Russia tests new wonder weapon

[Balschoiw 0]

Hi just came across this:

Quote[/b] ]Russia has successfully tested a hypersonic anti-Star Wars weapon capable of penetrating any prospective missile shield, a senior general said Thursday.

Doesn´t that mean that SDI is basically useless now ?

I mean this really looks like some lively rocket

Quote[/b] ]"The flying vehicle changed both the altitude and direction of its flight," Baluyevsky said. "During the experiment conducted yesterday, we proved that it's possible to develop weapons that would make any missile defense useless."

Quote[/b] ]"The experiment conducted by us must not be interpreted as a warning to the Americans not to build their missile defense because we designed this thing," Baluyevsky told The Associated Press.

SDI ?

But there are still lasers right ?

[Falcon Six Two 0]

By SDI, you mean the Strategic Defense Initiative, right? How it would penetrate the defenses is beyond me......but hypersonic flight? Past Mach 5? Good Lord.....

[ralphwiggum 6]

I really see no point in this. Star Wars I and II(Phantom menace and whatever other one is called) are just movies.

personally, i'll see it to beleive it

Quote[/b] ]"The experiment conducted by us must not be interpreted as a warning to the Americans not to build their missile defense because we designed this thing," Baluyevsky told The Associated Press.

ROFL!

[bn880 5]

Bah the lasers, afaik the lasers are not as effective as they should be (sorry no recent research done), but from a simple standpoint; you are going to have a hell of a hard time shooting down something flying that fast and changing altitude. It can probably be done but will take a bit o time to develop and actually test.

[MI_Fred 0]

Quote[/b] ]"The experiment conducted by us must not be interpreted as a warning to the Americans not to build their missile defense because we designed this thing," Baluyevsky told The Associated Press.

Damn that's just a plain open invitation for another weapons race. Or atleast a suggestion for the US to spend their money in the biggest..wait 2nd biggest nothing in the history of mankind

I hope this isn't the same one they failed to launch once from land and twice from a sub? If so, seems quite unreliable... If it's still largely on the drawing board, it'll be scrapped for sure...

[Baron von Beer 0]

Big robotic arm with insanely large tennis racket. Problem solved from the US point of view.

[bn880 5]

Big robotic arm with insanely large tennis racket. Problem solved from the US point of view.

You forgot the

[Apollo 0]

Russia has lready found a number of way's to go around SDI ,not hard neither as most analists knew that such a system would be rather unnefective before the project even started.

The simplest of Russian sollutions was to sipmly fire a number of nukes toghether accompied of a shitload of dud rockets.Basicly a few 100's to 1000's of ICBM's of the same type's at once and the SDI can decide wich one of those rockets to shoot down ,quite a dim chance that the Nuke get's downed even given the system's own failure chance.And to think it's only designed to stop ICBM ,not Nukes fired from a Nuclear submarine. (wich is a delivery system that is unpossible to stop at this date)

And to think how much SDI costs ,what a waste...

[Pipski 0]

As the biggest nuclear threat to the US currently comes from terrorists or rogue states without ICBM capabilities and given that SDI doesn't even work then wtf is the point? All because Ronald `Darth' Reagan watched too much Star Wars in the 80s ...

[denoir 0]

SDI of the 80's and todays' 'Ballistic Missile Shield' are two completely different things. SDI was a technically moronic idea that never worked, but it was politically brilliant. Reagan managed to get the Soviets to get into the standard arms race as always, and they could not afford it. It put the final nail in the coffin of the Soviet economy. An insane amount of money was dumped into something that they knew would not work. They didn't even reach a prototype level.

The BMS on the other hand is a much more practical project with the aim of actually working. It is still very difficult technically and a lot of tests have failed. Still, they are getting better at it and I'm sure that given enough time and money they will make it work.

Having said that, I still think it is a stupid idea. Getting around it is not difficult. You can for instance use a MIRV with a bunch of dummy warheads and a real one. Or you can use stealth technology to hide the warhead from radar. Or you can add an additional rocket stage to the physics package that slams the warhead with a velocity high enough to prevent any counter-measures to reach in time.

Overall, beating it is not difficult, but it would most likely require an overhaul and perhaps re-design of the current nuclear stock piles. Does it sound like a good idea to you to force Russia into yet another expensive arms race?

[ChizzleOwnizzle 0]

gee, how do they make new weapon systems with a military budget of 2 rubels?

[bn880 5]

The answer is; pretty well

[akm74 1]

Quote[/b] ]Overall, beating it is not difficult, but it would most likely require an overhaul and perhaps re-design of the current nuclear stock piles. Does it sound like a good idea to you to force Russia into yet another expensive arms race?

I’m sure that not new Russian nuclear warhead, not US new defense will not be used as intended anyway. But any military invention moves the science forward faster. And this is a good thing. I sure if they apply new technology on something less military (as it always happen), we will all benefit from it. No one needs an arm race anymore.

[Guest]

SDI of the 80's and todays'  'Ballistic Missile Shield' are two completely different things. SDI was a technically moronic idea that never worked, but it was politically brilliant. Reagan managed to get the Soviets to get into the standard arms race as always, and they could not afford it. It put the final nail in the coffin of the Soviet economy. An insane amount of money was dumped into something that they knew would not work. They didn't even reach a prototype level.

The BMS on the other hand is a much more practical project with the aim of actually working. It is still very difficult technically and a lot of tests have failed. Still, they are getting better at it and I'm sure that given enough time and money they will make it work.

Having said that, I still think it is a stupid idea. Getting around it is not difficult. You can for instance use a MIRV with a bunch of dummy warheads and a real one. Or you can use stealth technology to hide the warhead from radar. Or you can add an additional rocket stage to the physics package that slams the warhead with a velocity high enough to prevent any counter-measures to reach in time.

Overall, beating it is not difficult, but it would most likely require an overhaul and perhaps re-design of the current nuclear stock piles. Does it sound like a good idea to you to force Russia into yet another expensive arms race?  

Excellent point. I wrote a paper on exactly this for a strategic and political analysis of the cold war class i took a few years ago.

One point you forgot to mention is that while SDI broke the soviet economy, it trashed the US one pretty hard as well

But some people refuse to give Reagan any credit for his role in ending the cold war.