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Russia's 'unstoppable' hypersonic missiles


seeder

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One system being looked at by the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency to counter maneuvering high-speed missiles is an enhanced version of Lockheed’s THAAD, called THAAD-ER.

The current THAAD-ER system uses a two-stage interceptor with higher velocity that would be capable of catching up to and destroying hypersonic missiles.

Laser weapons also are being considered for use against hypersonic missiles. Lockheed is working on lasers that can hit hypersonic missiles shortly after launch and before they reach ultra-high speeds, Graham said.

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/pentagon-seeks-weapons-counter-hypersonic-missiles/

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6 minutes ago, Captain Risky said:

Here's an excellent article on what future U.S. and British military responses could look like...

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/pentagon-seeks-weapons-counter-hypersonic-missiles/

Enjoy.

By the time the public hears about such things, it's already a fait accompli.

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On 3/28/2017 at 11:32 PM, and then said:

I have no doubt that Russian scientists are quite capable of creating excellent weaponry.  [...]

Sure they are, but there is long path from paper to actual thing. To make that 'thing'  you have to have money, and Russia nowadays is in big trouble (economy is below floor tile), not to mention they lag in technology by decade, more or less.

Many are criticizing US for F22/35, but US have already ~400 of those and counting. And where is Russia with their "state of the art" T-50? Only 8 prototypes. And with levels of corruption in Russia, I can guarantee that T-50 project costs waaay more than F22/35 (relative to GDP).

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35 minutes ago, bmk1245 said:

Sure they are, but there is long path from paper to actual thing. To make that 'thing'  you have to have money, and Russia nowadays is in big trouble (economy is below floor tile), not to mention they lag in technology by decade, more or less.

 

Im not really making a comparison between the two overall but whenever i hear someone make that claim about Russia I cant help but think of post WW1 Germany. 

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49 minutes ago, bmk1245 said:

Sure they are, but there is long path from paper to actual thing. To make that 'thing'  you have to have money, and Russia nowadays is in big trouble (economy is below floor tile), not to mention they lag in technology by decade, more or less.

Many are criticizing US for F22/35, but US have already ~400 of those and counting. And where is Russia with their "state of the art" T-50? Only 8 prototypes. And with levels of corruption in Russia, I can guarantee that T-50 project costs waaay more than F22/35 (relative to GDP).

Most of the criticising of the F-35 project has been by American's and Europeans including the U.S. armed forces. Price, range and weapons carrying ability while still remaining in stealth mode are the main problems. The effectiveness of Stealth, especially with the technological gains that modern radars, in particular, Russian ones are also a concern. To the best of my knowledge the F-22 hasn't been criticised by anyone. 

Edited by Captain Risky
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interesting things happening in Russia right now, people starting to wake up a bit.  i have a feeling we'll see it go the way ussr did in 1991

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On 4/1/2017 at 0:41 PM, Captain Risky said:

Most of the criticising of the F-35 project has been by American's and Europeans including the U.S. armed forces. Price, range and weapons carrying ability while still remaining in stealth mode are the main problems. The effectiveness of Stealth, especially with the technological gains that modern radars, in particular, Russian ones are also a concern. To the best of my knowledge the F-22 hasn't been criticised by anyone. 

No? I've heard differently (of course, its huffpost, so maybe critique wasn't entirely truthful).

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On 4/1/2017 at 0:30 PM, Farmer77 said:

Im not really making a comparison between the two overall but whenever i hear someone make that claim about Russia I cant help but think of post WW1 Germany. 

Yeah, about that... If western countries won't push till the end with sanction (like USSR were supplying Germans when bombs were falling on London), that may indeed end in disaster. 

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1 hour ago, bmk1245 said:

No? I've heard differently (of course, its huffpost, so maybe critique wasn't entirely truthful).

 

F-22 has been criticized as much if not more than the F-35 and for many of the same reasons

 

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On 3/27/2017 at 10:12 PM, seeder said:

 

well, lasers might travel at the speed of light... but someones still got to aim them at something travelling thousands of miles per hour. But if a few missiles are fired at a ship carrying just one laser....well.... that ship and laser are soon sunk

A computer can detect, aim. and neutralize them. 

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5 hours ago, Thanato said:

A computer can detect, aim. and neutralize them. 

 

hhmmmm, is that a fact?  Tell me...how fast do US missiles travel....the ones fired from ships? How will the computer track 2 incoming missiles at that speed and arrange a defence?

Quote

 

The extreme speed of the Zircon will make it very tough for navies to defend against. At 4,600 miles an hour, the Russian hypersonic missile will be traveling faster than a mile a second. Even if a defending ship were to detect an incoming Zircon at 100 miles, that leaves the ship just over one minute to shoot the missile down.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a20565/russia-hypersonic-missiles-battlecruisers/


 

 

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17 minutes ago, seeder said:

 

hhmmmm, is that a fact?  Tell me...how fast do US missiles travel....the ones fired from ships? How will the computer track 2 incoming missiles at that speed and arrange a defence?

 

Yes. A computer can do all that and in a minute would be more then capable of engaging and destroying it once detected.

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3 minutes ago, Thanato said:

Yes. A computer can do all that and in a minute would be more then capable of engaging and destroying it once detected.

 

Detection, via computer is possible I agree, but you didnt answer how fast ships defensive missiles could travel...and THATS the issue

You cant hit what you cant match the speed of... or maybe Im missing something?

