Sadly, the first applications of this will most likely be military.
It'll be nice if they can get it small enough for a phone, though.
Depending on when the tech is available, preventing GPS jamming of drones is probably much more urgent in Ukraine.
HIMARS, on the other hand, will enjoy the improvements.
They've been in use for years now in that war. The Shahed drone, for example, was used by Russia. About two years ago Ukraine was using autonomous drones to down Shahed drones.
AI targeting came out in the Gulf war, friend. 35 years ago, Tomahawks could use rudimentary AI to match preprogrammed terrain profile and target imagery to get more precise targeting.
The Shaeed is really just a rather shitty cruise missile.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136 "No cameras or short-range sensors were noted in 2022."
> Tomahawks could use rudimentary AI to match preprogrammed terrain profile and target imagery to get more precise targeting.
Key word: preprogrammed, and similarly a cruise missile.
It's the FPV drones chasing down people in trenches that require real-time video transmission to control.
AI targeting was debuted in the Patriot missile system, which does technically field the required elements of a hands-off kill chain. But TERCOM is not AI nor was it debuted in the 90s with the TLAM. The original BLOCK-I variants of the Tomohawk (and many versions released afterwards) were no more autonomous than the Shahed-136.
If quantum INS can soon take out more Russian ammo dumps in spectacular fashion, then bring on improvements to lasers.
Once it gets cheap enough, it'll probably go into cruise missiles; it could eliminate or reduce the need for terrain contour matching, which requires radar transmission.
I'm not 100% certain but I believe when MEMS accelerometers first came out, the better ones were subject to arms controls because of fears they could be used in missiles.
Unlike other bombs it must absolutely be 100% resilient to any kind of spoofing though, for obvious reasons, hence GNSS is a nonstarter for those when they are the default guidance system for other weapons (with backups, for cruise missile).
Not accurate enough for counterforce. When a missile silo lid can withstand 600 atmospheres of overpressure, "close enough" isn't good enough.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here?
Accuracy is incredibly important because you don't put a nuke somewhere to kill people; you put it there to destroy infrastructure. More specifically nuclear missile silos, and bomb shelters (well, the people inside them.)
Reducing the CEP means you can use a smaller nuclear yield to get the job done, which is preferable for a number of reasons, including politics, but also allowing for more targets in a strike.
The very latest US ICBMs are suspected of having sub-100m CEP. CEP for ICBMs is "bad" enough that it is typical for planners to figure three warheads per target, but accuracy is rumored to be getting good enough where that is no longer necessary.
It depends.
"Counter-force" strikes aim to destroy the ability to respond or attack with nuclear weapons, not infrastructure per se. So that's just silos, warhead storage sites, submarines in port, airfields, etc. The US is doctrinally counter-force for about half a century. This doctrine is also reflected in technological choices: lower yields and higher precision mean lower fallout, collateral damage, and fratricide when hunting for silos, but aren't that useful for city busting.
"Counter-value" strikes are pure destruction of cities and killing of people. Russia seems to have this doctrine [1]. This is a very inflexible doctrine, because you can't credibly threaten to execute a counter-value attack on the US over things that don't seem to be worth a response in kind (like a defeat in Ukraine). It's much cheaper though.
> The very latest US ICBMs are suspected of having sub-100m CEP
Apparently the precision is good enough for photos like the one on page 23 here https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1557069
[1]: At least strategically. There is a hybrid strategy of targeting military-related infrastructure, which Russia seems to have adopted for less-than-strategic forces according to recent leaks https://www.ft.com/content/237e1e55-401d-4eeb-875b-03fe68f81... .
It can take several warheads to destroy a missile silo with high probability, because even landing a little off-target can spare the silo. Greater precision means it takes substantially fewer.
https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-moderni...
Nuclear bombs are useful because you don't need precision to get the effectiveness, but if you have the precision then why would you bother with the consequences of using nukes…
If a superfuze or a super-IMU means that you can kill one silo with one nuke, that is a huge improvement over the old status quo, where it was assumed to take several, simply because the CEP was larger than the radius at which they can destroy a silo.
If someone does have an conventional ICBM that can reliably take out nuclear silos that would be an even bigger deal.
Of course the US military has been working on conventionally-armed ICBMs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_Prompt_Strike
But this kind of silos simply doesn't exist.
Yes you could theoretically imagine such a silo, but because the threat of a conventional bunker buster payload hasn't been very realistic when it comes to nuclear silos, they aren't designed to deal with such a thread and instead focus on protection against the kind of overpressure that is caused by an nuclear explosion occurring around.
