"To date, he says, the US has conducted tests on this type of missile system but to his knowledge none have been successful, flying for just a few seconds. "

Basically, Putin made a laughable claim that Russia already has a mach 10 missile, so China and the USA jumped down the rabbit hole.

Kind of like when Reagan started up the SDI star wars BS. Which some people believe led to the USSR dramatically boosting their defense spending, nigh bankrupting themselves and breaking up as a country.

Hubris.

WW2 japan had fighters that flew faster, climbed quicker, had bigger guns, and turned quicker (a6m vs f4f). And we had intel reports that told us, but we ignored them because "we have the best stuff and nobody else can compete".

You see the same stuff today with China. China makes all of our microchips, all of our microelectronics, most of which are designed over there anyways (companies here just ask for a widget that does X and Y, and Chinese companies design+make it), yet we act like as if they are some technologically retarded place that only knows how to steal ip.

Russia has been at the forefront of rocketry since ww2. Nobody has systems that compare to their consistency and reliability. Not even the U.S.. The idea that Russia can't make a hyper sonic missile before the U.S., because it's Russia, is a non sequitur.

Also, Russia broke up as a country because guaranteed government jobs for all citizens, where you can't be fired and performance is not important, is going to destroy any economy. No one will produce, shelves will be empty, and money will be no more than paper. Combine that with making private business illegal (preventing people from economically helping themselves), and you have a recipe for economic disaster and social discontent.

This missile exists to swat down carrier groups on the cheap.
We're gonna need some powerful lasers, or our own hyper sonic interceptors, or else proliferation would instantly leave us isolated in the Americas (vis-a-vis power projection via conventional weaponry). Our only option for projecting power would be reduced to nuclear or nothing.

-scheherazade

The idea that near bankrupted Russia has made a hypersonic missile just because they say they did strains credulity.
Are they possibly technically capable? Sure. Is that all it takes to bring a multi billion dollar ultra secret project to completion with no one noticing? Hardly.

When you have neither speed nor maneuverability, it's your own durability that is in question, not the opponents durability.

It took the capture of the Akutan zero, its repair, and U.S. flight testing, to work out countermeasures to the zero.

The countermeasures were basically :
- One surprise diving attack and run away with momentum, or just don't fight them.
- Else bait your pursuer into a head-on pass with an ally (Thatch weave) (which, is still a bad position, only it's bad for everyone.)

Zero had 20mm cannons. The F4F had .50's. The F4F did not out gun the zero. 20mms only need a couple rounds to down a plane.

Durability became a factor later in the war, after the U.S. brought in better planes, like the F4U, F6F, Mustang, etc... while the zero stagnated in near-original form, and Japan could not make planes like the N1K in meaningful quanitties, or even provide quality fuel for planes like the Ki84 to use full power.

History is history. We screwed up at the start of WW2. Hubris/pride/confidence made us dismiss technologies that came around to bite us in the ass hard, and cost a lot of lives.




Best rockets since the 1960's? Because it had the biggest rocket?
What about reliability, consistency, dependability.
If I had to put my own life on the line and go to space, and I had a choice, I would pick a Russian rocket.

-scheherazade

Why do you think it was secret?
Why do you think nobody noticed?
Do you think they just began on it since sanctions?

Every major power has had back-burner development of this stuff since the cold war.
The only "secret" was how much progress they made. That it existed, you can freely take for granted.

Just how you can take for granted that everyone is working on genetic weapons, everyone is working on directed energy weapons, everyone is working on infrastructure hacking weapons, everyone is working on automated robotic weapons, etc.

Do you think there is a better / more-cost-efficient place for Russia to spend defense dollars, than on a system which can trade the price of a missile for the price of an aircraft carrier?
I would be more surprised if they hadn't put their money into a program such as this.

Look at what progress China has made :
Which country is fielding a rail gun today? China.
Which country is fielding a man portable laser rifle? China
Which country has demonstrated quantum entanglement encrypted communication? China.

The world is moving on, while we stand around confidently patting ourselves on the back.

