costs about what it was predicted to cost and does what it was claimed it would do and won't take twenty years to develop. And if we are lucky, no one will steal the tech and get the result of all those billions of dollars in research for free.
By the way, it's impractical to offer Medicare for All or convert our energy economy to combat climate change because they would cost too much.
69
We have hyper-sonic missiles, they are called ICBMs. These new missiles are quite a bit slower- mach 10 is only 7500 mph. But they could be more maneuverability, and maybe less expensive. MAYBE. But at $160m per test that does not seem likely.
As to defense, we dont have one for ICBMs, so nothing new. If we found a rock solid defense (space mines or something) it might also work for the new kind of hyper-sonic weapon.
This article is trying to accomplish too much, trying to give us the technology, the development program, and the world wide politics all at once. I give the author credit for trying.
10
@H Smith - According to wikipedia modern ICBMs have a speed on arrival at target at 4.3 miles/sec = 15480 miles an hours; about mach 20. Max 30 minutes from anywhere to anywhere in the world. So, yes, description of what is new and what is old is a little blurry.
8
Reagan wanted space missiles ,he wound up running rifles down in Nicaragua.Yet he did calm the Russians.Maybe President Trump will decide that too many people may die with the Hypersonics and shelve the mission.Then he would be seen like Ghandi ,just imagine ,Trump as Ghandi.
6
Trump is a Propaganda machine and otherwise clueless.
5
@Alan Einstoss
With all his problems people used to give credit to Nixon when it was due. This generation could never do the same. They are too self righteous and perfect.
"...cycles of intense arms racing have restarted whenever one side has felt acutely disadvantaged or spied a potential exit from what the political scientist Robert Jervis once described as the “overwhelming nature” of nuclear destruction, a circumstance that we’ve been involuntarily and resentfully hostage to for the past 70 years."
I'm 72, which has given me two whole years of living without the nuclear threat hung precariouly above my head. Thanks for nothing.
4
Half way around the world in a matter of minutes! Jeff Bezos, are you listening?
4
Good! Perhaps we can speed up the inevitable self-destruction of humankind and the planet. This might be just the thing to spare us this agonizing, slow boat to China strategy of global annihilation!
No more pussyfooting around. No, no! No more feet dragging. It’s been so tediously slow doing it the 20th century way, just merely poisoning the oceans with plastic and garbage, choking the air with carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide as ozone.
Admit it, let’s be honest for once... it’s become a tediously long yawn waiting for the Amazon to be finally leveled and deforested; and it’s taking much too long making all those “lesser” animal species surrounding us extinct.
Come along now, spit spot, snap to it!
And now this! At last! No more boring antiquated uranium enrichment, or those so last century nuclear bombs. Hiroshima? How old fashioned!
Admit it, we’ve all had enough of those fools marching for human rights and the dignity and value of human life; we well know the Masters of Our Universe (the tiny-appendaged angry little warriors) aren’t satisfied with mere mass starvation, the incarceration of minorities, the sex trafficking of women and children, the poisoning and capitalization of our water supply. Heck no! Finally! A techno-phallic wunderkind of mass murder is here at last!
Think of all the time we’ll save getting to the end of this bad play! Thank God! A weapon that delivers true hope in expediting the extinction of this race of suicidal hominid cretins!
74
@René Pedraza Del Prado
And we need to do it before AI comes to fruition. If not future AI robots will resurrect us from the ashes and start this sad suicidal journey all over again. How many times can one planet be destroyed?
Ah, the great US of A - manufacturers of killing machines for decades! We should be ashamed but we aren't.
17
Speed still kills, and having weapons so fast that they're undetectable just makes for a Murphy's Law scenario that takes us into August 1914 territory, when all of Europe fell under the spell of warmongering. Problem then was that there hadn't been a war for nearly 50 years, and there was so much new and frighteningly effective weaponry that had never been used before. So it was a fools paradise. A few weeks of war and it would all be over. Today at the speed of technology and communications there's no comparison. Human psychology remains just as primitive. Just now we can make the rubble bounce sooner and with less warning or ability to control outcomes than ever before. Look out world, hypersonics are coming.
4
Oh, My Heck ! There goes my weekend!
3
«“We always do these things in isolation, without thinking about what it means for the big powers — for Russia and China — who are batshit paranoid” about a potential quick, pre-emptive American attack, the adviser said, expressing regret about how the issue was handled during Obama’s tenure.» Interesting to note how US «advisers» choose to characterise their counterparts in other countries as «paranoid», not to say «batshit paranoid», while failing to reflect on their own mental state or considering whether any «paranoia» on the part of these adveraries, based on previous US actions, might, indeed, be justified....
No wonder no meaningful discussions on how to regulate these extremely destablising weapons have yet taken place....
Henri
18
What a waste of resources, in terms of engineering intellect and much needed tax dollars!
One of the takeaways from Reagan’s Star Wars notions was the recognition that the vaunted space shield could not be fully tested as to do so, it would have appeared to other nervous nuclear equipped nations that we had launched a full blown nuclear attack requiring immediate retaliation.
These weapons programs are nothing but the epitome of human folly and anyone unwilling to discuss binding, multilateral agreements to halt their production is blind to the fear inculcated in all humanity.
