THOUGHTS ON DISRUPTIVE MILITARY TECHNOLOGIES
SO HOW DO YOUR COUNTER MISSILES TRAVELING AT NEARLY 8,000 MILES PER HOUR?
RIGHT NOW, YOU PROBABLY CAN’T. THE CHINESE HAVE JUST COMPLETED THE THIRD TEST OF THEIR NEW WU-14 HYPERSONIC GLIDE MISSILE
If the Chinese make a success of their hypersonic missile program—which seems highly likely—they will have a weapons system which will seriously undermine the credibility of the aircraft carrier as our traditional way of telling them to back off (from invading Taiwan, for instance).
Such missiles will threaten much else, of course, but the aircraft carrier has such a special place in our self-image as the most powerful nation in the world that I thought I would place it front and center.
Reportedly they, the Chinese, plan to deploy the Wu-14 as soon as 2020—and a scramjet version by 2025.
Can we defend against such extraordinarily fast weapons? Lasers would seem to be the only solution—but, as matters stand, defensive lasers of adequate power don’t seem to be as far advanced as is necessary.
The most likely outcome—at least in the short to medium term—seems the likelihood that our main defense will the deterrent value of having our own hypersonic missiles (which we are working on).
MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction—hypersonic style.
Should we continue to rely on the aircraft carrier as we have in the past? Well, fortunately, hypersonic missiles are unlikely to be possessed by most of our enemies for many decades—if ever. They are technologically complex and vastly expensive.
But, even so, one has to wonder whether the time hasn’t come for the Navy to re-think how it does business. Should we, for instance, rely more on our hypersonic equivalent for global strike and rely less on aircraft carriers?
This, I guess, is one of my less cheery posts.
VOR words 295.
No comments:
Post a Comment