Lance Lord! That's the best name since Jeff Gannon. (Insert the citizens of Rock Ridge holding their hats over their hearts and singing "Jeff Ga-aa-non" here.)

Skynet? Is that you?

Damn.

First time I glanced at the headline I thought it said "Penguin Plans Space-Delivery of Ordnance"

That would have been much more interesting.

And there's my shallow, kneejerk & repetitive political commentary for all you troglodytes and rightwing nutbags.

Well we sure don't come here for the chicks.

...hey!

A hypersonic cruise vehicle...

..."an incredible capability to provide the warfighter with a global reach capability against high payoff targets,"

Damn, I love being an American!

er, that was me

Sounds like another golly gee weapon that won't get built. Seems we already have alternate means of delivering 1,000 pounds on a target. Planes/JDAMs, and cruise, MRBM and SLBM missiles. Plus Predators + Next gen slower moving UAVs with fast missiles on board.

It's not like we currently lack means to take out terrorists - we just lack the Humint to know who and where they are. And the best way to get Humint is not dropping a bomb ot missile - but to have cooperation of local police, security forces - arrest them, and take 'em away for some long chats..

I don't see a need for this ultra-extensive baby, not with Bush's tax cuts for the best off Americans killing our military capital spending already given the deficits. We have less fighters, bombers, and ships than when Bush II came in, and he is on a ship construction schedule that shrinks the Navy down to 140 ships by 2020, base closures are proceeding, and he wants to go from 12 to 11aircraft carriers. The DDX is running up against the need for Bush's donors to keep & spend their tax cuts - and it's not like many have kids in the military to worry about.

We also have problems finding the "evildoers". We can't even seem to secure a 6-mile stretch of highway 'cause our intelligence doesn't match our high tech weapons. No target, no toy gets used.

It also has the characteristics and trajectory of a nuclear-tipped missile, so it would not be advisable to just "lob" one into China, N Korea, Russia, Pakistan to get a terrorist. That might cause some stuff to come flying back.

awww, blow me

Chrissakes, Ace, you've seen what he does with that mouth.

Indeed! He's like the Louie Armstrong of dork-horn.

"It also has the characteristics and trajectory of a nuclear-tipped missile, so it would not be advisable to just "lob" one into China, N Korea..."

Hell, I'd advise it !!!!

Special delivery for Kim Jong Il...Special delivery..

I always liked the "Mjolnir" idea: put a zillion depleted uranium crowbars in orbit with guidance systems and simple propulsion. Trouble rears its ugly head, you just dial it in and drop a hundred pound weight on it..from 250 miles up

Maybe we should get Dave@GR on that right away.

Ace, check your email.

Well, it may be the comment that you love to hate, but a 2-hour delivery timeframe isn't likely to be very practically useful. Very few enemies are now forting up in castles and other non-mobile targets of opportunity. I'd rather see UAV's with Hellfire missiles overhead at all times.

And the points about the military procurement budgets being starved is very pertinent in this context. I don't begrudge anyone a tax cut (nor do I mind paying my taxes), but I want more bombs, planes, guns, and ships for my own peronal buck, and not a bunch of gee-whiz useless delivery systems instead of actual ordnance. Did any of you ever read "Superiority" by Arthur C Clarke?

Sorry, that last post was by me.

Someone call Dennis Kucinich!!!!

but a 2-hour delivery timeframe isn't likely to be very practically useful. Very few enemies are now forting up in castles and other non-mobile targets of opportunity.

What are you talking about? The first strike always goes against anti-aircraft positions, radars, SAM sites, command and control bunkers, radios, power grids, etc.

All of those are fixed targets.

There may come a day when stealth technology is defeated by better radar and we're going to want to take all that crap out from space before sending in manned bombers.

America! Fuck Yeah!

ACE, ya moron! Ever hear of stealth fighters, cruise missiles? It's not like we lack the ability to drop 1,000 lb warheads on fixed targets, toot suite!.

This is just another expensive concept weapon in search of a sponsor and a mission.