It's not quite so bad as "we are certain that they will not successfully launch any nukes" and so they're still being treated with caution. But the US keeps upping what it allows Ukraine to do as it loses its fear of World War III.
As it applies to the US... yeah, the sky is the limit for military spending.
As for nuclear weapons, they are practically useless. Anything but strategic use would have little impact on the battlefield, but will immediately alienate China and India. They have their own border conflicts and do NOT want the nuclear taboo to be broken, and they are holding the leash, being the only economic and technological lifeline Russia has. A strike against the US would be suicidal for obvious reasons.
Also, notice how Putin and his officials talk about nuclear use a lot, but there is still zero evidence of any action (such as dispersal of road-based ICBMs or 12th GUMO taking warheads out of storage). Rhetoric is cheap and not credible.
The only real fear of escalation here is "horizontal" escalation: Russia stirring shit elsewhere. Advanced anti-ship missiles to Houthis, handing nuclear technology to North Koreans or submarine technology to China, that kind of thing. But that's already seem to be happening, and there isn't much more that Russia can do.
To drive this home, India and China have a moderately high probability of engaging in armed conflict with a nuclear power in the next decades. (India with Pakistan and China, China with America.)
They do not want tactical nukes to be normalised in prelude to those conflicts.
Not true at all. The risk may be overstated by some, but it's a perfectly possible outcome that must be considered.[0]
A "World War" requires an opponent worthy of a world-wide conflict, and Russia is anything but
Also simply not true. It just requires one side to start using nukes, which can also happen entirely by accident (and has come close to happening multiple times, even without a multi-year and incredibly nasty hot proxy conflict on the ground between two of the planet's largest mutual adversaries).
As for nuclear weapons, they are practically useless.
True of course, but it doesn't matter. What matters is that certain people might start to think that they're useful and/or their only choice. Which gets into the fact that we can't assume these people are acting rationally.
Also, notice how Putin and his officials talk about nuclear use a lot, but there is still zero evidence of any action
Right, but that can change at any time. It doesn't even have to be a tactical battlefield strike (which of course would be useless, and their people know it). For example, once their backs are pushed against the wall with sufficient firmness, Putin or his successors might start to think that a demonstrative high-altitude detonation over an ocean somewhere might be a pretty neat idea. Especially if they've reached a point where they have nothing more to lose, and have a reasonable fear of being outright killed sooner or later if the current situation on the ground starts to move strongly and rapidly against them.
Russia is a China's client state at this point, and China is very interested in keeping nukes taboo. They are so worried their own army is only allowed melee weapons in border skirmishes with India. There is no way a demonstrative breaking of the taboo would not get Putin's leash yanked, so even that remote possibility (that has nothing to do with WW3) is extremely improbable and would only hasten Russia's defeat. Unless, of course, our politicians use it as an excuse to abandon Ukraine.
Also, no one is "pushing Russia's back against the wall" in Ukraine, there are no M1A2s speeding to Moscow. Russia understands it perfectly well, too, denuding their borders with NATO to throw more soldiers into the meat grinder.
> the fact that we can't assume these people are acting rationally
I think this meme is largely a cop-out. A person just doesn't get to be a leader of a country by acting irrationally. They might interpret things differently or have different priorities, they might even put on an act of irrational buffoonery, but it's different from being "irrational". However, to see the rationality of their actions requires putting yourself in theirs shoes, which is uncomfortable and/or requires a deeper understanding, so it's easier to just write their behaviour as "irrational".
Putin is perfectly rational. The empty threats are working (as evidenced by this thread), there is no risk of a strategic exchange (because the actual signalling on the ground is one of business as usual), and Western politicians are successfully convincing their voters that they drag their feet because WW3, not because actually stopping the war (eg deploying a NATO peace keeping force) would incur a substantially higher domestic cost.
We don't really talk about potential North Korean aggression in WW3 terms, do we? We shouldn't do that in Russian case either.
Obviously (as in very obviously) this wouldn't be the big one in itself, but an entirely possible provocation that could shove things in that direction.
China is a significant inhibiting factor, but one factor among many. "Client state" is a caricature, the relationship is more complex than that.
Also, no one is "pushing Russia's back against the wall" in Ukraine, there are no M1A2s speeding to Moscow
It doesn't need to be tanks speeding to Moscow. A major shift in the ground situation Ukraine's favor (effectively signaling an eventual Russian defeat) could do the trick.
