Lockheed Martin to develop ground-launched hypersonic missile | Hacker News Reader

Lockheed Martin to develop ground-launched hypersonic missile

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27 pointssahin58 comments

There is an interesting discussion about the effects of hypersonic nuclear capable missiles and glide vehicles here [0]. In summary, this doesn't change much. But what the larger players are afraid of is proliferation of hypersonic missile technology [1].

[0] https://thebulletin.org/2020/01/hypersonic-missiles-new-arms...

[1] https://www.rand.org/blog/2018/03/hypersonic-missiles-a-new-...

[0] Is I have to say simply wrong on every point.

Russia has large missile defense deployments S400 and S500 and selling them to lots of countries. This is in no way a secret and a huge bone of contention between Turkey and the US for their purchase of S400.

Hypersonic missiles make aircraft carriers sitting ducks without any defense. This is a pretty damn large shift in military power at the US expense.

For hypersonic missiles to work against ships, they require either nukes - in which case conventional ICBMs on a lower trajectory work fine - or terminal guidance, which is an absolute bitch through 3000K plasma. There's a difference between being maneuverable and maneuvering to hit a moving target, after all.

I don't think they change the naval balance of power much.

[0] is exclusively concerned with the balance of nuclear deterrence - it's the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists after all. What they mean with missile defense is defense against strategic nuclear weapons.

Lockheed was intimately involved in the current UFO story being promoted. They had worked on and off for years with Bigelow Aerospace. When Bigelow won the AATIP contract, 2 of the 38 Defense Intelligence Reference Documents were written by highly credible Lockheed scientists.

It’s assumed that Bigelow affiliates initially enchanted Lockheed with the credibility of former intelligence employees. In 2015, Lockheed executives invited Tom DeLonge to a barbecue for Skunk Works. Bigelow affiliates were there.

They were all involved in helping DeLonge’s pitch for media projects to promote aerospace and the Pentagon to younger audiences. UFOs weren’t discussed until the 2nd or 3rd meeting. Detailed here- https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28377/tom-delonges-ori...

Later, prominent executives from Lockheed Skunk Works and a Major General were talking with DeLonge and John Podesta. All under the assumption that Hillary Clinton would win the Presidency.

Later, Lockheed dropped out. It’s impossible to know the extent of what’s happening but it would be illegal for the US Government to engage in disinformation either directly or indirectly. The claim that DeLonge’s operation is controlled by the CIA is false. The former intelligence people working with him are true believers who lack any actual evidence of aliens.

Most likely, a highly sophisticated private group with complex financial incentives is purposely misleading individuals and groups. They’re exploiting naive former government employees and dubious government scientists who skirt the line of fraud in the pursuit of radical technology. And the Air Force uses it for cover and the CIA for national security vectors and foreign disinformation.

In your opinion, do you think Commander David Fravor is lying about his story or do you think he is "naive" and being purposely misled?

> UFO ... John Podesta ... the assumption that Hillary Clinton would win the Presidency ... is controlled by the CIA

I dread to ask, but what story or theory are you referencing here? Some light Google News searching isn't showing up much.

That’s a tall tale and hard to buy without at least some evidence.

Do you have a single fact to back that up?

>it would be illegal for the US Government to engage in disinformation

Smith–Mundt Act of 2012 legalized domestic dissemination of propaganda.

"The U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (Public Law 80-402), popularly called the Smith–Mundt Act, is the basic legislative authorization for propaganda activities conducted by the U.S. Department of State, sometimes called 'public diplomacy.' [...] The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 [...] allowing for materials produced by the State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to be available within the United States."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith–Mundt_Act

Cool, more ways to kill eachother. Woo.

Oh it's the same ways, just lower latency.

That's why we should always be asking our elected officials, why continue the madness?

> That's why we should always be asking our elected officials, why continue the madness?

Allowing one's arsenal to slowly become obsolete is akin to disarmament, and unilateral disarmament isn't wise if one values their independence.

Similar weapons are being deployed by the US's military rivals:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-ZF

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avangard_(hypersonic_glide_veh...

This particular madness will continue until all major powers come to some measure of political unity. A helpful first step would be for all of them to have elected officials.

Absurd. When does it end? Or are we just caught in this dangerous resource drain ad infinitum?

> When does it end?

I already answered that:

>> This particular madness will continue until all major powers come to some measure of political unity. A helpful first step would be for all of them to have elected officials.

Alternatively, the US and other democracies could be destroyed and their populations either exterminated or forcefully assimilated into some kind of authoritarian world superstate.

> Alternatively, the US and other democracies could be destroyed and their populations either exterminated or forcefully assimilated into some kind of authoritarian world superstate.

A false choice you attempt to make true by ensuring the cycle of escalation never ends. No US war since 1945 has been undertaken for the purpose you ascribe.

> A false choice you attempt to make true by ensuring the cycle of escalation never ends. No US war since 1945 has been undertaken for the purpose you ascribe.

You don't understand deterrence.

You know what I understand? How are you inside my head?

In fact, an understanding of deterrence is the basis for my critique. Deterrence is just branding for an endless cycle of escalation, investment, and global danger. It's almost as if, perhaps, you weren't alive during the Cold War and don't understand its absurdity.

