Pentagon Says Hypersonic Weapons Are Too Expensive (reuters.com) 95
The Pentagon wants defense contractors to cut the ultimate cost of hypersonic weapons, the head of research and development said on Tuesday, as the next generation of super-fast missiles being developed currently cost tens of millions per unit. From a report: "We need to figure out how to drive towards more affordable hypersonics," Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu told reporters at the Association of United States Army conference in Washington. She said cost was something she "would like to help industry focus on." Currently, the U.S. uses cruise missiles which are mature technologies costing less than $5 million per unit to strike deep into enemy territory. But cruise missiles are inferior to hypersonic weapons because they have a shorter range, are far slower and more vulnerable to being detected and shot down. Both Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies are working on hypersonic weapons for the Pentagon. The Pentagon's budget request in the 2022 fiscal year for hypersonic research was $3.8 billion which was up from $3.2 billion they year before.
Re: Russia and China (Score:2, Offtopic)
Only if you believe their propaganda.
Re:Russia and China (Score:5, Interesting)
Being ahead in development—which is questionable—won't matter much if it isn't cost effective to produce and maintain, which is what this article is about.
Back in the '00s I was talking with Roger Boisjoly [wikipedia.org] at a dinner, and he half-seriously claimed credit for ending the Cold War. While he's perhaps best known for his role as a Challenger whistleblower who tried to stop the disastrous launch, his claim to ending the Cold War actually derived from his time working on the Minuteman missile [wikipedia.org] while at Thiokol.
It was his contention that the USSR's long-term reliance on liquid fuel rockets was what caused their collapse. Because the liquid fuel used by the USSR was highly corrosive, maintaining an arsenal of tens of thousands of missiles in a ready state (or engaging in routine readiness tests? I can't remember the specifics), meant costly repairs were necessary on a regular basis. In contrast, the solid fuel used by the Minuteman was far more stable, allowing the US to maintain a ready state without needing to engage in costly maintenance of the missiles with nearly as much regularity as the USSR.
I'm neither an aerospace engineer nor an economist nor a geopolitical analyst, so I can't speak to the veracity of his claims or even that I've accurately repeated them here, but I found the idea interesting, nonetheless, and it's stuck with me ever since.
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I doubt the rockets were the source of the USSR's collapse. It was more their sclerotic economy, the wheels came off and they couldn't buy off their satellite countries any longer or afford to keep the squeeze on them. Also, their people no longer believed in the system. The old joke was true, the people pretended to work and the government pretended to pay them.
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So did they buy them off or squeeze stuff out of them? Also follow up question, did EU buy them off or squeezing them for something?
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lso follow up question, did EU buy them off or squeezing them for something?
Neither.
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Missiles are just a small part of the force. The Soviets were actually very good at building items that performed 95-98% as well as ours for a tiny fraction of the money that our "better" product cost. They would put straight lines where we put curves and brute force things that we would finesse. Their equipment was generally considered much easier and less costly to maintain due to the same decisions that made them cheaper in the first place. We have a habit of overthinking and overspecing military equipme
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The Soviet block economic base was much lower to begin. Plus all those countries had been ruined in WW2.
It is nothing short of a miracle the rebound they managed to do until the mid 1960s. But afterwards their economy started growing much slower than the West.
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While the liquid fuel of the Soviet ballistic missiles is indeed corrosive, the Soviets have developed special fuel tanks allowing them to fuel the missiles at manufacturing, weld shut the fuel inlets and store the missile fuelled for up to two decades.
The main causes for the breakup were ethnic conflicts in Moldavia, Armenia and Georgia (called the Transnistria war, first Nagorno-Karabakh war and Georgian civil war after the breakup) and the Chernobyl aftermath costing the state about the same as the yearl
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The Soviets had the RT-2 solid rocket which is about the same age as the Minuteman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Their main problem was not making the rockets. Their main problem was they took a long time to miniaturize their warheads so only large rockets could launch them. Solid rocket technology couldn't deliver payloads that large. That is why the Soviets developed the R-36 and larger rockets.
To counter that claim about cost, the Soviets also had uranium gas centrifuge technology, which meant they co
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Most Russians own their own homes though. Own them, not mortgaged them.
Internet access, food, energy are also a lot cheaper.
Shortening the oops. (Score:3)
Currently, the U.S. uses cruise missiles which are mature technologies costing less than $5 million per unit to strike deep into enemy territory. But cruise missiles are inferior to hypersonic weapons because they have a shorter range, are far slower and more vulnerable to being detected and shot down.
Shortens the time between "TARGET" and "Oh we f*ucked up!"
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Re:LOL immoral US Pentagon dumbfucks. (Score:4, Interesting)
The USA has envisioned itself as the "police of the world" for a long time, so their preference of offensive weapons really isn't that shocking.
But what I do find surprising is that a country with the world's largest military budget, a "spare no expenses for the troops" organization, would balk at the cost of, well, anything.
Maybe they've been infected by common sense? Maybe spending millions of dollars to blow up a shack in the wasteland with a few ramshackle enemies in it has been understood to be a "bad return on investment"?
