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Post by flyjoe180 on Aug 11, 2011 21:02:38 GMT 12
www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/08/pentagons-mach-20-missile/The Pentagon has been working for nearly a decade on an audacious plan to strike anywhere on the planet in less than an hour. Thursday could prove to be the do-or-die moment for that plan. At approximately 7 a.m. PDT, a three-stage Minotaur IV Lite rocket is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It will puncture the atmosphere, and then release an experimental aircraft. That aircraft, known as the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2, will then come hurtling back to Earth at nearly 20 times the speed of sound, splashing down near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 4,100 miles away. Total flight time: about 30 minutes.
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Post by flyjoe180 on Aug 11, 2011 21:02:54 GMT 12
Mach 20. Now that is something.
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Post by jonesy on Aug 12, 2011 7:42:05 GMT 12
Wonder how many billion $$$ got sunk into that?
Now I'm no Greens-voting tree-hugging pacifist, but I'm pretty sure that theres better ways to spend a buck right now when your country's economy is heading down the toilet....
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Post by jonesy on Aug 12, 2011 8:02:42 GMT 12
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Post by fyl on Aug 12, 2011 9:02:10 GMT 12
Certainly looks like it...D'oh!!
Last seen passing the moon.. :-)
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Post by flyjoe180 on Aug 12, 2011 11:06:03 GMT 12
;D Yay America! Yes, the very same Hypersonic beastie. Best pay off some of that debt Mr Obama before making any more space darts.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 12, 2011 21:42:03 GMT 12
I agree Jonesie, waste of money at a time like this, especially when it goes wrong and it's back to the drawing board. Haven't the USA got enough ways to kill people yet? These international missile tests should be banned, imagine if it had malfunctioned and come down in diwntown Auckland.
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Post by adzze on Aug 12, 2011 22:00:29 GMT 12
Seems a hell of an expensive weapon system unless it's reusable? Why not just use an ICBM?
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Post by Officer Crabtree on Aug 13, 2011 20:59:06 GMT 12
Stick with a good old manned craft, I say! This wouldn't have happened if there was a test pilot in there!
Then again, said pilot may be dead , so...
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Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 13, 2011 22:12:43 GMT 12
Missiles don't usually have pilots Jasper, apart from those made by Japan in 1945.
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Post by flyjoe180 on Aug 17, 2011 21:28:20 GMT 12
I take it the Americans know where this thing came down? Or, like parts of the stealthy Blackhawk thing used in the Bin Laden raid has it become part of China's stockpile of things to analyse?
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Post by angelsonefive on Aug 18, 2011 14:11:47 GMT 12
Data transmission from the craft ceased at 20 minutes into the 30 minute flight to Kwajalein Atoll.
Presumably the shattered bits are deep in the Pacific Ocean.
The USA demonstrated its expertise in deep ocean salvage a few years ago when a sunken Russian nuclear sub. was hauled up from the Pacific , so I imagine that DARPA will be able to recover the wreckage if they really want to.
I understand the advantage of this kind of weapon is that the launch of the rocket that carries it into space is indistinguishable from that of a satellite launch.
So the US could take out a lucrative Al Qaeda target in Yemen, say, without causing Russia to go to its version of DEFCON 1.
And talking of Russia, I believe they have been working on this class of missile too, and like the USA have had some failures.
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