DARPA Looking into Hypersonic Bombers 819
while(true) writes "As reported previously here on Slashdot, hypersonic jets from NASA has recently been in the news. Now DARPA is showing interest in the military applications and is to host a conference on hypersonic unmanned bombers. These bombers could be based in the US and yet strike from space at any place in the world within 2 hours. BBC has a report about these air/spacecraft that could be operational by 2025."
more info (Score:5, Informative)
Re:more info (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:more info (Score:3, Interesting)
too dissimilar. Airbreathing is more useful for one,
but at the expense of worse thermal control issues.
And neither one of these really want to use hydrogen
as fuel.
Re:more info (Score:4, Informative)
Re:more info (Score:5, Interesting)
A minefield full of networked anti-tank mines that can leap up to 30 yards per hop (and up to 100 hops per mine). You can't lay down a strip of C4 and clear a path. The mines decide as a group what configuration is best and then move to fill the gap. It would be incredible to watch.
Re:more info (Score:3, Interesting)
Then there is the clearing of these mines after a war, it would be one hell of a job to clear a whole minefield of these.
Re:more info (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:more info (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:more info (Score:3, Interesting)
But when they receive the encrypted signal they can decrypt it and check whether it was the disarm code.
Re:more info (Score:4, Funny)
I'll send out the signal and YOU go pick them up!
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Re:more info (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder how they go about it...
"Okay, Frank...hop over into that gap right there."
"Shit, no! Larry just got run over by a TANK! Did you see that? You hop into the gap, asshole!"
Re:more info (Score:3, Informative)
Re:more info (Score:3, Insightful)
Jesus, why must everything be a conspiracy theory? When I read this article on the BBC (before Slashdot posted it), my first thought was, "Cool, but why the hell is this one of the BBC's top news stories?" I mean, ok, the government wants to build a fancy new bomber. And if it works it'll be big news, and if it goes into production it'll cost a lot of money. But Jesus, we have 22 years befor
Grandma wolf (Score:5, Funny)
The better to bomb the living fuck out of you, my dear.
Is this a good thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hypersonic bombers sound really really cool.
Umm, don't we already have that? (Score:5, Funny)
Someone should let them know the solution is 50 years old [boeing.com].
Re:Umm, don't we already have that? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the point with hypersonic bombers as opposed to ICBMs is 1.) they are reusable
Re:Umm, don't we already have that? (Score:5, Interesting)
Launch, hold at the predesignated point. If the situation resolves itself, come home. If not, go forward and blow something up.
Once you get past 'launch' with an ICBM, it is out of your hands.
Re:Umm, don't we already have that? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Umm, don't we already have that? (Score:4, Interesting)
Carriers provide the ability to project power and do so well, but they only cover a small circle on the surface of the Earth. Our forward bomber bases similarly have a fairly small footprint, though bigger than a carrier. This still leaves huge portions of the world out of US reach. While an extended bomber mission with in-air refueling brings these areas into range, such a mission is expensive and very rough on the pilots.
The other side of this option is the balistic missile. ICBMs and MRBMs are both very accurate weapons, though AFAIK they do not approach the accuracy of the guided munitions we've seen our government cooking off in Iraq recently. Accuracy aside, however, people see a ballistic inbound and tend to get jumpy. Doubly so if it's launched from the United States or the former Soviet Union.
A hypersonic bomber allows the kind of responce time an ICBM exhibits (ok, a bit longer) while not encouraging everyone and their brother to whip out the 2,000,000 sunblock. A small contingent of these weapons would allow limited airstrikes on specific and high priority targets. A larger number would allow a massive projection of power at a moments notice.
A lot of this depends on what the pricetag is on these things. If Boeing can churn them out for $250 Million to $500 Million I think they'll be a valuable asset. If they come with a price tag like the B-2 Spirit maybe we need to rethink these things.