Also no one said this was presently happening, so your use of the present tense is puzzling here.
Putin is perfectly rational.
He isn't simply "irrational", but he definitely isn't "perfectly rational" either. Otherwise, he wouldn't have bullied his own advisors to a point where they were afraid to express their own opinions (or even provide rational assessments) in regard the neat little plan he decided to roll into action in the Fall of '21. And what he apparently does in all seriousness believe about his own manifest destiny (as the restorer of the Motherland's natural position of greatness) definitely isn't rational.
There's also the matter of his successors, who won't be nearly as smart, and will likely be far less rational.
The empty threats are working (as evidenced by this thread),
I guess everyone who doesn't agree with your assessments is either paralyzed by irrational fears, and/or a useful idiot, or just looking for a cop-out.
How? What plausible pathway do you see between Russia exploding a nuke over Novaya Zemlya and their suicide by American nuclear response?
> A major shift in the ground situation Ukraine's favor (effectively signaling an eventual Russian defeat) could do the trick.
I don't understand what trick. Russia directly attacking NATO? They'd get pulverised, and they have no forces left. Russia committing a suicide by launching a strategic attack on the US over Donbas? That's implausible. They just lost a chunk of Russia proper and took it on the chin.
> I guess everyone who doesn't agree with your assessments is either paralyzed by irrational fears, and/or a useful idiot, or just looking for a cop-out.
I see how it's easy to interpret the earlier reply personally, my bad, sorry. I was referring to the people establishing the narrative (media, politicians, and people with large platforms). It's self evidently working! A direct confrontation with Russia (a country with an economy smaller than Italy's, glaring manpower problems, and largely depleted army) evokes the idea of WW3, but I see very few people talking about the very likely war over Taiwan (with a much, much, much more powerful country) in "WW3" terms. This narrative doesn't make any logical sense, we just got used to it, even though it's not grounded in reality.
The "pathway" is that any deployment of a device will at the very least trigger a suite of necessary countermeasures on both sides (moving assets around and so forth), greatly increasing the risk of misperceptions and panic reactions.
I don't understand what trick. Russia directly attacking NATO?
The "trick", by which I mean outcome simply, of pushing the regime into an (acutely) fatalistic mindset. The reaction doesn't have to be a direct attack on NATO. It could be some other form of escalation (of the sort they might have ruled out otherwise). It doesn't even have to be an action taken by Russia. It could a matter of China looking at the situation and thinking, in terms of the move they've always been threatening to make, "now or never".
I'd rather not delve into scenarios; I'm just advocating that we observe the cautionary principle here. We agree that the risk is overstated, and that the aggressor's threats are mostly bluster. But it's definitely not negligible risk, in my view; probably on the order of 3-5 percent per year. As high as at any time since the Cuban missile crisis, in any case.
How is it different? What "panic reactions"? What "panic reaction" can connect a low-yield explosion over Black Sea and a suicidal strategic strike on the continental US?
> I'm just advocating that we observe the cautionary principle here
"The cautionary principle" is only applicable if you disregard hundreds of thousands of killed and maimed Ukrainians, millions of refugees, unknown number of abducted children, and entire cities raised to the ground. Letting a genocide continue for years is not a default safe option.
Again, I invite you to reflect on this exchange: you'd "rather not delve into scenarios", but when weighing what's basically just vibes against very material, prolonged, ongoing suffering of the second largest country in Europe you decide to advocate for vibes. Putin's bullshit has already won and his deterrence succeeded, because you give it enough credibility (whilst refusing to outline a credible scenario) to talk about "WW3" as a real risk worth more than dead and maimed Ukrainians.
How is it different?
From a detonation deep inside their own territory? You tell me.
a suicidal strategic strike on the continental US?
I never suggested that would be the next step. In fact my words said something entirely different.
For some time now I've been noticing a consistent tendency in your posts to employ straw man techniques. Then we have this:
Letting a genocide continue for years is not a default safe option.
you decide to advocate for vibes
you give it enough credibility (whilst refusing to outline a credible scenario) to talk about "WW3" as a real risk worth more than dead and maimed Ukrainians.
I'm doing absolutely none of those things. Unfortunately the conversation has definitely into unproductive territory, and you seem to be confusing me with other people you're unhappy with. I'm not those people and my energy resources are quite limited. Let's wrap up here and give the topic a rest, please.