Now, if Darpa comes up with something really cool, like ceramic armored Gambian pouched rats trained to lope ahead of a US convoy and sniff & find IEDs - that would be practical. Not adding weapon delivery system #18 to the 17 we have already than can quickly drop 400Kgs on "arch-evildoers" provided we (1) know about them; (2) locate them; (3) they indulge us and stand still for a few days.

Better we replace the all the fighters we lost cutting donuts above American cities for 2 years after 9/11 or talk about that 140 ship Navy Bush is downspending us into than the 20 million "super high tech missile".

A missile that drops one half ton bomb on target with no penetrating ability at 40 times the cost of a cruise missile and 20,000 times the cost of a JDAM.

My mate attended Staff College with a special forces type named Major Dan Fortune.

I shit you not.

My name is Ellis D. Tecnine.

I shit you.

Its called "thor" not Mjolnir Alex.

It would be nice to have something like it up in space because it would be the perfect way of dealing with any amphibious force attacking Taiwan, crushing any force invading a country we want protected, or devastating any blocking force in the way of our troops in a larger land battle. And it would be much faster time on target then this system.

HT,
Superiority's point was about trying to make major weapons changes or upgrades in a war without allowing for the teething problems that always show up at the expense of all else. It was a shot at the war winning wonder weapon mentality of the Germans durring WW2. It really doesnt fit given that we're not in a back against the wall war nor are we going to replace most of our other weapons with it.

Cedarford, ya moron! Ever hear of some of our cruise missles being shot down, also we've lost a stealth aircraft in combat before. Every year that goes by it will get easier for people to deal with these weapon systems. Its not about a lack of ability to deliver 1,000 lb warheads on fixed targets, its about the ability to do it better and safer.

"I always liked the "Mjolnir" idea: put a zillion depleted uranium crowbars in orbit with guidance systems and simple propulsion. Trouble rears its ugly head, you just dial it in and drop a hundred pound weight on it..from 250 miles up"
I don't know how realistic this is, but in a usenet discussion someone suggested destroying Nork nuclear facilities by dropping rods at night from high altitude, using fins etc to hold the orientation and trajectory, straight through the core and down deep into the ground, covered by the nuclear sludge that would follow. Looks like an accident. Feels great.

Looks like an accident. Feels great.

Ok, that phrase is going in the file.

The answer is the "Directed Asteroid Ordinance". Sooner or later, a large asteroid is going to be on a collision path with earth. The first thought might be to develop a way to alter the asteroids trajectory so that it doesn't hit earth, but I think a better approach would be to develop the capability to determine exactly where "we" want it to hit (ie. N. Koriea, Iran, Sytria....). The ultimate capability would be to get it to split into pieces and to hit all of the "evil doers" all at the same time.

Lance! Aa-aaah!
Savior of the universe,
Lance! Aa-aaah!
He'll save every one of us.

Yes, but can it fight off a Vogon Constructor Fleet?

If it can deploy 1000 pounds of bad poetry, we've got a chance...

A metric ton, or free verse?

Whatever happened to the idea of dropping super-sonic bolts (for lack of a better term) from orbit - their terminal velocity would generate (roughly) the equivalent of a low-yield nuclear weapon, without any of the nasty fallout. That was just about the coolest idea I'd heard of when I read about that....

Where's Dave with my intelligence briefing?!?

Cool! the Falcone project. Must be named after Vinnie Falcone! Ace, how did you miss that reference?

huh? what? ohh.... never mind.

Jesus, nothing sticks in my craw like Cedar being even a little bit right about something. We do, in fact, have T-O-N-S of excellent artillery options, and in almost any case, there's a better cost-benefit setup than this new gadget. HOWEVER, the big limit for all our other tools is getting there -- we have to fly in a plane, or pull a ship in close, or something. Even if the delivery method is stealthed, the time factor can be huge. I think there's a place for this new weapon, but that place is pretty small -- ONLY when we need really, really fast reactions.

Cedar defeated his own argument against this device, and reaction time is the reason. He said we need the humint to ID targets -- well, once you have that, how long is it good for? Suppose the battle is in Fallujah, but the target you've just gotten intel on is currently in Chile? How long does it take to fly/steam a deployment vector in there from the closest base?