You can also surrender independence for the greater cause of unity.

Yes, it's called evolution. It just shifted from genes to memes like "a nation". Or, alternatively, these two happen on different timescales.

If only the military complex benefiting from war were forced to pay profits to veterans.

That would not be perverted for like, an hour and a half.

"At DeathTech, we don't make the missles that kill people, we make them deader."

[From BASF the chemical company's "We don't make a lot of the products you buy. We make a lot of the products you buy better"]

Building badass shit like that is pretty damn cool.

i wish i was a US Citizen so I could work on things like this. I assume you'd need TS-SCI....

You can work on plenty of stuff without citizenship, but at minimum greencard is helpful.

If you are smart enough to work on projects like that you should be putting your efforts to the benefits of humanity, not helping regimes build weapons of mass destruction. We need to end this madness we call the "arms race". This threat is greater than global warming.

The arms race was the main driver of progress in the 20th century, with countless civilian applications, including the Internet. We could use a good old fashioned arms race nowadays. It creates demand for top notch science and engineering like nothing else.

And you could argue this benefits humanity, too, even besides the technology transfer. There hasn't been a world war since 1945, and the only real reason for that is that it would end really badly for everyone involved.

Or we could spend a lot of money on technology which is actually serving the public good

To what end, fistfucker3000? How do you convince people to spend unlimited amounts of money other than by convincing them that their very survival depends on it? And the threat needs to be acute, too: this is what they're trying to do with climate change now, but nobody really gives a shit about something that may or may not happen 50 years from now.

Ask Elon Musk he seems to be good at that

Imagine how much we could have progressed if we just focused on progress rather than acquiring power through intimidation in some artificial zero sum game.

Yeah, I'm trying to imagine that, but then I remember that we live in the real world here, with finite resources, and thousands of years of history, not in some utopia where everyone sings kumbaya and dances merrily around a campfire.

Yes, this is true: If you denuclearize you too will end up with a bayonet up your ass in the street.

Ah yes, all that military innovation that's been improving the education system over the years....

In Russia, after seeing the nuclear weapon the Party realized that the Marxism-Leninism alone is not going to produce such a weapon and had allowed and forced real sciences to be taught in schools. Likewise, the "Sputnik moment" in the US resulted in massive education improvements, e.g. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/10/how-sputnik-c...

Those better schools payed up real quick. Soviet union created atomic bomb in 1949.

The 1949 device was likely done with stolen technology both from the USA and Germany. Phystech opened in 1951.

Did someone measure that claim? There was a lot of progress in 20th century. Calling arms race a main driver is a pretty wild claim but seems to be repeated all the time by geopolitics and army experts. That doesn't make it true though. Development of internet was by no means a single source event. That is case for most of technology also and main driving force for progress of internet was definitely market incentive.

Those who do not live by the sword can still die by it.

This is stupid. of course you can die, that’s no excuse for giving up on human values.

Not necessarily. Nuclear weapons have thus far arguably been the single greatest global stabilizer of all time.

"Thus far" is a very very short time.

For those allied to nuclear powers, sure. Ask other countries how stable life has been since nukes popped up.

It’s too bad that such brilliant innovators as Turing and Von Neumann wasted their careers trying to compete in an arms race against Nazi Germany when they could have been designing better ways to deliver targeted advertising or something useful like that, isn’t it?

We have an arms race again! Putin announced hypersonic missiles, and now the US has to have one.

I think we already have hypersonics, but you are right, the US is focusing more efforts on new weaponry, although 34 mil isn't much

It's been designed already; the 34 mil is to pay for a review. If that's successful there'll be much more money available to build it and do some tests.

what the russians built, we built in the 50s-60s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersonic_Low_Altitude_Missil...)

It says an airframe was never constructed, let alone tested, much like my perpetual motion machine

yes, the US has to have one. we can’t fall behind our adversaries technologically

This got to appeal to the Military Institute of Technology Cadets here on HN

The US military is looking to outfit Starlink, Kuiper and other commercial LEO satellite constellations with hypersonic missiles, for an on-demand kill of any spot on Earth within 90 seconds. Project has been in the works for nearly two decades but the exponential reduction in cost per kg to LEO has made this nightmare finally fully viable.

See Space Development Agency under the newly minted Space Force for more information.

This seems like the kind of space weaponization that's in every significant geopolitical players interest to ban. Ditto with conjectures that cost-effective commercial launches makes SDI satellite missile defense viable. It's just going to encourage all the players to go all-in on ASAT, park SLBMs near each others coasts while racing to a constellation of hypersonic missiles of their own. The last thing US wants to do is encourage China / Russia to hit any spot in mainland US in 90s. Or anyone for that matter, it's way too destabilizing for all parties involved.

yes, it's incredibly destabilizing if you worry in 2 minutes all your bases and defenses could be destroyed, leading to accidentally launches. In the cold war it almost happened by accident (launch or we'll lose our ability to respond!) multiple times. Short time to react just makes it much much worse!

Do you have any evidence, or links? They would have to be really tiny missiles, so it's not really possible today. Also you couldn't just hide stuff easily in the starlink constellation because they are always moving around.

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