China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in Aug that circled the globe | Hacker News Reader

China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in Aug that circled the globe

twitter.com

24 pointsSQL221916 comments

the average US citizen has no idea how badly our military has rotted, we have nothing that can counter this. Trillions wasted by corrupt military contractors and morons in the Pentagon

We can't even manage a successful retreat from Afghanistan and people think we can do anything to contain China. The CIA and military have admitted pretty much all of our spies in China got wiped out while China has infiltrated us at all levels

I believe the United States slow walked its own Prompt Global Strike [1] program because it was perceived to be needlessly escalatory [2]. That sounds like sensible policy making.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20121220071303/http://defense.ao...

Not really. The reason PGS was deemed "escalatory" is because it was indistinguishable from a nuclear first strike but had a conventional payload, and that the payload itself was fairly small. This missile certainly has completely different objectives to PGS.

I don't think anything you say is relevant, true or false, to why or how it should be "countered". Do you have any opinion on that?

we've spent a ton of money on our anti-ICBM missile shield which is now useless. Even before we really weren't confident it would work but now it's definitely worthless.

As far as first strike and retaliation, we can't even be sure our subs aren't detected by China considering we just tried to do a drill in Chinese water and our sub collided with an "object" which did significant damage. Wouldn't be surprised if China was giving us a bloody nose

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58838332

>we've spent a ton of money on our anti-ICBM missile shield which is now useless.

Isn't this how the USA broke the Soviet Union, by developing advanced weapons that forced the Soviet's to try to compete and bankrupting them? The USA will likely go ahead with the anti-ICBM shield because there are still ICBM's around, but now the USA's hypersonic missile program will also be accelerated (as well as a counter hypersonic missile program?), just as the Senate is haggling over how many trillions to spend on other existential issues. So one prototype hypersonic missile launch by China may cost the USA a lot. Very asymmetric effect. A few more like it and the USA might start to feel the money pinch. Can't say this was intentional, but the timing of it may directly affect the amount of money spent on repairing USA infrastructure and fixing other internal problems given the hawkishness of some politicians, raising social discontent. Maybe another demo of a satellite killer is next? Just speculation on my part, though it seems to make some sense as a strategy. The USA military has a self-professed strategy of always being the best and ahead of everyone else. That costs a lot, and that cost can be a vulnerability.

You are making a point of refusing to express any constructive opinion or ideas, while also making an unsubtle point of being American.

Why bother commenting? Who do you think is your audience, and what would you like to accomplish by communicating with them?

>we have nothing that can counter this

As much as I may dislike it, 4000 nukes say otherwise.

The nuclear capability is an extra goodie in case the US manages to make an ABM system that actually works after 60 years of trying. The main use case will be to hit high value targets like carriers, you won't be using nukes as a responses.

Keep thumpin. Gotta keep the war machine alive. Next thing you know, people will want their planet saved, and there goes that sweet honeypot.

My first thought was that this may explain the mysterious "boom" that occurred in New England recently.

Great, now theres going to be radioactive exhaust all over the place from everyone doing this.

Normally "nuclear capable" in the context of missiles means capable of carrying nuclear weapons, not having some sort of nuclear propulsion. Nothing in the FT article seems to suggest the latter.

There was some attempt in the 1960s to develop nuclear ramjets, but it was canceled. Allegedly because it would encourage an arms race.

Missles that are more than five times faster than the speed of sound and you’re worried about the environment?

Maybe you need to find out how they work, even just to test them without detonation. The propulsion variant.

The propulsion variant of what?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com