12
@JH Agreed. However, the world today is a far more politically fragmented and less-stable place than it was when previous nuclear non-proliferation treaties - amongst other internationally-negotiated 'safeguards' - were negotiated and ratified. It's my understanding that, from the viewpoint of contemporary diplomats, it is considered to be significantly more difficult to engage the major protagonists in 'talks about talks', let alone persuade them to negotiate what many would consider to be power-limiting treaties. Though that should not, of course, deter us from trying...
3
Hypersonic missiles may be fast, but a space-based laser weapon would be as fast as light itself. Maybe the late President Reagan was just ahead of his time?
3
Here is the good news. Multicellular life arose only 600 million years ago, the earth has about a billion years to go before the sun gets too hot for life on earth and the average species only lasts 4 million years, so the earth has plenty of time to cleanse itself and regenerate from our despoiling.
8
More Toys for the Boys' military-industrial complex. Wonder what the world would look like if we didn't spend massive amounts of money on death machines. What if we just--took the toys away from the Strangelovian boys and let women run the world for a while?
19
@Comp This (83 year old) man couldn't agree more!
1
Hear, hear!!!
1
I'm all for these so long as we limit their use to the people who decide that war would be a really nifty thing to engage in rather than a bunch of 19 year-olds who are just there to get money for college.
Think Michael Bolton would be such a hawk in that scenario? Yeah, he seems like the sort to put his money where his mustache is to me, too.
2
Michael Bolton is a handsome singer. I do not know if John Bolton can sing anything besides "Bomb bomb bomb Iran".
12
Mutually assured destruction is back with a vengeance! It is not too late for talks, treaties, inspections, information sharing and agreements on how to handle "mistakes." Please sit down and protect the world from the inevitable mistakes or the intentional competitive destruction that will be unleashed by angry men or women. The risk is real!
2
Let's be clear. This is not the first hypersonic weapon. When the warheads of intercontinental ballistic missiles arrive, they are hypersonic. You won't hear anything. The flash will be first.
Also, in spite of the many billions that have been spent on missile defense since the Strategic Defense Initiative was sold to President Reagan, we have no defense against such missiles. Or not any that can't be defeated simply by attacking with more missiles. Let alone missiles with penetration aids.
Are we supposed to take comfort in the fact that the hypersonic missile program is being directed by a self-described unreconstructed Cold Warrior? Are we again supposed to put our faith in staying "ahead" in these technical developments rather than in committing ourselves to developing a cooperative scheme for keeping these weapons from being deployed?
8
Doesn't look like 10x Russia's military budget is buying us 10x more protection.
I'm not surprised, in any environment where budgets can only go up there is a huge amount of waste and a resistance to change.
6
So inventive, new ways to kill each other. Fear not however, 5 million years after humans have extinguished themselves all will be back to normal.
26
Once upon a time, this Griffin person would have been correct5ly labeled a war mongerer. And IMO so long as these boyz want to destroy , let them go serve on the front lines wherever we are at least three months out of the year. (PS a master's degree takes about 1.5 years to finish. What subjects? where?)
Thank heavens, Trump resisted all the boyz who wanted to blast those Iranians -- unlike Obama who decided to support the rebels in Syria. (Of course the Obamas and Clintons now have the jobs they have always wanted working with Hollywood.)
How many hypersonic missiles are we planning on? Back to the arms race.
WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN. (Why are we paying for education?)
1
Mankind’s answer to a slow, painful death from climate change?
29
What nobody talks about is that there is technology to hack into the guidance system of ICBMs and Hypersonic vehicles to reroute them back to their origins; making all these weapons a liability.
Remember the Iranians 6 years ago hacked into a US drone, an RQ170 flew it to Iran and reverse engineered it. If they can do it, so can everyone else.
4
The warmongers are gaining control and they are DETERMINED to move us closer to midnight on the Doomsday Clock.
5
Another genie out of the bottle. One more to add to the AI powered autonomous weapon systems the world powers are already competing on. If that’s not scary I don’t know what is.
5
Money,money,money; the need for profit and the inability or lack of political will to create jobs any other way is what drives this. We need politicians the likes of Tulsi Gabbard to get elected and reign in the forces that drive the military-industrial complex. We need it now before a "fail safe" erases all our worries in an instant.
2
If humankind had the same kind of approach to dealing with climate change, the problem would be solved.
123
Why spend all this money on hardware, when the possibility of completely disrupting the infrastructure of a hostile country by hacking it's critical computer systems, and literally shutting the country down, is doable ?
Look what Stuxnet did to Iran's nuclear centrifuges, and what Target just went through when it's computer system went down.
11
It should be obvious to the most reactionary strategist that both aircraft carriers and the human-carrying airplanes they carry are way obsolete. How about small, unmanned ships carrying drones? But, hey, we are still fighting the Cold War -- if not WW2!
@KBD
I don't know about that, aren't all these unmanned technologies inherently vulnerable to hacking, electronic warfare, malfunctions, breakdowns, glitches, 'technical difficulties' and so on?
@KBD already under development by the Navy, called Sea Hunter.
Finally, an end to the worry about not arriving on time.
3
It is impossible to predict how the development of these weapons will change things. But the fact that they don't require nuclear warheads in order to be devastatingly effective could well make their eventual use more likely. And that, in turn, could make it more likely that nations under threat from hypersonic missiles will become less reluctant to break the taboo against using nuclear weapons. I suspect we will end up making ourselves less secure through the development and deployment of these new missiles.