(and I thought the only current interest in hypersonic weapons was anti-ship missiles, trying to avoid close-in weapons systems on carriers / guided missile destroyers?)
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My understanding is that there are many areas where the military would like to reduce costs (not least of which is dropping projects that are not meeting needs), but Congress really wants them to stick with it.
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That was an interesting read to look up, so I'll throw it in here for anyone else interested.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The USA has envisioned itself as the "police of the world" for a long time
for better or worse, the US basically has been the "world police" for a long time.
military bases in over 80 countries;
basically the military arm of NATO;
sailing/protecting international waters;
etc etc
This is desperately needed... (Score:2)
I am sure some of these people absolutely deserve to die. But hypersonic weapons seem unnecessary. An overkill if you will.
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That's what Airwolf was for.
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That's what Airwolf was for.
See, we already have the technology, and some kickass theme music.
Re: This is desperately needed... (Score:2)
This isnt for them, it's to take out chinese and russia assets.
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Yes, Putin is a mortal enemy of the US. But he need not use anything so crude as ships, tanks, or aircraft to threaten us. He has Trump and his cronies.
Putin (Score:3)
I saw this exact article earlier today. Putin already claims to have these. We can't let that shit slide, now can we?
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The Pentagon knows what Putin has or doesn't have, and they don't rely upon what that piece of shit says. . .err. . .unlike you.
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It's part of the show. What he actually has doesn't matter, bluster buffs budgets.
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Wasn't this how the US also scared USSR into spending a bunch load of money on "Star Wars program", money they cant exactly afford? And that too hastened the fall of the USSR?
How much you wanna bet Russia / China are both doing the same to the US, regardless they have hypersonic weapons or not.
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It's about maintaining the qualitative edge. This is arguably precisely what limits war.
Despite the claims by the perpetually scared about war with Russia, the whole reason Russia will never go to war with the West is because it would lose, and lose hard.
Back in 2008 Putin thought he'd pulled off one of his masterstrokes, sat next to Bush at the Beijing Olympics he smirked away about the fact he'd ordered his forces to invade Georgia hours before. Bush, being Bush, ordered the US military to roll humvees in
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So, according to you Georgia won that war against Russia? Just about as much as the Serbs won against NATO.
What an idiot.
Mass production (Score:4, Funny)
Cost can be reduced by mass production .. solution seems to be to either start a war or incentivize civilian use.
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Yeah, it seems a bit odd to gripe about cost when you are literally the only customer.
It's like telling a full-time live-in nanny that she costs too much and should try to find ways to become cheaper...
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Only customer or not, the issue from the military perspective is "how much will Congress budget for this?" Matters not at all that the military is the only customer, since the military buys weapons from the makers (yes, it's true - the Army doesn't make M16's, they buy them from a civilian firm. And if the civilian firm can't make enough selling the things, they won't get made).
If a weapon costs more than Congress has
Re: Mass production (Score:2)
In that case, mass produce existing cruise missiles. Overwhelm their defenses. Add flak spewers to gum up radar.
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Yeah but you still run the risk that your target runs to a fortified position when the volley of cruise missiles are detected.
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Make them take an indirect route so that they don't know the actual target until it's too late.
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solution seems to be to either start a war or incentivize civilian use.
Hasn't the world police already done this through their local police?
Kind of disappointing (Score:2)
One would dream that the military would abandon a weapons program because they realized making devices that maim and kill one's fellow man makes one a terrible human being. But no, it's just cost that matters to them.
In other words, the lives of the people those weapons would have killed has been valued less than the cost of the weapons' development. Nice...
Re:Kind of disappointing (Score:5, Insightful)
Additionally what about the idea of spending a 5% fraction of the defense budget on making life just better enough for these other countries that they don't want to murder us, we murder them, cycle repeats.
Illegal immigration for instance. Can build a stupid wall and moat for a jillion dollars. Drones, Homeland security driving back and forth. But it would be entirely possible to subsidize a series of factories or whatever in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and so on such that large numbers of people could have meaningful work. And yeah, we'd have to oversee it so money doesn't instantly go to graft, and yeah, there's a public safety component around policing...perhaps with our own troops in the neighborhood near at the factories. but you can create a virtuous cycle and not a cycle of destruction. But God forbid any amount of money goes offshore...we gots problems right here in 'Merica. And it would be so little money really, so littler in comparison to pretty much any weapons program (F-35 looking at you)
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Good idea, but we're already doing that.
Historically, the non-military foreign aid has been about 5% of the size of US military budget.
Presently, it's about $35 billion for non-military foreign aid and a military budget of $705 billion.
The USA is by far the largest donor of foreign aid in the world, but private giving dwarfs what the government does.
https://philanthropynewsdigest... [philanthro...digest.org]
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I think it would be even nicer if US foreign policy didn't destroy latin american economies, thereby displacing millions. But no, we have to prop up rotten governments who do what we say... or else.