Re:Umm, don't we already have that? (Score:4, Informative)
Problem is, once you get there, you need overfly rights from those pesky countries in the way. If your aircraft is in space, outside the national exclusionary zone, you can go wherever you please, and bomb the shit out of whomever you please, at will.
Derek
Wake up, the cold war is over (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Umm, don't we already have that? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't mean to be mean, but this is the stupidest thing I've read in a long time. We have a stockpile of over 10,000 ICBMs. they only reason reusability comes in to play is if we plan on running out. The same can be said for fuel efficiency.
Also, do you have any idea how much it costs to design, test, and roll out a few hypersonic planes? Neither does the government, because they've tried three times and dropped it after severe cost overruns and technical problems. I don't think saving a hundred thousand dollars on fuel is valid justification for spending 30 billion designing a superfluous 'defense system.'
Re:Umm, don't we already have that? (Score:3, Insightful)
There are treaties in effect that limit the number and types of ICBMs we can have and use. AFAIK, there is no treaty that currently limits the number of bombers we can have ready to use.
Re:Umm, don't we already have that? (Score:3, Informative)
point taken, but the ABM treaty did have a withdrawal clause, given six-month notice, which the US did give. So the treaty was not actually broken. no idea if there is a similar clause in any treaties rel
Re:Umm, don't we already have that? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Umm, don't we already have that? (Score:3, Informative)
And here [fas.org] as of Jan '99.
Re:No. Think 6000 mph "Son of B-2" (Score:4, Insightful)
A MIRV could carry a conventional weapon, but why would you?
Accuracy sucks. ICBM's are flying a long way, over basically uncharted territory. The specific gravitational anomalies and wind conditions have never truly been mapped. Yes, they launch regularly from Vandenburg to some islands out in the Pacific, but they've been doing that so much, they know how to adjust. Over the pole has never, for obvious reasons, been done.
Modern smart bombs and air to ground missiles can hit within inches. Or hit a truck on the move. The pilot can adjust at the last minute, or decide not to drop at all, because the intel was bad, and there is a large group of civilians in the way. An ICBM merely drops on their heads.
Throw weight. An F-15 Strike Eagle can probably carry as much as an ICBM in terms of explosive weight.
Image An ICBM launch would start a whole chain of reactions, in a lot of countries. The plume will be detected, and someone might launch in retaliation (Use it or lose it), even though they were not the target.
An expensive solution to a non-existing problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:An expensive solution to a non-existing problem (Score:2)
How about settling for an invisible hypersonic delivery system for GIs?
Ummm, yea, still glad I went to flight school instead of jump school
Re:An expensive solution to a non-existing problem (Score:5, Insightful)
ahh but you are wrong grasshopper....
I can win any war by throwing bombs, espically if I have the largest bomb pile. It's how far I am willing to go in throwing those bombs.
IRAQ could have been completely dealt with in 6 hours.. Simply carpet bomb the entire country and finish it with a few well placed nukes. kill every man/woman/child in the country and you win. It's very simple.
trying to avoid wiping out a country completely and still win.... this is another task all-together... and is still difficult but do-able.
right now in iraq and what we did in vietnam is acting like police... it is always a complete failure at the end with lots of casualties on both sides... NO police action was ever sucessful in the history of man... the romans learned it early on.
in vietnam we were not wanted, so the people fought us... Guess what is happening in IRAQ.
I say pull out right now, and tell them if they rebuild to be asshats... we will be back... but not as police.
Re:An expensive solution to a non-existing problem (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd just like to hear what your resolution would have been for Iraq? Considering all past wars on other nations, there was extreme pains taken to avoid destroying strategic targets such as power generation stations, water reclaimation plants, amungst other targets. In fact, dispite the sounds of war, Iraqi citizens seemed to be largely unaffected unless caught directly in the middle of fire fights (noted by markets opened and filled dispite the siege occuring in and aroudn the capitol). Was there a diplomatic solution? Perhaps. How exactally do you negotiate with a dictator that abuses his people, and doesn't even bother to veil his hatred for you and your beliefs?
