Navy Tests Hypersonic Weapons That Could Hit Anywhere on Earth in an Hour

[Onkel Neal]

Navy Tests Hypersonic Weapons That Could Hit Anywhere on Earth in an Hour

The U.S. Navy is testing technology that could deliver a conventional warhead anywhere on Earth in as little as an hour. As first reported by US Naval Institute News, the Navy performed a flight test last week featuring Prompt Global Strike, a hypersonic weapon system designed to give the U.S. the ability to quickly strike targets worldwide with almost no notice.

Interest in very long range precision-guided weapons surfaced in 2001, when the George W. Bush Administration expressed interest in "offensive strike" weapons. The idea was to field a ballistic missile or some other kind of high-speed long-range missile with a conventional, high explosive warhead. This way, the U.S. could hit targets virtually anywhere based on time-sensitive information in situations where aircraft carriers, bombers, and other U.S. assets could not respond in time.

[moose1am]

With the Russian's spooking GPS data that missile or what ever it is called may not hit what it's suppose to. What it needs is a map of the land terrain for guidance at least in the terminal phase so it can't be gps spooked and misguided.
This may give the Russians, Chinese and the North Korean missile man pause.

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by moose1am

With the Russian's spooking GPS data that missile or what ever it is called may not hit what it's suppose to. What it needs is a map of the land terrain for guidance at least in the terminal phase so it can't be gps spooked and misguided.
This may give the Russians, Chinese and the North Korean missile man pause.

This is available due to the first Polaris submarines A-1 missiles did not have GPS and relied upon images of the target before the warhead would arm, but of course those missiles were coming down out of the atmosphere not headed straight for the target dropped out of a bomber bay doors.

[ikalugin]

ECM seems to only be the issue when we are talking about precise strikes against hard targets.

Launch of the Russian equivalent:

 

The issue with such weapons is that the adversary would still by default view them as a strategic nuclear weapon and thus, if he has the proper EW means, would react approprietely.

p.s. X51 pics being used everywhere is cancer.

[mapuc]

My first thought was - Countermeasure

Second thought The development in weapons is moving fast forward wonder what we will see in 50 or 100 years from now. Laser weapons from rifle to artillery ? or a combination ?

Markus

[Sean C]

Since at least 1967 there has been a guidance system available that does not rely on artificial satellites or images of the target. The MD-1 Automatic Astro Compass was a sort of automated sextant which could guide a bomber or even a missile, based on the locations of the stars in the sky.

I'm not sure if the old system would work on a missile traveling at hypersonic speeds, but according to the article linked in the first post:

Boost glide hypersonic weapons typically sit atop a ballistic missile and ride the missile to a great height and speed, before detaching from the missile and gliding down to the target...

This probably means that the missile would be above any cloud cover for a significant portion of its flight and therefore would have a clear view of the sky under any weather conditions. With today's technology, it would likely be a relatively simple task to design a new system which could operate at higher flight speeds. I'm also not sure if the old system was capable of using the Sun/Moon/Venus/etc. during the daytime, but again, this would be a trivial matter to work out today.

A system like the MD-1 could guide the missile most of the way, providing an accurate position until under any cloud cover. At that point an INS (inertial navigation system) could take over using the last known position from the MD-1.

EDIT: As recently as 2015 one of these units was listed on eBay for a mere US$425.

[Mr Quatro]

What, where, when, how and why are the only questions left to answer?

The reason why will never go away?

http://acepilots.com/planes/b29.html

What was the most expensive military project of World War Two? ...
It wasn't the atom bomb (the Manhattan Project). It was the Boeing B-29 Superfortress.

Cost? $3 billion, the most expensive weapon of World War II.

Only used in the Pacific, to rain both conventional and atomic destruction on Japan's cities,
the B-29 surely justified the cost of its development.