8
When I was 20, while on active duty with the USAF, I found myself engaged in nuclear targeting at Strategic Air Command Headquarters to support war planning. There were a number of us engaged in this task, and we all accepted that we were probably #1 on the target list of the USSR. We accepted that we were going to be incinerated, despite our hardened vault.
Once in a while, we would reflect on the crew of 20-somethings hidden away in the USSR doing the same exact job as us. We used to fantasize that, given the chance for a non-confrontational meeting over a beer with those troops, we might actually get along well, and laugh together at the absurd nature of our mutual occupations.
Once you see a map of anticipated nuclear targets in the US, you realize that, if nuclear conflict occurs, it will be over quickly and totally.
251
@John E.
> Once you see a map of anticipated nuclear targets in the US...
Back in 1987 FEMA sponsored an extensive study on what a full Soviet attack on the US in 1990 might have looked like. It's available, compete with maps, at
https://fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/napb-90/index.html
Tl;dr: Virtually everybody dies.
The "low risk" fallout areas were those that received 3,000 rem or less in a week. The L50 dose is usually taken to be 600 rem.
29
I don't think discussing this while drinking alcohol is a good idea
6
@John E.
To the wealthy with their bunkers.
I have one question for them:
How to you intend to get to your bunker?
You will have no meaningful warning.
Let's hope you are standing right outside your bunker door when you get the warning, if you get any at all.
Do you intend to hop on a plane to get to your bunker?
Drive?
In 15 maybe 30 seconds?
For me, a poor guy, not so wealthy as you, I'll just hide under my desk.
The outcome will be the same.
7
For many of your readers, myself included, this article is a critical wake-up call. The development of these weapons by the U.S., China and Russia should be prompting broad public discussion, as well an effort to negotiate a moratorium. I'd love to see The Times find a current hook and get the story above the fold. It deserves better legs.
33
Russia and China would tolerate a broad discussion about their military capabilities?
1
@RH Deutsch, as long as two of the three chairs at the table are filled with autocrats that fear elections more than nuclear war, I don't see "discussions" producing anything more than what they did in the Cold War (which was to simply freeze quantity of these weapons well above the amount needed to destroy the globe many times over).
@Bob: the USSR and the USA managed it for SALT...
Aliens out in space were looking down on Earth. One said, "It seems the dominant life forms have developed satellite-based weapons." The second asked, "Are they an emerging intelligence?" "I don't think so", the first responded, "They have their weapons pointed at themselves!”
294
@Opicka
nice! Your Aliens may also have said, "Why are they heating the planet to well beyond the level it can support anywhere near the existing population of the dominant life forms and reduce the diversity of all life by about 90%?
The answer must have been: "OK, I agree they are not an intelligent life form."
5
Hypersonic weapons will have the same limited use, if use at all, of Nuclear weapons. Whoever uses one first in either a single surgical strike, series of such strikes or in a massive strategic strike automatically invites an equally devastating response. Destroying an American carrier or an entire battle group with any weapon of mass destruction would result in a multitude of responses including equally massive destruction.
Thus far the United States, China and Russia are speeding toward development and deployment of these weapons. How far research has advanced in stopping Hypersonics is not spoken of. They are being promoted as unstoppable. Therefore the weapons become ones that threaten but cannot be used due to retaliation. A weapon that can be shot down is not a total threat. Hypersonic weapons are like early nuclear missiles. All sides can arm themselves to the teeth with weapons that only assure the users mutual destruction. Until, that is, a way is found to stop them.
Lasers travel at the speed of light. So, while hypersonic weapons are being developed, somewhere, someone is saying, "I can't use this unless I can nullify my enemy's hypersonic arsenal."
Recall the 1980's era movie "War Games". A computer played hypothetical "Thermonuclear War" until it learned that nobody could win.
This is another "War Games" but not a movie. It's a headlong rush to imminent mutual assured destruction. On the other hand, Korea, Iran and others have nothing to lose.
12
Will the arms race never end unless and until hundreds of millions are killed in the flash of an eye? Maybe then the interests that Eisenhower called "the military industrial complex"---and their reactive, competing adversaries---will understand the insanity of profit---and glory---promoted in the guise of national defense.
9
Weapons already exist to neutralize our aircraft carriers and they are available not only to sophisticated nations, but also to more primitive military and paramilitary forces. Hypersonic missiles will only hasten the obsolescence of our carriers. In the event of a conflict they will likely be the first asset to be disabled.
5
I am 68 years old. I have lived my entire life under the threat of a nuclear arms race. At first it was just us and the Soviet Union. Then other countries got involved: England, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, and terrorists with no particular national allegiance. In all that time, I'm amazed we haven't already turned this planet into a burned out cinder...and now this. It will end badly.
42
@R.F. Yes, it will end badly, and the only question is when. The catastrophic potential of these weapons makes climate change look like a walk in the park.
3
I give mankind 25 years, 50 max.
15
@Mike S. so not concerned about global warming?
This technology may be a game changer for land based and surface naval targets, but the good old ballistic missile nuclear submarine capable of launching and delivering a nuclear payload while submerged will remain largely invulnerable to hyper-sonic/kinetic weapons, thereby ensuring that massive retaliation will still be inevitable. The nuclear triad has three legs in the MAD world.