-scheherazade

The fact that the current state of the technology is not public knowledge, and the fact that it's development is a secret military program, likely without a publicly available budget in all 3 countries, makes me think it's secret. Just tests on models require a supersonic or hypersonic wind tunnel....you don't pick those up at home depot.
Nobody has seen one fly, so if it was even in the early testing phase, no one noticed. Since we're watching, I'm dubious it's past models and simulations anywhere.
I don't doubt they, like us, are working on it. I have doubts any nation has made exponentially more progress than we have, and I wouldn't trust China or Russia if they claimed to have them without seeing them demonstrated successfully, just as they shouldn't trust us if we make more unsubstantiated claims, we're proven liars.

A big part of the Zero's reputation came from racking up kills in China against a lot of second-rate planes with poorly-trained pilots. After all, there was a reason that the Republic of China hired the American Volunteer Group to help out during the Second Sino-Japanese War – Chinese pilots had a hard time cutting it.

The Wildcat was deficient in many ways versus the Zero, but it still had superior firepower via ammo loadout. The Zero carried very few 20mm rounds, most of it's ammo was 7.7mm. There are records of Japanese pilots unloading all their 7.7mm ammo on a Wildcat and it was still flyable. On the flip side, the Wildcat had an ample supply of .50 cal.

Stanley "Swede" Vejtasa was able to score seven kills against Japanese planes in one day with a Wildcat.

Yes, the discovery of the Akutan Zero helped the United States beat this plane. But MilitaryFactory.com notes that the Hellcat's first flight was on June 26, 1942 – three weeks after the raid on Dutch Harbor that lead to the fateful crash-landing of the Mitsubishi A6M flown by Tadayoshi Koga.

Marine Captain Kenneth Walsh described how he knew to roll to the right at high speed to lose a Zero on his tail. Walsh would end World War II with 17 kills. The Zero also had trouble in dives, thanks to a bad carburetor.

We were behind in technology for many reasons, but once the Hellcat started replacing the Wildcat, the Japanese Air Superiority was over. Even if they had maintained a lead in technology, as Russia showed in WW2, quantity has a quality all of it's own. We were always going to be able to field more pilots and planes than Japan would be able to.

As far as Soviet rockets, once we were stunned by the launch of Sputnik, we kicked into high gear. You can say what you will of reliability, consistency, and dependability, but exactly how many manned Soviet missions landed on the moon and returned? Other than Buran, which was almost a copy of our Space Shuttle, how many shuttles did the USSR field?

The Soviets did build some things that were very sophisticated and were, for a while, better than what we could field. The Mig-31 is a great example. We briefly lagged behind but have a much superior air capability now. The only advantages the Mig and Sukhoi have is speed, they can fire all their missiles and flee. If they are engaged however, they will lose if pilots are equally skilled.

As @newtboy has said, I am sure that Russia and China are working on military advancements, but the technology simply doesn't exist to make a Hypersonic missile possible at this point.

China is fielding a man portable rifle that can inflict pain, not kill, and there is no hard evidence that it works.

There is no proof that the Chinese have figured out the technology for an operational rail gun on land, let alone the sea. We also have created successful railguns, the problem is POWERING them repeatedly, especially onboard a ship. If they figured out a power source that will pull it off, then it is possible, but there is no concrete proof other than a photo of a weapon attached to a ship. Our experts are guessing they might have it functional by 2025, might...

China has shown that long range QEEC is possible. It has been around but they created the first one capable of doing it from space. The problem is, they had to jury rig it. Photons, or light, can only go through about 100 kilometers of optic fiber before getting too dim to reliably carry data. As a result, the signal needs to be relayed by a node, which decrypts and re-encrypts the data before passing it on. This process makes the nodes susceptible to hacking. There are 32 of these nodes for the Beijing-Shanghai quantum link alone.

The main issue with warfare today is that it really doesn't matter unless the battle is between one of the big 3. Which means that ANY action could provoke Nuclear conflict. Is Russia going to hypersonic missile one of our carriers without Nukes become an option on the table as a retaliation? Is China going to railgun a ship and risk nuclear war?