That said, I like the sound of the Mjolnir/Thor system a lot -- similar reaction time, but a) disperse, which means it's even harder to shoot down, and b) persistent, in that you can put them in geostationary orbit and only have to fight decay very occasionally with tiny bursts of propellant. The ability to drop a satellite anywhere on the globe, really fast, is pretty damn attractive if you ask me.

You know this Lance guy is in his office going
"Lightning BOLT! Lightning BOLT!"

CAV isn't orbital-- it's a suborbital vehicle. Putting and leaving a weapon in orbit would be guaranteed to get the "no weapons in space" critics lined up against this.

As it is, their biggest concerns now is just against the whole "mistake CAV for a nuke delivery vehicle" issue.

Dear April,

The idea is that if you have a global agreement on fighting terror, you don't need to "move assets" in theater....in your example...to call the Chilean police, military..and any US liaison resources nearby to apprehend the suspect. That certainly beats launching a ballistic missile attack on a friendly country's territory.

If you only have a few rogue nations where you can't count on the cooperation of locals, you park military assets nearby.

And while space-based weaponry to hit a China invasion ofTaiwan virtually instantly sounds good, in practice, the Chinese & Russians may not tolerate a weapon poised to instantly come down on their heads and would seek to destroy such orbiting platforms.

Still, the desire of some to win an ideological conflict with "high tech wonder weapons" is an entertaining diversion.....and perhaps one day they will come up with something actually useful like the Predator - like the effort to breed IED and mine-sniffing Giant Gambian pouched rats.

Sonofsham -
Explain again how we are so worried about the inability of cruise missiles to drop a 1,000 lb warhead on a target "better and safer" than an alternative that costs 40 times as much?

Seems we won't weep over "lost safety" if 3 of 40 cruise missiles are "killed" on their short flight to target. That leaves 37 accurate 1,000 lb bombs hitting. And a "new and improved" weapon that drops 1, not 37 bombs for the same price?? You can surely see the difficulty of making a sales pitch....

CAV isn't orbital-- it's a suborbital vehicle. Putting and leaving a weapon in orbit would be guaranteed to get the "no weapons in space" critics lined up against this.

Seems to me that this could be worked around by simplying spray-painting "film canister" on the side of the depleted-uranium crowbars...

Cedarford-- if those 37 1,000 lb bombs "accurately" hit the cave Osama Bin Laden left an hour earlier, then they're not worth ANY price.

Tanks can't do the jobs of ships. Ships can't do the jobs of airplanes. And cruise missiles can't do the job of something like CAV.

It's like rock-paper-scissors. Only rock costs a lot more than paper & scissors. You can live without rock, but you're only going to win 66% of the time. Or, once your enemy finds out you don't have rock, you lose every time.

We try our best to cover our bases, within technological capabilities, and available budgets.

1) A falling crowbar cannot be mistaken for a ballistic missile. It has a totally different trajectory and radar profile.

2) China can try to shoot them down if they want. Good luck. Our defense budget is bigger than the next 15 nations combined; I'm betting on us to win that fight. Plus, they can find out first-hand what N Korea's economy is like when we embargo them. Yay! Instant Chinese revolution! I'm sure the new gov't will be more reasonable.

3) The main benefit is timing. Hitting things faster is better. Would we always use them in place of cruise missiles? No, just in cases where missiles are too slow.

Remember, boys and girls:

Depleted uranium is the good DU

Tall Dave - If we had an unlimited military budget, cost no object, a new toy that could get to a stationary target twice as fast as a cruise missile but 10-100 times slower than a plane or Predator circling above might be nice. As I said at the beinning, an 18th method for delivering explosive on the enemy might be nice if money wasn't a factor. But it is.

The Bushies are finally waking up to that and cancelling capital construction defence projects right and left...or scaling back. Reagan gave us a 600-ship Navy and tons of jobs to make them. Bush II is on track to a 140 ship Navy, and less M-1s, Bradleys, fighter jets, and bombers than when he took office. Basic R&D cut 30%. Air Force downsizing and base closures proceeding. Going to 11 aircraft carriers from 12 with 10 a possibility in 2007. 10 subs inc the San Francisco lost to the Fleet so far under Bush.

Cederford:

For once, I completely agree with you.