Re:An expensive solution to a non-existing problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Did he have WMD? Nope.
Did he support Al Quedda? Nope. They hated him almost as much as they hated us.
Was he a threat to our "allies"?
- To Kuwait, whose citizens now hate us? Not really.
- To Israel? HAHAHAHAHA! Yeah, right.
- To Saudi Arabia, homeland of most of the 9/11 terrorists? No.
So, what was the problem? What did we have to get tough about? Nothing. It was all a pack of lies told to convince us that we were doing the right thing.
Re:An expensive solution to a non-existing problem (Score:5, Informative)
That depends on your definition of 'win'. The Vietnamese would not see the US as winners, nor would Laos, Cambodia, Korea, Afghanistan and the jury is still out in Iraq but I doubt the US can win that one either. Killing lots of people is, more often, likely to lose the war. The only way to win is to earn the popular support of the people and that is something that the US has yet to learn how to do. Ghandi did it without an army and he beat the British when they were the strongest force on the planet.
Re:An expensive solution to a non-existing problem (Score:3, Informative)
Re:An expensive solution to a non-existing problem (Score:4, Informative)
No, this country needs educated, responsible citizens that understand the consequences (political, economic, and lives) of military action, and the will to look to alternate sources of information, now that the US media is owned by a few commercial military conglomerates.
It makes Christ's Second Coming a more likely event.
Great but... (Score:5, Insightful)
And? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And? (Score:2)
Re:And? (Score:3, Insightful)
And the US public will remain brainwashed into believing they have might when they really live every day cowered in fear and aggression.
Re:And? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, lately. What sort of action will be needed in 25 or 50 years? The B-52 fleet is scheduled to fly well into the 2030's. A lifespan of 80 years or so. There needs to be a follow on aircraft of some sort.
This is one possibility.
Re:And? (Score:3, Informative)
B-52 are old work horses, but to get them moved around and ready to go take some time. Having all these new bombers stationed in say some corn field in Nebraska would remove all this. 24/7/365 ready to go whereever they want to go.
This almost sounds like the Aurora project that does not exist
Re:And? (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Cost: Although each plane is more expensive to build then their counterparts today, the US would not need forward bases for air power. These bases are far more expensive to maintain than the aircraft are to buy. In addition, Air bases cause a lot of concern for the country they are in, as well as an increased risk to those who need to guard.
2. The Minutemen are missiles. ICBM's at that. The political and social implications of suddenly firing lots of those is incredi
Re:And? (Score:3, Informative)
The published circular error probability of a Minuteman is 100 METERS, not 10 miles. In other words, they are pretty accurate.
10 miles is nowhere near enough for a nuclear weapon. Depending on the target, 100 meters is what you need.
See here [tinyvital.com] for some more reasonable data on nuclear damage.
Oh, btw... otherwise I agree that Minutemen aren't the right thing for this job - too expensive.
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
DARPA projects (Score:5, Funny)
To me, this is sad. (Score:2, Insightful)
It seems that the U.S. government has an endless amount of money for killing people and destroying property, but not very much for making good relationships.
The least sophisticated way of relating to other people is killing them.
Re:To me, this is sad. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:To me, this is sad. (Score:3, Insightful)
If Bush just went up to Osama one day, said "Hey, lets just put this all behind us" and shook his hand kissed his cheeks, you think Osama would say "Yeah, this is all a big mess. You US guys are re
Re:To me, this is sad. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:To me, this is sad. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm tired of the US bashing. Yeah sure we suck sometimes. Well so does everyone else. Its amazing what we accomplish with the population (top 5 in the world) and landmass (top 5 in the world) we have.
Sure we've fucked up some countries in our time. We've also rebuilt some and funded others.
Anyway this was just to draw more attention to the the parent poster
Re:To me, this is sad. (Score:4, Informative)
oh oh let me!