26
This is another example of why the global climate crisis is unsolvable. Rather than cooperating as a united humankind to prevent climate catastrophe, we are continuing to kill each other. This is almost certainly an accurate prediction regardless of whether these weapons are new or not. Selfishness rules, and murder follows as a consequence.
38
One element which I have not seen mentioned is cost. It seems unlikely the production cost will ever be low enough to use these casually. I'll bet their cost will be in the range of the cost of an ICBM. If that is so, they will be used only for high priority targets.
Another thing on my mind is what happens when by chance a meteor enters the atmosphere at just the angle and in the general direction from which someone is expecting to see a hypersonic attack. The chance of a response to a false attack is high. This is even worse than with ballistic missiles because these weapons don't have such predictable trajectories.
All of this is bad news.
15
@Anonymous
Don’t worry. Computer programs will look after all of that. What could possibly go wrong?
3
America's civilian or military commanders could not survive or react to a surprise hypersonic nuclear attack before being obliterated by the blast.
A real first-strike threat from which there is currently no defense.
With portability to fighters or bombers we could not tell for sure who is attacking us. Who to shoot back at? Russia? China? North Korea? Saudi Arabia?
What if the attack isn't real? With so little time to decide would WE launch a REAL retaliatory attack in response to an attack that's NOT REAL?
These weapons travel many times faster than ICBMs. ICBMs give us maybe 30 minutes to react. Maybe 5-10 minutes if a nearby submarine attacks.
Less than 5 minutes with a hypersonic missile? How about 2-3 minutes to decide the future of the world?
We often make mistakes with lots of time to make a decision. The less time we have to decide, the more likely we are to make the wrong decision.
If I were not agnostic, I would say God help us, because nobody else can.
28
@S Butler: There were several instances during the Cold War when one side or the other thought an attack was underway. Fortunately, folks in the chain of command decided against launching a counter strike.
Although a WW1 escalation from provocation to total war is s real threat, I don’t see any scenario where these weapons could be used without starting WW3.
What I can imagine is a hacker feeding false strike signals into a defense system , like the old War Games movie, with the intent of tricking Russia, China, and the US into destroying each other.
9
@S Butler
> These weapons travel many times faster than ICBMs.
That should be "These weapons travel nearly as fast as ICBMs."
The reason the time of flight is shorter is that, for the most part, they're meant to be launched from closer to the target.
So depressing that nations are investing so much for our mutual destruction
13
Were these weapons, being tested in air, what Navy pilots saw in recent videos?
2
OK. False advertising. Assuming that these weapons are built, they aren't going to be going at hypersonic speeds for more than a really short time, if at all. Mostly, they'll be accelerating or decelerating. Then, the physics of going extremely fast isn't friendly. The missiles would have to be very small, and even then wouldn't be very maneuverable unless their speeds were reduced drastically (f = ma, folks). It doesn't sound as though the testing is going to be very realistic until a very late stage. Which is fine for the contractors, who get paid to build it wrong, and then get paid to do a bad job of correcting the flaws, etc., etc. My first guess is that any test that doesn't result in something bad happening to the missile will take place at artificially slow speeds. But the idea of hypersonic weapons sounds great to people whose ideas derive from comics or the movies based on them. Unfortunately, the U.S. China and Russia all have irresponsible governments at the same time, so at least in the short run, what they can afford to do that's actually possible most likely will be done. Here's to the principle of nonviolent governmental change.
5
You know what they say, “ the only thing that stops a bad guy with a hypersonic missile is a good guy with a hypersonic missile”
161
What about the cave gap?
14
The US is playing catch-up with China on hypersonic missile development.
2
@Douglas You may be young. Let's talk about the "missile gap." Look it up on YouTube. Does it seem familiar?
It's possible that China may have a temporary lead in deployment of some current Mach 3 anti ship missiles. What they're talking about here is a horse of a completely different color.
The US has been researching these since the 70s--way before China had the ability to do any sort of concentrated, state-sponsored research.
There are not any shortcuts to testing and flying these. I find it exceptionally unlikely that the US is playing any sort of catch-up here.
3
It's all well and good and I support being miles ahead militarily of Russians and the Chinese.
That said, the war with either of these two is unthinkable and hope never takes place.
With these Hypersonic Weapons, even if one is released by mistake; the World War III will be unavoidable. You have no time to think and you MUST retaliate. Scary Thought.
8
@Deevendra Sood
Once upon s time in the 80s even, it was considered good strategy NOT to let the Chinese have access to our computer, etc. technology. NOW eve4ythin including parts for various jets are Made in China. (Note these loyal American captains of industry.
"Dr. Strangelove" y'all and Ken Burns' "Vietnam."
1
Over 25 years ago, I was working in an FFRDC - Federally-Funded Research and Development Corporation. I don't wish to mention which one but it would be one under which such weapons would be studied.
Something I found fascinating working there was a virtual arms race: One group would dream up new-and-improved weapons such as these hypersonic missiles while another group would dream up new-and-improved methods to defend against the weapons that the first group dreamed-up. No treaties stopped us from thinking these things because we realized that enemies violate treaties and that they had groups of nerds just like us dreaming up the same things.
