Posted on 06/25/2022 9:54:37 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Edited on 06/26/2022 3:44:14 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Raytheon Technologies Co and Northrop Grumman Corp have won U.S. contracts to continue developing missiles to intercept hypersonic weapons, the Pentagon said on Friday.
The decision means Lockheed Martin Co., the No. 1 U.S. defense contractor, which had also been competing for a contract, has been eliminated for now from the multibillion dollar progam, but could be pulled back in at a later date.
Thanks BushCo, for 30 years of ‘peace dividends’.
For comparison, a brand-new F35, the most advanced manned fighter in production, is about $110 million apiece.
Look on the bright side.
By the time they get all the kinks worked out and they mass
produce them, the price will come down to $105 million.
Heh heh heh...
You sure that video was for the interceptor missiles? Because the numbers you quote sound more like the numbers being tossed around for hypersonic strike/attack missiles.
With faster hardware (chips, etc.), good machine language telemetry developers, good transducers and tough enough guidance parts in airframes, it would be possible.
A hypersonic missile, by its very nature, cannot make sudden turns or course deviations, no matter what the Russians and Chinese try to claim. So, presuming you can detect and track them in time, it seems the easiest and cheapest way to defend against them would be to launch a spread of high-speed defensive missiles with warheads designed to explode and spread a cloud of shrapnel ahead of the incoming hypersonic missile. Rather than the old “hitting a bullet with a bullet” approach, just make them fly through an impenetrable cloud of debris.
As long as they don’t use the telemetry math software developers up for low wages and spit them out within a few months like one contractor was doing in the late-90s and early 2000s. Admin office employees were treated better.
Lasers
You think an interceptor would be cheaper?
Shocked!
As a general rule of thumb they are - if for no other reason than that they can be far smaller, not having to have to have a range measured in hundreds of miles. Think Patriot vs your typical theater ballistic missile.
Rsytheon. Now where have I heard that name before? Oh yeah. Lloyd Austin
$120 mil? Pocket lint for the Pentagon.
.
That’s ‘Lord Austin’ to you.
I was thinking more in terms the the guidance system than of the propulsion side of it. If intercept is to be made inside the atmosphere, the plasma sheath that surrounds the warhead is the problem, it seems to me. I was assuming that a fairly large proportion of the cost was for the technology that can do that.
If the intercept is exo-atmospheric, the amount of energy required to get up there at high mach number makes the booster nearly as big as an ICBM. Also, if it's a "brilliant pebbles" type of plan, you would have quite a few "kill vehicles," each of which carries a bit of fuel, although no warhead is needed.
Pumping the economy with mass murder. No way they are going to let that productive capacity be used for increasing wealth. Let underpaid foreigners manufacture our consumer goods.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.