Saudi Arabia gives a greater percentage of its gross national product to foreign aid that any other nation in the world. Following Saudi Arabia is Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Even countries like Luxembourg give 2x that of the United States. Per capita we spend less on forign aid than any of these countries. So what's so special about us? These countries are certainly not economic power houses but still manage to find the generosity to provide more of their money to forigners.
If you're talking jazz, the situation is a no-win (Score:3, Informative)
Percentage of budget of US foreign aid: 1.0% (dead last among western nations).
Percentage of that dedicated to military aid to allies: ~50% (to Israel, mostly)
Percentage of total aid that comes directly back to US companies: ~70%
Percentage of people polled that think we spend too much on foreign aid: 75%
Average response to the question, "how much should we spend on foreign aid?": 8.4%
What you reap is what you sow.
Re:If you're talking jazz, the situation is a no-w (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, if you ask what the US Federal government spends, as a portion of the total Federal budget, we look like punks. If you look at Federal expenditure as a portion of GDP, we look like punks. But when you look at the bottom line, we end up spending more dollars than anybody else. But that makes for bad anti-US rhetoric.
Take, for example, spending on AIDS/HIV prevention. Look at this document:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/nr/downloads/glo
The US government contributes more dollars to prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS than anyone else. (see page 34.) Should we spend more so that our percentage of GDP is more inline with the UK? That might be a good plan. But to assert that we do nothing because our percentage of GDP is too low - that's ridiculous. Everything you could ever want to know about the amazing work that done with that money is here:
http://www.usaid.gov/
Go there, look at the work that money does, and come back and tell me it means nothing.
Re:If you're talking jazz, the situation is a no-w (Score:3, Insightful)
It's fun to be a smart ass.
But the figures for US foreign aid and how much goes to military "aid" are accurate. Google for it, and you will find many reliable sources.
As for the other figures, they're just from a survey. From the Boston Globe, if I recall correctly.
Re:To me, this is sad. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:To me, this is sad. (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, we tried giving money away to make friends (Europe after world war two, Egypt, etc.) That didn't work very well either, considering most of them hate us too...
Actually, it worked great. The problem is that we also gave money to people like the Shah of Iran and Suharto (and Israel). And they loved us. Its the poor bastards that had to suffer under those despots because of US military aid that hated us.
The French are the French, but the rest of Europe generally loved us until the 1990's. I th
TWO HOURS? (Score:2)
Re:TWO HOURS? (Score:2)
I can't wait for a FedEx that can do same day delivery.
unmanned = break normal speed limits (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder what the upper limit of these speeds might be, that wouldn't tear up the ship itself (like some falling meteor).
But the article did mention that a simple titanium rod would serve as an adequate 'bunker buster' only from the speed it would be traveling from space. In rod we trust
Re:unmanned = break normal speed limits (Score:2)
Tell them DARPA is selling seats on the flights to space tourists. Give Madonna free tickets.
Make the world a better place, for you and me..
What does this portend? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not just use a rocket? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why not just use a rocket? (Score:3, Informative)
Worse yet, then you take away warheads that "need" to be there for the US's Nuclear Triad. Fu
Space Treaties? (Score:2, Informative)
conventional ICBM (Score:3, Interesting)
NATLA (Score:5, Funny)
hmmm... I think that's the most contrived acronym I have *ever* seen... was "COOL DEATH EAGLE" already taken?
Coincidentally... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Coincidentally... (Score:3, Funny)
Why is it that kids these days need everything right away? When I was a kid, it took a lot longer than two hours to destroy the world... and we LIKED it that way.
Just what we need (Score:2)
America, leading the way as usual. To where?
Scramjets (Score:2)
If they actually manage to develop scramjets there are a lot of more applications than bombers.
Cheap space travel comes to mind.
Tor
Aurora? (Score:2)
Re:Aurora? (Score:5, Informative)
Hypersonic is five times the speed of sound. The Concorde is supersonic only. Although the x-15 [nasa.gov] has been acknowledged as a hypersonic test platform it was:
A. A rocket
B. A test aircraft flown by NASA
To date there are no known flying hypersonic aircraft. Although there are a few test platforms for various airframes and engines (ramjets, wedge shapes, waveriders, etc) I know of no flying hypersonic aircraft that is public.