It's odd thinking about building the Death Star, so to speak, but someone else will and use it against us unless we are prepared. That's because of the nature of physics - the ultimate fair and neutral arbiter of the universe.
As for defending against hypersonic missiles, I will simply say eventually all things can be defended against - there is no ultimate weapons system. The only limiting factors are lack of ingenuity and human ethics and both of these can be overcome.
9
@VJR
The average empire lasts about 350 years. We had a nuclear standoff for about 30 years before the holiday when we lucked into one empire falling early. We can say with confidence nuclear war does not occur once every 10 years. If nuclear war occurs once in 1,000 years then there is about an 8% chance of going through one in the average lifetime.
Is there similar research and finding on how to survive the aftermath of these hypersonic weapons? I understand the MAD part ensures the nations at war and their militaries cease to exist, however, people starving in anarchy would continue to exist. The only thing I can find is Nuclear War Survival Skills written in 1979.
https://www.oism.org/nwss/
I understand that nuclear winter might make it harder to farm. With better guidance and lower yield weapons ozone depletion might not be as severe. However, the research on nuclear winter seems inconclusive. There are a few people looking into using mushrooms and bacteria grown in the dark to help people survive a 1 in 1,000 year war.
https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/david-denkenberger-allfed-and-feeding-everyone-no-matter-what/
If MAD doctrine encourages arms races, proliferation and instability then should we instead focus on survivability? Why is international trade monumentally important to international peace?
It's hard to disagree with most of the comments that say we should not be in an expensive arms race with China/Russia. The problem is WE ARE in an expensive arms race with China/Russia. Let's elect people who can move us to greater international stability.
In the meantime the question is, are hypersonic weapons real or just more Starwars dream tech? Everything points to their being real and as such, pending a change in the temperature of international relations, we would be foolish to dismiss them and hope for the best.
12
Such weapons are monuments to human failure, their funding stolen from the poor.
207
@Dwight Jones Stolen from the poor and stolen from all of us. Men playing who's is bigger, who's is faster, stealing the cultivation of life and liberty from all of us.
16
I believe that the deployment of these weapons will completely rewrite naval projection and warfare in a way not seen since WW2. At the time of Pearl Harbor the battleship was considered the apogee of naval weapons. Countries competed to build larger ships with bigger cannons ever since the creation of the British Dreadnaught class in the early 20th century.
However, by the time of WW2, it became crystal clear that the limited range of naval cannon placed the battleship at an extreme disadvantage to the nascent aircraft carriers coming into existence whose aircraft had a range of hundreds of miles. Interestingly, Japan saw this sooner than most and began a massive carrier building program in the 1930’s. The US and England had more modest programs, while Germany had none.
The attack on Pearl Harbor changed everything. The Japanese used 6 carriers to destroy our battleships at anchor. From that point on battleships became obsolete. America proceeded to manufacture Essex class carriers at a frantic pace and by the end of the war we had over a dozen in service. Eventually the battleships were mothballed and we entered the age of nuclear supercarriers.
Now the invention of these hypersonic missiles threatens carriers so dramatically that I believe we will see their diminishment as naval weapons. Suddenly they are very vulnerable to strikes by these weapons. They will become giant sitting ducks to a missile that cannot be deflected or destroyed.
16
@Joe Mingolla The US built a total of about 110 aircraft carriers during World War II to Japan's less than 20. As they say, mass has a quality all its own.
3
Unless the missile misses the carrier by 100 yards.
I wish the article had tried a little harder to clarify for readers -- and legislators -- that
1) the ICBMs in place for 50-60 years can deliver their warheads even faster -- and in practice just as unstoppably.
2) there is no technological barrier to putting (multiple) conventional warheads on ICBMs, or to putting nuclear warheads on hypersonic missiles. In a crisis, the launch of either would put us (and any opponent) under very strong pressure to assume the worst.
So how much is really new here? There have already been several occasions where new tech (MIRVs, "fractional orbit" trajectories, increasingly precise terminal guidance for warheads, much of SDI, etc.) has started out as "a threat from them" and/or "an edge for us"... and ended up as the same balance of terror at higher cost.
Whee - here we go again.
108
@mdavis
Nothing matters except the stock market. The rich get richer...
6
@mdavis
Good point. Hypersonic weapons are only a small incremental change from the MIRV warheads that we have limited with treaties. This is just a way of breaking those old treaties with "new technology". In the end, what our planners don't see, is that nothing has changed. We cannot defend ourselves with better weapons in the nuclear age, we can only defend ourselves with no such weapons at all. This was clear to leaders like JFK in the sixties and to the people who negotiated those nuclear reduction treaties. Nothing has changed technologically to change that equation and nothing has changed in regards to our existential dilemma. The fact that John Bolton is crazy is no grounds to get into a nuclear war. We will not have an opportunity to vote on whether to have a war that will destroy the planet in 15 minutes. Our only hope is to get the crazies out of government and put the peacemakers in. We are only alive today because JFK existed. We are entering another time of peril and we don't seem to know that we need protection from our leaders much more than we need protection from the "enemy". We are all mortal and our leaders have forgotten that. They live in a dream world and they play with our lives like they were toys. If we don't impose the power of the people on them they will impose the rule of death on us all.
3
The heck with this stuff. It's child's play.