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38 minutes ago, seeder said:

 

Detection, via computer is possible I agree, but you didnt answer how fast ships defensive missiles could travel...and THATS the issue

You cant hit what you cant match the speed of... or maybe Im missing something?

Well you wouldnt need defencive missiles. CIWS would put up a wall of lead and the missile wouldnt be able to turn. Or soon Point Defence Lasers would engage and destroy quick.

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1 hour ago, seeder said:

 

Detection, via computer is possible I agree, but you didnt answer how fast ships defensive missiles could travel...and THATS the issue

You cant hit what you cant match the speed of... or maybe Im missing something?

Detection and continuous tracking of several dozen (up to hundreds)of potential threats is common and technically very simple - consider air traffic control radar where 30 / 60 individual aircraft are tracked simultaneously.

The speed of an incoming threat is almost irrelevant because the actual cross-section of the missile is fixed, whilst the perceptible cross-section (to a radar system) actually increases the closer it gets. The response that is most important is in choosing the correct defensive deployment or armament. With a hypersonic missile then you would want to use proximity-fused weapons with a high yield to ensure engagement and neutralisation.

Commonly Carrier fleets have a defensive radius of at least 100nautical miles supplied by escort drones and other aircraft (plus constant satellite coverage extending several hundreds of miles in all directions)

I would expect the CIWS (or Phalanx system as it is also known) to be up to the task for close combat but hopefully the missile systems that are currently available are also capable of interception and neutralisation of hypersonic missiles.

The missile itself would necessarily be quite massive because it needs to carry sufficient propellants to maintain the high velocity required of it so there is a trade off inasmuch as it becomes easier to detect at a greater range. 

Edited by keithisco
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something I found
 

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Lasers, of course, move at the speed of light, faster than any physical object can possibly go. But lasers’ targeting systems still have to find the target before they can fire and, afterwards, hold the beam on one precise point for long enough to burn through. The tougher the target, the longer it takes, and a ballistic missile’s warhead rides in a “reentry vehicle” designed to withstand the heat of, well, reentry: If hitting the atmosphere at several times the speed of sound isn’t going to burn it up, your laser isn’t going to, either.

http://breakingdefense.com/2014/05/the-limits-of-lasers-missile-defense-at-speed-of-light/

 

 

 

 

 

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also from above link

Quote

A ballistic missile is much more vulnerable when it’s still attached to a rocket booster full of combustible fuel. You could probably use a .50 caliber machinegun to shoot down a missile in its relatively brief boost phase, Wilkening said, if you could just get close enough. But getting in range of the launch site is the problem: Despite packing a converted 747 with power modules and laser components, the cancelled Airborne Laser (ABL) still couldn’t generate the power to zap a North Korean launch without the very large and relatively slow-moving aircraft getting dangerously close to enemy airspace. And even if you could hit a missile in mid-launch with a laser, Stein told me, there are still plenty of countermeasures an enemy could use, such as buffing the rocket booster to a mirror sheen or spinning it to spread out the beam.

 

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41 minutes ago, keithisco said:

Detection and continuous tracking of several dozen (up to hundreds)of potential threats is common and technically very simple - consider air traffic control radar where 30 / 60 individual aircraft are tracked simultaneously.

The speed of an incoming threat is almost irrelevant

 

Seen this?
 

Quote

 

Can current radar technology properly detect and track hypersonic targets such as hypersonic missiles or scramjets? This could be in order to intercept it or just follow it. If not, why not - what is the problem?

So what would happen if a radar did try to track a Mach 10 target when it’s upper limit is turned for, say, Mach 4. You will still get detections, for sure. The radar won’t know that’s measuring the target falsely. You may get some detections off a couple of pulse trains that erroneously resolve to a particular range and speed, which will probably be wrong. Maybe the range will be correct but the speed will be way off. When the bogus speed measurements are fed into a tracker, the tracker will go haywire since the measured speed from dwell to dwell will be all over the place. A superb tracker may have the ability to identify this and start to ignore the speed, and then maybe it will get valid range and be able to still track the target without using the speed measurement. But this is unusual, since the radar will believe that it’s making valid Doppler measurements and will report valid Doppler and trackers tend to trust the radars in order to utilize the most measurement information possible.

I started rambling there, but the point is that radars have to be designed to track these types of targets. Maybe, newer software-defined radars with advanced waveforms will be able to track these targets without sacrificing performance in other areas. Maybe new radars will be designed that are only tuned for hypersonic-type threats, say Mach 5 to Mach 10 and will supplement other existing radars.

https://www.quora.com/Can-current-radar-technology-properly-detect-and-track-hypersonic-targets-such-as-hypersonic-missiles-or-scramjets-This-could-be-in-order-to-intercept-it-or-just-follow-it-If-not-why-not-what-is-the-problem


 

 

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19 hours ago, seeder said:

 

hhmmmm, is that a fact?  Tell me...how fast do US missiles travel....the ones fired from ships? How will the computer track 2 incoming missiles at that speed and arrange a defence?

 

According to what I could find the RIM-161 has a speed of Mach 10.2 if it's block IA/B or Mach 15.25 if it's block IIA with a range of 378 miles for block IA/B and 1,350 miles for block IIA and it's designed to intercept short to intermediate range ballistic missiles from ships.

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