The flip side is that an object going that fast will be difficult to accurately hit a small target such as a ship at sea.
How do they protect the Launch sites ?
I would assume we have similar capabilities, although who knows at this point. Ultimately, defense and wars are going to be decided by who has technological superiority. Maybe time to start building drone ships that are expendable.
“It is in all likelihood unstoppable by modern air defenses”
That’s hilarious
Pumping up the hype machine
“Ya can’t stop a bullet with a bullet!” they said back in the ‘80s about SDI
Beg to differ.
Hey Governer Brown Moonbeam,
the Zircon can send passengers from California to Las Vegas at high speed Mach 8, which is much faster than your bullet train.
I suggest you reverse the missle direction to send your Liberals out to sea.
as long as their isn't a fingerprint on the optics, a laser beam can travel 186,000 mph or >25x faster.
Well we toyed with hypersonic weapons, namely Sprint and Spartan missiles...Sprint was as fast if not a tad faster than the Russian model.
My question is: can they hit a target with it? Isn’t it extremely difficult to control an object moving at such speeds in an environment with gravity, atmoshphere, wind and other weather effects? Wouldn’t such an object have to generate spectacularly high temperatures that make sensitive electronics hard to protect and control?
CNBC quoted two anonymous U.S. government officials with direct knowledge of an intelligence report on the test
Soooo CNBC admits to receiving classified intelligence...
Terminal corrections to steer a missile going that speed to target are going to be an absolute bitch.
Speed works two ways.
[Even without a warhead an object going that fast will cause catastrophic damage.]
Kinetic weapons. I thought we were supposed to outfit a boomer sub with Polaris type missiles with strictly kinetic warheads. They screw a big boxing glove onto the tip. (grin)
You can’t out run a Directed Energy Weapon.
Considering a modern carrier is a big, slow moving target and unlike WW2 we can’t practically mass produce Carrier’s of today as they are to complex as many of today’s weapons are so you take out a number of our carrier groups the enemy will have blunted the US’s ability to project its power globally. We forgot the lessons of WW2 and mass production.
Trump responds....
I see your Zircon, and raise you Rods from God.
Russia cannot win an arms race, and they’d bankrupt their economy (even more than it is now), if they tried to keep up with the U.S. This is all propaganda, meant to instill patriotism in their citizens who clamor getting back their old Soviet Russia.
No doubt they can produce the weapons, but keeping up with the U.S. would require an economy perhaps 10 times the size of what they have now. Russia is a third-world economy.
If I figured right, that is almost 9000 fps. How do they do that with anything of size?
Funny thing with no warhead it will probably pass through and cause little or no damage unless it hits something hard.
I suggest we scuttle the entire fleet NOW! Why wait???!!!
< /sarc >
Will Hillary’s uranium be on board?
They know it goes that fast because the Russian made speedometer from a Mig says so.