Let's go all out. Time to develop anti-matter weapons.
Okay, maybe better to develop both so anti-matter weapons can be delivered in 15 minutes anywhere.
Why wait for global warming/climate change to turn the planet into Venus?
Just build one big anti-matter bomb and get it over with.
Destroy the Earth and do it now!!!
34
Accuracy is unnecessary when these things are carrying nuclear warheads. A sky burst of a 1megaton or higher weapon is more than enough to flatten everything in a target whose radius is miles across.
3
Nice to know we'll be dead before we know it, what's not to like.
47
@MB
For many years, I have said that I would like to be at "ground zero" if we start to drop nuclear weapons on each other.
My logic is simple: there will be no 'winners" and life after a serious nuclear exchange is going to be very harsh for the few survivors.
Not my cup of tea, thank you.
As the old saying goes: "One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day."
1
I doubt that the Americans were able to "relocate" a large wind tunnel in Peenemünde near the Baltic Sea in the then Soviet Zone of Occupation in the year 1948 ! Three years after the end of war the Sviets had dismantled even the second track of railroad lines, not to speak of wind tunnels.
I hope the other informations in the article are more precise.
5
@FThomas
Good catch! I did a little digging.
There's a book titled "The Peenemünde Wind Tunnels" by a Yale professor who had been a German rocket scientist in the 1940s before moving to the US.
Based on the blurb for the book on the Yale University Press website, it looks like the Germans moved the wind tunnels to Bavaria after the US and Britain bombed Peenemünde in August of 1943.
So you're right that there's no way the Americans could have taken wind tunnels from Peenemünde, but they had already been relocated before the end of the war.
1
Is accuracy terrifying? Or is inaccuracy terrifying?
Soviet nuclear warheads have a bigger yield than US nuclear because they weren't accurate. Is that more or less terrifying?
3
Early in the article there is this statement;
The missiles’ kinetic energy at the time of impact, at speeds of at least 1,150 miles per hour,
Later on, there are these statements:
When a projectile reaches a speed faster than Mach 5, it’s said to travel at hypersonic speed.
One of the two main hypersonic prototypes now under development in the United States is meant to fly at speeds between Mach 15 and Mach 20, or more than 11,400 miles per hour.
Mach 1 is 768 mph. 1150 mph is then mach 1.5.
Looks like the first statement is off by an order of magnitude with regard to speed.
22
It depends on what the system is designed to do. They can slow down before impact, to better locate their targets. It's very difficult to do the final maneuver and guidance to a precise target at speeds of Mach 5 or above.
3
@William
It slows before striking the target.
1
The speed of sound is not a constant. It varies with the ambient temperature.
One would think high power lasers would be a deterrent. Their beam travels at the speed of light.
1
@GUANNA
The problem with lasers is that they defeat their targets with thermal energy. Hypersonic weapons are built to resist the extreme thermal environments of hypersonic flight, which far exceed the temperatures of a laser beam.
5
@Brian N
x-rays destroying the electronics is still possible and hard to defeat. Also using nuclear interceptors or variable yield weapons would work too. The best way to destroy nuclear weapons is using the United Nations and diplomacy. Although I do look forward to using a hypersonic single stage to orbit spacecraft to leave this crazy planet.
1
I swear to god, if the Trump Administration’s laxness on cyber security allows China or Russia to steal this technology like they’re letting them steal everything else....
3
The statement that hypersonic missiles and ballistic missiles are different weapons is misleading. MIRVs from ballistic missiles are indeed hypersonic missiles. the main difference is the delivery method and, in the case of the new type, additional, but still very limited steering, capabilities. Again the ability of terminal guidance of an HM is extremely limited unlike in normal supersonic missiles. The whole idea of these weapons is the so called "prompt strike" essentially a non ballistic, very fast missile with some maneuvering ability. The fact is they are far from a game changer. Its another excuse for idiotic spending a defense program of limited if any use. File it under the same tab as supersonic Russian torpedoes, nuclear powered missiles and rail guns weapon programs to impress the science fiction fans. BTW supercarriers are vulnerable to mass "normal" missile attacks too.
58
All this new technology in the hands of Russia, China and North Korea mean that Trump is truly compromised by Putin, Xi and Kim and must agree to follow their instructions as given. Trump has no allies now and 60% of the country can't stand him as president what power does he have as a blowhard bully when the only bullies can beat him up he will turn and run. Draft dodgers do that.
1
How to pour money down a drain. To achieve ram jet velocities a very powerful rocket is required. The payload would have to be miniscule in order to achieve the necessary acceleration. The whole idea is stupid from an engineering and political perspective. Cruise missiles may be slow, but they are deadly accurate, impossible to stop and they are here today.
19
Appears the U.S. Air Force was testing a prototype hypersonic missile last week that was launched from a B-52 bomber over a California test range. The missile, developed by Lockeed Martin Corp., was an AGM-183A nicknamed the "arrow." Here's a link the USAF made public on twitter https://twitter.com/nukestrat/status/1140804327864492034
4
Hypersonic missiles are stoppable if you are willing to put the trillions of dollars in research to found out how to do it.
Better idea? Don't start the race.
Only get involved in it, if some nation is rapidly doing it and it is deemed an immediate threat to the USA and not another faux threat to increase the defense budget to over one trillion a yr.