Balance of power.... (Score:2)
Allies? We don't need no steeking allies!
Shocked and Awed (Score:3, Funny)
In what appears to be another carefully planned "shock and awe" tactic, DARPA is running its www.darpa.mil website on the Microsoft IIS/5.0 server.
Sounds familiar, I'm skeptical.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sounds familiar, I'm skeptical.. (Score:5, Informative)
This effect is mitigated nowadays by tightly coupling the disciplines together into what is called multi-physics analysis. Since the finite element meshes used to model structures looks very different from the structures used to model airflow, for example, there is a lot of calculation behind the scenes that must correlate structural, thermal, and aerodynamic properties into a cohesive model.
Furthermore, the level of detail (number of nodes & elements in the mesh) required for proper hypersonics analysis is much higher than that of "normal" aircraft design. And, the inherently chaotic nature of hypersonics means that it is very difficult to show meaningful results without good probabilistics. Running probabilistic analysis on something so complex, however, requires serious computing resources. Computing resources even a few years later are many times faster now than they were back then, and many improvements have been made to the structure and methods used in parallelizing this kind of interdisciplinary calculation, such as the development of the SIERRA framework [sandia.gov] developed at Sandia National Labs.
WMDs found! (Score:5, Funny)
Reinventing the wheel? (Score:5, Informative)
You may not be aware of it, but most of this 'new' capabilities was avilable to the US in the late fifties, in the form of the Navaho intercontinental cruisemissile. True, it was a one way weapon on operational missions, but test missions were flown with retn to base.
It's funny... the US developed the Navaho [astronautix.com] based on the idea the germans had in the A4b [astronautix.com] / A9 [astronautix.com], which was contrived as a way to lenghten the range of the A4 (V2) [astronautix.com], only to cancel it and develop the Atlas [astronautix.com] ICBM wich offered the potential for longer range and shorter reactiontime... History seems to run in circles, just like a wheel...
why does this not appear in American news? (Score:5, Insightful)
But for some reason, the mainstream media in the US has chosen to simply roll over and play dead for the government. Remember all the play given to that boring and irrelevant Lewinsky case? But the fact that the government lied to get us into a war, the fact that the government has marked the enquiry on what went wrong on 9/11 as classified, crucial things involving life and death for thousands of Americans, have barely been mentioned here in the US.
You wonder whether the Republican Party doesn't simply have thousands of incriminating photographs in a file somewhere...
It's not news yet, and Americans don't care anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing has happened yet. Writing a story about this is like saying that the US is drawing up contingency plans for an evacuation of Liberia. News flash! Military planners have detailed mission plans for a variety of ope
Its is now 1:20 Pacific Daylight Time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Stow the rhetoric, please. Not everyone accepts that blather at face value.
An incredible amount of technology that we take for granted exists today because DARPA spent money on it and people complained about the size of the US defense budget (he says while sending his comment of the *internet*).
Hypersonic flight, whether ballistic or not, is incredibly hard to control. Manned or unmanned, incredibly hard to control. This sort of project will develop the skills and capabilities needed to engineer such an audacious plan. That knowledge barely exists now. How do you build something so insanely complex and difficult to control? How do you make it reliable? Someday, that knowledge of how to build impressive stuff will be used to build impressive stuff you'll use everyday.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Civilian Applications (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is truly sad. (Score:3, Funny)
Assuming the tourists and businessmen can behave themselves when they get there...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
shame on me (Score:5, Interesting)
American society needs to get over this Cold War fascination with ever larger, more powerful, and more complex military technology. The military is not the solution to every problem, they are just a last resort when we have no real solution.
We need to expend more effort developing technologies that will really improve our lives, no matter how gee-whiz hypersonic bombers, planetary annihilation lasers, and the like, may be.