Hell no, no more than we would expect to blow up some major Russian or Chinese piece of military hardware without severe escalation! Which means we can create all the technological terrors we like, because we WON'T use them unless they somehow provide us a defense against nuclear annihilation.

So just like China and Russia steal stuff from us to build military hardware to counter ours, if they create something that is significantly better, we will began trying to duplicate it. The only thing which would screw this system to hell is if one of us actually did begin developing a successful counter measure to nukes. If that happens, both of the other nations are quite likely to threaten IMMEDIATE thermonuclear war to prevent that country from developing enough of the counter measures to break the tie.

We have conventional missiles that hit hypersonic speeds for short periods. Aim54 fired at altitude checks that mark, and that's a 60's/70's tech missile.

The X15 did it manned, and that first flew in the late 1950's.

Why would Russia not be able to come up with something similar in the last half-century?


Re-entry from orbit is 4x hypersonic. Russia has plenty of experience with the effects.

The Russian p-270 was made in the 80's, and used a ramjet.
This new missile is an incremental improvement over tech they already posses. A higher speed ramjet missile. Hardly a stretch.

It's not like they are spamming the internet with updates just so you can see how they are doing.

-scheherazade

All you mention are a far cry from sustained hypersonic powered atmospheric flight, which is what we're talking about here.

You mentioned a ramjet, but scramjet engines are hardly an incremental improvement, they're an entirely different class of jet engine. Ramjet engines only do around mach 2.5- 5, scramjets 4-8+ theoretically. What's needed for a viable weapon imo is the next iteration of dual mode ramjets that can do both with one engine, that's a long way off. Public scramjet engine tests have only been successful in a few short 5 second+- burns so far, launched with conventional solid rockets.

The Zero's Chinese performance was ignored by the U.S. command prior to pearl harbor, dismissed as exaggeration. That's actually the crux of my point.

Exceptional moments do not change the rule.
Yes on occasion a wildcat would get swiss cheesed and not go down, but 99% of the time when swiss cheesed they went down.
Yes, there were wildcat aces that did fairly well (and Zero aces that did even better), but 99% of wildcat pilots were just trying to not get mauled.

Hellcat didn't enter combat till mid 1943, and it is the correction to the mistake. The F6F should have been the front line fighter at the start of the war... and could have been made sooner had Japanese tech not been ignored/dismissed as exaggeration.


Russian quantity as quality? At the start they were shot down at a higher ratio than the manufacturing counter ratio (by a lot). It was a white wash in favor of the Germans.
It took improvements in Russian tech to turn the tide in the air. Lend-lease only constituted about 10% of their air force at the peak. Russia had to improve their own forces, so they did. By the end, planes like the yak3 were par with the best.


The Mig31 is a slower Mig25 with a digital radar. Their version of the F14, not really ahead of the times, par maybe.

F15 is faster than either mig29 or Su27 (roughly Mig31 speed).
F16/F18, at altitude, are moderately slower, but a wash at sea level.

Why would they shoot and run?
We have awacs, we would know they are coming, so the only chance to shoot would be at max range. Max range shots are throw-away shots, they basically won't hit unless the target is unaware, which it won't be unaware because of the RWR. Just a slight turn and the missile can't follow after tens of miles of coasting and losing energy.


Chinese railgun is in sea trials, right now. Not some lab test. It wouldn't be on a ship without first having the gun proven, the mount proven, the fire control proven, stationary testing completed, etc.
2025 is the estimate for fleet wide usage.
Try finding a picture of a U.S. railgun aboard a U.S. ship.


Why would a laser rifle not work, when you can buy crap like this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7baI2Nyi5rI
There's ones made in China, too : https://www.sanwulasers.com/customurl.aspx?type=Product&key=7wblue&shop=
That will light paper on fire ~instantly, and it's just a pitiful hand held laser pointer.
An actual weapon would be orders of magnitude stronger than a handheld toy.
It's an excellent covert operations weapon, silently blinding and starting fires form kilometers away.


