Posted on 11/27/2019 2:54:25 PM PST by DarthVader
The Russian military has allowed U.S. officials to inspect a hypersonic nuclear missile that Moscow claims can evade any American military defenses.
According to Interfax, U.S. inspectors traveled to Russia this week on a two-day visit to see the weapon as part of the New START bilateral nuclear arms control treaty, which is set to expire in 2021.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said his forces would be ready to deploy the hypersonic Avangard missile by the end of 2019. It is one of a host of futuristic weapons announced by Putin in 2018, as he sought to advertise Russia's supposedly growing military prowess.
Putin said the Avangard can fly at 20 times the speed of sound—or about 1 mile per second—thus defeating any existing missile defense systems. Russia's military also released footage of the weapon being fired from a silo in a test launch.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Not even close
Russia has a monstrous supply of gold....He’s not broke.
By my calculations, which could be wrong, it works out to roughly 4 1/4 miles per second. Does that jive with you?
Supposedly, it’s maneuverable, not ballistic. We have had maneuverable reentry vehicles (MARVs) for many decades, going back at least to the Pershing II, with it’s mach 8 MARV. A high-G maneuvering vehicle traveling at mach 20 would certainly be a very, very, challenging target. That said, Russia has had serious problems with previous supersonic missiles suffering catastrophic failure when attempting the high-G maneuvers required to avoid modern air defenses. Historically, Russia has always over stated the capabilities of their weapons, while we tend to understate ours. If we decided that we didn’t want this ability, it’s likely there was an unacceptable trade off in reliability and accuracy. Or we decided on an alternative technology, like stealth or decoys, to ensure a kill.
Hey! Math is, like, HARD Dude!
About right. Nowhere near 1 mile per second.
I think you are correct, especially the part about accuracy. If there were no winds or the winds were predictable then maneuvering would be more precise. Note that although the atmosphere is thin at 50 miles or so it may be moving fairly fast which can throw off a calculated post maneuver trajectory rather significantly. Unless you want to put in a much larger yield to cover that type of slop you may miss by enough to fail to destroy a hard target.
[A high-G maneuvering vehicle traveling at mach 20 would certainly be a very, very, challenging target.]
The vehicle is 50 miles or higher during the transit phase. The air is so thin that it offers just enough resistance to allow maneuvering wedges to function.
The vehicle must shed velocity when it re-enters the atmosphere in its' terminal approach. Otherwise it would break up in the lower elevations where the air is denser.
The re-entry phase is a point of vulnerability for such weapons.
How does the supersonic Russia missiles protect the Russian Commonwealth from retaliation from SLBMs?
The lame-ass MSM is buying this crap of an "unstoppable missile". We have them too. They're called Minuteman III. As for maneuverable re-entry vehicles, McDonnell Douglas developed and implemented them into our missiles in the 1970s. What was that about "technical innovation"? Vladdy thinks that vodka improved to taste marginally better than the gasoline in his Zhiguli's tank is technical innovation.
How’s their nuclear-powered missile doing?
Too fast to intercept? I doubt that. What was it, a couple of years ago the US shot down that satellite to prevent Hydrazine from reaching the ground? Well, that was the story, right? It also demonstrated that we could hit something travelling at orbital speeds. This system is sub-orbital, starting at a lower velocity. Yes it can maneuver - to some extent. Every maneuver scrubs off speed and energy. Ultimately it dives towards a target, not significantly different from other "standard" ICBMs. Terminal intercept systems shouldn't see it as being much different from anything else.
But that's just technical fun. Big picture, even if it works as designed (a big if with new tech) and even if it cannot be intercepted - BFD most of Russia's existing ICBMs cannot be intercepted. Oh sure, we can probably knock down the first 30 or 40. Russia has nearly 300 ICBMs. So at best we get what, maybe 10%...
The US missile defense system isn't designed to counter a massive doomsday strike. It is supposed to stop terrorists and nation-states such as Iran and North Korea. Iran and NK are far more likely to use their weapons than Russia or China. We don't see eye to eye with either Russia or China, but they are at least nominally sane and rational by our standards. They "get" mutually assured destruction. However, Iran and their cultists...not so much. They just might go for it, even knowing they'll become a glass-topped self-lighting parking lot, figuring their reward is waiting in paradise. Ditto NK, so power-mad that if they see it all coming apart, they'll probably launch on us, Japan, and SK just out of frustration and petty BS. I don't trust the leadership of either of those countries.
Newsweak has it wrong anyway, the USAF link and every other MSM article is citing Mach 27. Guess what? At that speed, your missile is no longer sub-orbital. It’ll come down next fall after picking up enough atmospheric drag in low-earth orbit. The thing probably won’t even come down in the hemisphere that you want it to. The whole thing is a bad joke.
“Boy I wish we had some of those hypersonic Avangard missiles...”
We don’t need them. After all, we spend 7 times as much on defense than he does - therefore we’re protected, not him.
Bush plotted to withdraw from START from 2002 if not earlier. The phony ‘missile defence’ in East Europe was about this in the first place.
“China is by far and away our most dangerous enemy.”
Naa, we spend 5 times as much on our military as China, so therefore China cannot be a threat to us.
Not long ago on an overseas tour I got to talking with a Russian who served in their Army, which runs their ICBMs. He told me that by the end of the Cold War, their star-tracking systems were landing their ICBMs within 100 meters of their targets (after traveling thousands of miles).
Some people here may not like Putin, but Russia (like China) still teaches math CORRECTLY to their kids, and therefore they both have a HUGE advantage over us when it comes to engineering.
Yep, broke. Drive over an average highway in Michigan and in Russia and see what’s broken. Then go to downtown LA and some third-tier Siberian city for more comparison. It is no comparison though.
Which country is 23 trillion in debt and which has a positive trade balance and a creditor nation?
All despite the fact that the latter is under economic war by half of the world.
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