3
Common sense says the day of the Aircraft Carrier is over ... Stop wasting money on them ! Getting in the first lick with nukes ? A different proposition... American subs can still exact a heavy toll..But this World is sure becoming less stable... The age of trumpism is scary !
6
@Paul
I agree...we must stop building carriers now, before one gets named after trump!
3
Clearly a new arms race ahead: and pretty much more dangerous...by the way, why don't you use metric system in your articles?
2
Could there be any relation to the unidentified flying objects pilots in fighter jets keep seeing and reporting on, according to a recent story in this newspaper?
7
The NY Times goofs again, slighting rocket pioneer Robert H. Goddard for the second time in a hundred years. This article states,
“With its skin heated by friction to as much as 5,400 degrees, its engine walls would be protected from burning up by routing the fuel through them, an idea pioneered by the German designers of the V-2 rocket.”
Well, no, Goddard received U.S. Patent No. US277491A, Combustion chamber for rocket apparatus on 10/8/1940, for that idea. The Germans cribbed the idea from Goddard.
On January 13, 1920, the Times published an editorial insisting rockets couldn't work in space:
"That professor Goddard, with his 'chair' in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution [from which Goddard held a grant to research rocket flight], does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react -- to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
The Times recanted 3 days before Apollo 11 landed on the moon in 1969:
"Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th century, and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere …The Times regrets the error."
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@Robbbb
"That professor Goddard, with his 'chair' in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution [from which Goddard held a grant to research rocket flight], does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react -- to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
Whoever wrote that at the time was clearly unfamiliar with the concept of momentum which is discussed during the first week of Physics 101. That had to have been embarrassing.
2
So Griffin gave us Star Wars and now hypersonic missiles--what a great gift to the defense contractors. So how much has missile defense cost so far and how many cities and people are protected in the US? With a DoD that is positing that the use of nuclear weapons could give us strategic equality or superiority where are we headed? ]
6
An extraordinary article. President Eisenhower knew what he was talking about on January 17, 1961. Our nation is now in grave danger more from within than without.
49
The arms race will evolve and continue, seemingly without limits. But the true end result or ultimate theater of destruction will be within the human mind.
Man will ultimately vanquish his enemy by removing the source of his enemies hostility: his memory. Man will develop, or has already, methods of erasing or altering the memory of the human mind.
Wish to eradicate hostility for some prior action? Wipe the mind. Wish to alter an adversarial objection? Replace that memory with something else. Better yet, change the memory to have your enemy act in a non-hostile fashion or in a way acceptable to you. Want to eliminate cyber warfare? Wipe the mind or change it so that the hackers cannot remember how to code.
The theater of the human mind changes everything.
And when the other nations realize what capabilities you possess, and the threat it poses, Armageddon then becomes suddenly real and suddenly possible.
Akbar’s Jihad: Book One.
5
Carriers have been obsolete easy targets for decades. But they look good, and appearance is everything in our inspired age.
I'll bet Buckaroo Bonzai could get one of these to bore through a mountain.
20
@Plennie Wingo
Yeah, but unless it also passes through the 8th dimension, what's the point?
4
@Plennie Wingo
And I thought I was the only person who saw that movie.
1
With a trailing sonic boom of 175 dB, there will be substantial damage and incapacitation along the path to the target.
31
How sad, using hypersonic technology for war instead for the wellbeing of our planet Earth
21
The central question is whether we will end with a bang or a melting whimper.
27
More ways to kill people, which would trigger a worldwide nuclear war, on a planet that's already in a death spiral. Insanity.
249
The headline to this article characterizes the hypersonic weapon systems as having "terrifying accuracy". But it is far from clear that is the case. At the extremely high speeds and low altitudes in which these fly during the terminal phase of their trajectory, the warhead systems will be surrounded by a dense plasma sheath that makes communication to the interior not feasible, similar to the blackouts encountered during early manned flight. Thus GPS or radar guidance for terminal homing are unfeasible. If the warheads carry nuclear weapons, that may not matter, but for conventional weapons, the kind of pinpoint accuracy we're used to seeing with "smart" bombs won't be possible. Perhaps in the classified realm some clever means to avoid this problem have been developed, but to my knowledge, it hasn't been solved in over fifty years. And it is a problem that all the major powers who are developing this technology are well aware of.
33
@Mark Final stage of guidance in many long-range weapons is based on inertial guidance systems. Especially if there is a risk of GPS jamming or lack of visual cues.
6
@Mark
There are two approaches to solving it:
-find some way to see during the final high-speed, low-altitude phase (solve the problem).
-improve inertial guidance to the point that the missile can do without seeing during the final phase (bypass the problem).
The problem may or may not ever be solved, but inertial guidance *will* eventually get good enough to bypass it.
3
As we spend billions on this new weapons system the latest news from Greenland goes almost unnoticed. The melting rate of sheet ice is occurring so fast that the tracking models are already obsolete because they have no stable baseline for comparison.
But the information is clear. Global weather catastrophes are real and are creating disastrous changes in weather patterns. Even our own CIA predicts that future wars will be brought on by climate disruption and mass migrations triggered by food shortages.
In the face of this we instead spend our treasury on yet another new strategic weapon. What this article alludes to but needs too stated clearly is that while this weapon can cripple a global adversary, the reaction would likely response would be a full scale nuclear missile launch.