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Yep, like stop producing more guns than we can use and allowing organizations to sell them to S. American countries. Or we could get serious about getting people off drugs so that the drug gangs lose their income. And we could reform our immigration policies so that human traffickers lose their cattle (SS is running out of taxpayers, seems Americans have stopped screwing).
Above, we could stop the carbon pollution that is causing climate change in Central America.
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Fair enough...thanks for doing the search I was to lazy to do myself. I guess it is either a matter of more money to fund this stuff or more realistically...wish XYZ organization just operated more effectively.
Re: Kind of disappointing (Score:2)
I was surprised how much money came from non governmental charity sources. More money went to other countries from American citizens charities than from the government.
I wasn't quickly able to find how much charity comes from other countries. I know that it is a lot, but not how much .
Re:Kind of disappointing (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope, cannot do that. The Republicans scream bloody murder over foreign aid.
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Re: Kind of disappointing (Score:1, Offtopic)
Sure, let's all skip down the street together singing kumbaya picking flowers. Meanwhile psychopaths elsewhere will continue to rape and kill with no one to stop them. But hey, your conscience will be clear, right?
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You think the USA stopped rapists and mass murderers? In that case, you're the one singing Kumbaya. US foreign policy has never been about making the rest of the world a safer place, at least, not safer for the locals.
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You've heard of UN peace keeping missions I presume.
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Ya, cuz the Chinese and the Russians are pussy cats.
This must be a first... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This must be a first... (Score:5, Funny)
You might say they're...hyper-expensive.
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How ludicrously overpriced are these things that the Pentagon balks at the price?
They do have some dumb people working there. Remember the US Navy ship that has a weapon that's too expensive to shoot? As a Navy guy would say - That's no shit.
https://www.popularmechanics.c... [popularmechanics.com]
$800,000 a shot.
It's good that they're looking at cost.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Steal it from India (Score:2)
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Usefulness of hypersonic missiles is asymmetric (Score:5, Informative)
US China and Russia don't have the same objectives or requirements for HS vehicles. The greatest impact of hypersonic missiles will be against highly valuable but moving targets, which China and Russia don't really have but US does in the form of aircraft carriers.
Strategic example: When a set Chinese of coastal land-based HS missiles is capable of hitting a US carrier out beyond carrier range of flight operations in the Taiwan, it has essentially neutralized the US ability to interfere with a Taiwan invasion. There is virtually no scenario where US would commit one or more carriers to this defense if there is a high degree of certainty that those carriers would not survive long enough to reach a distance where it can deploy aircraft as part of that defense. As soon as China makes US govt aware of they have this capability the ability of the US to interfere is severely curtailed as there is not (and is unlikely to be in the near future) any carrier-based defense against HS weapons.
Whereas there is no scenario I can see where having hypersonic missiles confers any strategic advantage the US does not already have over any likely adversary.
Re:Usefulness of hypersonic missiles is asymmetric (Score:4, Interesting)
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The greatest impact of hypersonic missiles will be against highly valuable but moving targets, which China and Russia don't really have but US does in the form of aircraft carriers. Strategic example: When a set Chinese of coastal land-based HS missiles is capable of hitting a US carrier out beyond carrier range of flight operations in the Taiwan, it has essentially neutralized the US ability to interfere with a Taiwan invasion.
Wouldn't the hypersonic missiles have to slow down to get optical course correction when they get close? And once slowed down, wouldn't they be as effect as cruise missiles?
There's an interesting discussion thread https://www.quora.com/How-woul... [quora.com] - the answers are mixed, with some people saying 50 cruise missiles would give you good odds of disabling an aircraft carrier, and others saying that 250 wouldn't do it.
If cruise missiles are $5m each, then say $0.5b to destroy an aircraft carrier against $10b to
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Talking just USA... solution is easy... (Score:2)
World is f*cked up man... f*cked up (Score:5, Insightful)
Give the contract to SpaceX (Score:2)
It will get done at half the cost. And maybe the first test flight will use a Tesla.
Lockheed = overpriced (Score:3)
Social services or welfare (Score:2)
Nearly a 20% increase in funding: Does welfare or social services, or even infrastructure construction get that sort of increase, especially in these uncertain economic times?
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The non-discretionary part of the budget is 2/3 of the budget. That non-discretionary is Social Security, Medicare, etc. The health care part of non-discretionary goes up year after year, we just cover it with debt.
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Just as a reference, the military accounts for more than 50% of discretionary spending (or 10-15% of total budget).
Joseph Heller (Score:1)
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Yup, just like Mussolini. You are probably too young to recall the boy but he was all the rage awhile back.
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Wait, what? (Score:1)
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The Pentagon often tells congress to stop spending money on things they don't need. Congress just ignores them.
https://havokjournal.com/natio... [havokjournal.com]
Didn't we fly the X-15 back in the 60s? (Score:2)
Hypersonic weapons are not too expensive (Score:1)
Hypersonic weapons only because of ballistic fears (Score:2)
Ballistic non-nuclear just as good, we need ballistic launch sites that are inspected by our rivals and certified non-nuclear.
The confusion between ballistic non-nuclear and nuclear is the issue.
Not just a Cash Problem (Score:1)