Even human cloning would be better than this. Honestly.
No shame in being fascinated. (Score:5, Interesting)
He concluded that the project was a failure, because building the catapult felt just like building anything else. Bzzt! It was a success.
If you're like me, you're just as fascinated by the unarmed SR-71 as you are by weapons. The fascination is with the height of the technology the military uses, not with the horrors that it can produce.
I bet you're not at all fascinated by the machetes used in the Rwandan genocide.
What's shameful is failing to apply our critical thinking skills to the political process.
DARPA misdirection (Score:5, Insightful)
For a while, the Space Shuttle was the only government sanctioned method of putting anything in orbit, then the first shuttle disaster happened and the military insisted on redeveloping non-reusable boosters.
Now the second disaster. The military might just think that they need their own space plane. This can put small satellites into orbit. It carries a payload to the edge of space. That payload is bombs but could be other items. It can survive the worst part of re-entry.
In the US, sadly, it is much easier to spend billions on a weapon then on a NASA budget item, especially given NASA's track record.
If this thing gets off the ground, with a few changes, after 10 or 20 years as a weapon the tech transfers into a cheap launch vehicle, and/or a hypersonic commercial airliner. DARPA does have a track record of sponsoring projects others cannot do that turn out to have non-military applications (the Internet is just one). The military purpose is just a way to get money into the research.
Re:DARPA misdirection (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DARPA misdirection (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, we pay for life support and supplies for 3 astro/cosmonauts that serve as nothing more than a maintenance crew for a science platform! No plans for making this a stepping stone to the moon, or for space manufacturing. Too little crew for any serious work. If you
The Sanger proposal AGAIN? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't believe that this is right? Check out the x-20 Dyna-Soar project of the 1960's, or the Trans-Atmospheric vehicle projects of the 1980's. Remember the Reagan "Orient Express" speech?
Okay, move forward another 20 years, and now they are hypersonic bombers, not freighters or passenger vehicles. Now we are making no effort to conceal the military applications.
So it's supposed to be "cool" and all that, but it is just a re-tread and do we really need weapons of mass destruction? What happens when somebody cracks the system and uses one to attack our allies or attacks us? What then?
These things have always been too costly and too unproven to be workable. We haven't developed the engine technology as anything more than a drawing board idea.
It is the gee-whiz kind of idea that causes the rest of the world to crap their pants as we drum up another arms race that we don't need. It is a solution in search of a problem.
Irrational decisions... (Score:5, Insightful)
The faster the planes can bomb, the faster the damage is done. Do you really want to live in a world where: a ruler can do something imprudent yet, not worthy of anhiliation and have his entire country bombed before dinner.
I don't.
Not new. (Score:5, Interesting)
That is why the "Future Strike Aircraft" (which shall probably be designated "B-3") will be relying on high speed rather than purely signature reduction.
*Note that the FSA will not be hypersonic, it will cruise at 2-4 Mach.
Terrible, absolutely terrible (Score:5, Insightful)
Great, just great
Be careful with this tecnology (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hypergoodness (Score:3, Informative)
Right, sure.
Kinetic weapons have the possibility to deliver effective yields greater than any of our current chemical devices.
1 ton of TNT yields around 10^10 J.
You, accelerated to 1 km/sec, will yield approximately 100(kg)*(1000 (m/sec)^2/2 = 5*10^7 J on impact. Not even close.
Re:Hypergoodness (Score:3, Interesting)
All of the kinetic energy in a titanium rod by contrast would be directed on the target. It would penetrate a hardened target extremely well.
If TNT worked was effective against armored targets wouldn't modern tanks use explosive shells rather than depleted uranium darts????
Re:We still need new military technology... (Score:3, Insightful)
And to fund this war mindset continually, we'll invent the threat, continually.
The US is building an empire, and the rest of the world is not glad about it.
This whole "peace through strength" mindset is total bullshit and if we could
rid the world of people that think that way, the rest of us would be better off.
Yeah, I know, I'm dr