So whatever tactical advantage this weapon creates still leads to a nuclear conflagration that ends life on the planet as we know it.
Rather than another doomsday path toward either rapid annihilation or slow destruction from climate disruption, why not harness this amazing technological talent to try and save the human species rather than destroy it?
299
@Drspock
Ah yes, the famine card-- already played by Malthus around 1800.. but hey birth control is so yesterday -- so much more fun to terrorize and destroy,
The flood card was already played by Noah.
1
@Drspock
Why exactly should the melting Greenland ice be regarded as doomsday?
Recall that there used to be Norse farming settlements in Greenland from around 1000-1400 AD. It implies that the climate then was relatively warm, maybe even warmer than today's to be able to farm (which to the best of my knowledge even today nobody is proposing to do in Greenland). The warm climate didn't turn out to be doomsday then so why should it be doomsday now?
1
@Drspock and on top of that, climate disruption will lead to increased tension between nations, conflict and the use of such weapons.
5
Our earlier experiences with destabilizing weapon technologies occurred under distinctly different political & geopolitical circumstances. Previously those technological transitions were overseen by leaders mindful of the experiences of World War II. Additionally, the two meaningful adversaries provided a stable political environment on which to structure plans & alliances. Stability maintained deterence. Those key elements have disappeared, creating a far less stable strategic situation. We were all remarkably fortunate that none of the military conflicts after WW II escalated to a nuclear exchange. On several occaions there was sufficient time to recognize false alarms before weapons were launched in error. The introduction of hypersonic weapons in combination with the world's existing nuclear arsenals could greatly increase the probability that deterrence will fail. If that occurs, it may likely happen suddenly as the result of events that haven't reached public awareness as an escalating crisis. That suggests no meaningful warning, similar to Pearl Harbor or September 11, 2001. Except the destruction could reach global scale within a few hours as opposed to the years required in previous wars. If there is still a way to forestall the development of this situation, tell me who is likely to act to do so.
63
Your point is well taken. I just want to interject that at Pearl Harbor, we did get warming, but they miss-interpreted. We sank a Japanese midget submarine, and our radar detected the Japanese aircraft, but they were thought to be American aircraft.
Our earlier experiences with destabilizing weapon technologies occurred under distinctly different political & geopolitical circumstances. Previously those technological transitions were overseen by leaders mindful of the experiences of World War II. Additionally, the two meaningful adversaries provided a stable political environment on which to structure plans & alliances. Stability maintained deterence. Those key elements have disappeared, creating a far less stable strategic situation. We were all remarkably fortunate that none of the military conflicts after WW II escalated to a nuclear exchange. On several occaions there was sufficient time to recognize false alarms before weapons were launched in error. The introduction of hypersonic weapons in combination with the world's existing nuclear arsenals could greatly increase the probability that deterrence will fail. If that occurs, it may likely happen suddenly as the result of events that haven't reached public awareness as an escalating crisis. That suggests no meaningful warning, similar to Pearl Harbor or September 11, 2001. Except the destruction could reach global scale within a few hours as opposed to the years required in previous wars. If there is still a way to forestall the development of this situation, tell me who is likely to act to do so.
3
There is no doubt that the human population on Earth is stuffed with brainiacs. Across the globe they conjure up and build artifacts and objects and tools that amaze and dazzle. Such astounding cleverness and imagination is almost incomprehensible. But to what ultimate end? To kill faster, better, and more with mind boggling speed in the 21st century is little different that the conquering Mongol warriors of the 13th century. Genghis and his progeny created the worlds second largest empire on horseback, leaving mountains of corpses from China to Budapest. Will today’s modern equivalents be content when they too have knocked off a couple billion more inhabitants? People are evidently a deadly virus infecting this beautiful planet. Honestly, maybe the sooner the human race has expelled itself once and for all, Mother Earth can spend a few centuries cleaning up our mess.
161
@ABaron Funny you mention the Mongols, I bet that the people they massacred wished they had spent more of their time and cleverness on weapons. Unilateral pacifism is just an invitation to be eaten.
15
@KM War. War never changes.
I simultaneously understand and despise your comment. Current status quo makes unilateral pacifism EXTREMELY hard to achieve, but it's still something to aspire to. To only kill when necessary for survival and to do so with mercy.
Do you think that war has a place with a Tier 3 civilization on the Kardashev Scale? We're only 0.73/3 right now but we're so focused on in-fighting we neglect more long term calamities that will happen regardless of our cultural unity.
11
@M
Peace is desirable but at the same time, it also depends on just what kind of peace is actually being offered.
Going by the Mongols mentioned earlier, it is my understanding that before any attack they generally offered their target a chance to surrender and live peacefully so long as they agree to submit to Mongol rule and pay tribute. Refuse that and you die. Would you have agreed to live under such 'peace'?
Alternatively, consider the modern South-East Asian nation of Brunei. It is a rather quiet and peaceful country and society from what I've heard. The very name of the country means 'Abode of Peace'. No news of trouble and tumult there at present. This peace though is maintained by a socio-political system that is very 'un-Western': no democracy or elections, an absolute ruling Islamic Malay monarchy and staunch sharia laws which everybody has to obey. Would you have accepted to live under such 'peaceful' terms?
6