Russia does not need to sink a U.S. carrier for no reason.
And the U.S. has no interest in giving Russia proper a need to defend from a U.S. carrier. For the very reasons you mentioned.


What Russia can do is proliferate such a missile, and effectively deprecate the U.S. carrier group as a military unit.

We need carriers to get our air force to wherever we need it to be.
If everyone had these missiles, we would have no way to deliver our air force by naval means.

Russia has land access to Europe, Asia, Africa. They can send planes to anywhere they need to go, from land bases. Russia doesn't /need/ a navy.

Most of the planet does not have a navy worth sinking. It's just us. This is the kind of weapon that disproportionately affects us.

-scheherazade

Well, looks like they have been working on scramjets too.

Apparently they made the first flying example ever, in 1991.
Not sure how that squares with the earlier U.S. efforts, maybe because it flew on its own? I donno.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramjet_programs#Russia

-scheherazade

Hmmm......the site i ended up on indicated much less progress, perhaps I misunderstood and they were only discussing
DFRJ tests.
I trust wiki has it right.
I can't find any real info on the gll holod, but I would expect it was also launched with a solid rocket/missile if it wasn't pure propaganda. Scram jets just don't work under mach 4-5.

The simple point is that as soon as we realized the capability of the Zero we easily and quickly designed a plane(s) capable of combating it.

The Yak-3 didn't enter the war until 1944, at which point the war had massively turned in Western Theatre. For the bulk of the conflict, they were using the Yak-1.

The Mig 25 and Mig 31 are both interceptors, they are designed to fire from distance and evade. The Su 35 is designed for Air Superiority. We have held the edge in our capabilities for years compared to them.

Every expert I know of is skeptical of China's claimed Railgun weapon. As to why they would bother mounting it and making claims, why not? It is brinkmanship, making us think they have more capabilities than they do.

The laser rifle is a crowd deterrent weapon. It would serve almost no purpose in infantry combat because it cannot kill. Yes, it can burn things and cause pain, but that is all. Again, this was claimed to be far more effective than experts think during our diplomatic arguments over China's use of blinding lasers on aircraft. We have no hard evidence of it's capability.

Yes, Russia could sell such a missile to our enemies versus using it directly against us. The problem is that as soon as they do so, the genie is out of the bottle. It will be reverse engineered quickly and could be USED AGAINST THEM. No country gives or sells away it's absolute top level weaponry except to it's most trusted allies. Allies which, for all intents and purposes, know that using such a weapon against another nation state risks full out retaliation against not only them but the country that sold it to them.

Our carriers are excellent mobile platforms, but they are not our only way of mounting air strikes. If we were somehow in a conventional war situation, we could easily fly over and base our aircraft in allied countries for combat. Most of our nuclear capable aircraft are not carrier launched anyway. Even if somehow all of our carriers were taken out and somehow our SAC bombers were destroyed as well, we would still have more than enough land launched and submarine launched nuclear warheads to easily blanket our enemies.

My points remain:

1. It is in the greatest interest of our enemies to boast about weapon capabilities even if they are not effective yet.

2. Most well regarded experts consider many of these weapons to either be still in the research stage, early production stage (IE not available for years), or they are wildly over hyped.

3. There is no logical reason for our enemies to use these weapons or proliferate them to their closest allies unless the weapons can prevent a nuclear response. Merely mentioning a weapon that would have such a capability creates a situation that could lead to nuclear war, like SDI did. I don't know if you recall, but I do clearly, how massively freaked out the Soviets got over our SDI claims. For two years they started threatening nuclear war as being inevitable if we continued on the path we were, all the while aggressively trying to destabilize our relations with our allies. 1983 to 1985 was pretty fucking tense, not Cuban missile crisis level maybe, but damn scary. Putin has acted similarly over our attempts to set up a missile barrier in former satellite states of Russia, although we still haven't got to the SHTF level of the early 80's.