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/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

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File: 1732998794096.png ( 26.78 KB , 600x600 , silver-bullet.png )

 No.485941

So the Russians are the first ones to demonstrate, what appears to be a purely or mostly kinetic impact weapon that is rocket-propelled. This thing competes with low yield so called "tactical nukes". Without any of the downsides like radioactive contamination and massive shock-waves.

They destroyed a weapons factory complex and aside from an estimated 100 people that were inside, nobody else died, the surrounding buildings weren't damaged. The decades old promise of doing "surgical strikes" at scale and parity without "collateral damage" seems to have finally been realized.

Given how much more focused the delivery of destructive energy from those impactors are, it's likely more effective at destroying hardened military targets than most nukes. Nukes technically are plasma weapons. And for this new weapon the line between kinetic and energy weapons is beginning to blur a little as well because of the extreme physical conditions during impact.

I would consider this as a strategic deterrent, because it likely can destroy icbm missile silos, air-fields, naval ports/battle-groups and command and controle bunkers. Part of the deterrence effect might also be that the political cost of actually using one is much lower than with nukes.

I also think that they will tag on other functionality, like replacing the 36 impactors that slam into the ground, with an air-to-air variation making hole squadrons of fighters or drones go poof.

There also is the arms-race aspect, i wonder how that will play out.

It might change the political game too. At present the neocons antagonize Russians in order to create a threatening enemy in order to get funding for their schemes. But since this new weapon doesn't really threaten anything that touches the majority of the population, the political effect of the "Russian boogieman" might just fade away. Companies like Black Rock have been lobbying for the Ukraine war, I've been wondering for a long time whether these war-lobbies would get targeted like military eventually, it wasn't really possible, until now.

If WW3 was fought with this type of missile not many people would die, probably less than in many of the currently active wars. People could opt out of WW3, just by avoiding the places that would be strategical targets. So that's why i think it might be a silver bullet.
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 No.485942

File: 1732999889506.jpg ( 31.41 KB , 640x400 , aegis-cruiser.jpg )

If nothing else this is going to make large ship naval warfare obsolete. The Aegis interceptor system already had dubious missile defense reliability against short-launch missiles, but there's no way in hell it can defend against these new hypersonic weapons. Thus the only argument to justify naval focus on aircraft carriers is going to be pulled out and the rest comes down like a house of cards. Aircraft carriers and the aircraft they deploy are a massive component of the US military-industrial scam, and if they are unable to trick the public into justifying their production anymore, then this is going to lead to considerable losses in profitability.
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 No.485943

>>485941
I admittedly rushed & skimmed… is this about the hyper-sonic high speed impact missiles which generate force from the sheer speed?

If so, those are actually extremely deadly lol. Like, they don't leave as much residue behind as nukes do, sure, but their power isn't just precision, they're extremely destructive. Using them decisively would kill tons of people, otherwise Iran would probably have already used this type of hypersonic missile on Tel Aviv.
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 No.485946

>>485942
>If nothing else this is going to make large ship naval warfare obsolete.
Yeah that too.
>but there's no way in hell it can defend against these new hypersonic weapons.
It's not just the speed the other "killer-feature" in naval warfare is the sub-munitions. The Oreshnik missile can split into 36, that's alot of ship in one go.

>if they are unable to trick the public into justifying their production anymore, then this is going to lead to considerable losses in profitability.
the hyper-sonic falling rate of profit.
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 No.485947

>>485943
>is this about the hyper-sonic high speed impact missiles which generate force from the sheer speed?
yes

>If so, those are actually extremely deadly lol. Like, they don't leave as much residue behind as nukes do, sure, but their power isn't just precision, they're extremely destructive.
Yes but they don't create massive area-blasts, there is side-ways deflection from the collision but most of it is in a narrow downwards cone. That's why these are so effective they don't waste much energy. There's a limited area where everything gets furiously vaporized, but beyond that the destructive effect trails off sharply. That's one of the most desirable qualities of this.

>Using them decisively would kill tons of people, otherwise Iran would probably have already used this type of hypersonic missile on Tel Aviv.
The Iranians don't have this type, the one the Russians fired probably was the first one. The Iranian missiles had regular explosive warheads, and those don't impact at hyper-sonic speed, they just go hyper-sonic to shorten the travel time and make it harder to intercept, they slow down before hitting.
Atmosphere near the ground is very dense and there is considerable extra difficulty to go very fast in that.

Regardng strikes in cities go, a small nuke will be many orders of magnitudes more deadly for the civilian population compared to an Oreshnik. Cities usually don't contain many targets that would warrant this caliber of weapon. So this is just a thought experiment. Look at it this way: if you lived in a city that got Oreshniked a few times, chances are you'd be fine. If you lived in a city that got nuked a few times, you'd probably be dead.
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 No.485948

well people depend on some order
some infrastructure

you really think projectile hit your water station is better (in ww3) ?
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 No.485949

>>485948
also that was already a puzzle in these arab wars of early 90s
because basiscally you don't have tomahawk for literally every single target
tomahawk just cost more than the AK
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 No.485950

each tomahawk explosion its like a million of usd, and also it shall be shot from some ship that running cost within 100 000k usd *per day*
thats in peace time
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 No.485951

even in ww2 they didn't have most advanced weapons (funny)
it was mostly propaganda

average weapon was dated and somewhat useless
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 No.485952

>>485947
>The Iranians don't have this type, the one the Russians fired probably was the first one. The Iranian missiles had regular explosive warheads, and those don't impact at hyper-sonic speed, they just go hyper-sonic to shorten the travel time and make it harder to intercept, they slow down before hitting.
IIRC the Iranians have said they have the hypersonic impact missiles, too. They haven't used them yet, though, but I think one of their guys said they could if they chose to, and the suggestion made was that the impact would essentially end the back-and-forth between them and Israel.
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 No.485953

https://scottritter.substack.com/p/fahrenheit-7232

>The physics surrounding the effects of the Oreshnik payload remain confusing to even those who have spent a lifetime studying the physics of such weapons. Dr. Theodore Postol, a weapons expert from MIT, has done some preliminary studies on the Oreshnik which mirror the assessment of the researchers from the North University of China.

>But Russian experts have spoken about advances made by Russia in material sciences associated with the performance of materials at hypersonic speed, advances which may alter the physics in question (for instance, the pure tungsten rod envisioned by the US Air Force and tested by the Chinese may, in the case of the Oreshnik, have had a coating of an advanced alloy formed from tantalum carbide and hafnium carbide, materials used by Russia in reentry operations from space, where heat absorption is desired).

>The Russians point out that the Oreshnik “rods,” whatever their precise composition, would, once heated to 4,000 degrees Celsius (7,232 degrees Fahrenheit), would vaporize steel and concrete, including reinforced concrete, on contact. “It would vaporize,” as President Putin observed, “everything that is in the epicenter of the explosion is divided into fractions, into elementary particles, everything turns essentially into dust.”

>The underlying question remains, how much of an area does the “epicenter of the explosion” encompass? Ukraine has been surprisingly reticent about documenting its claims that the Oreshnik caused “minimal damage,” only noting that the warheads which struck Dnipropetrovsk carried no explosives and, as a result, did not cause significant damage. This conclusion was shared by German experts commenting in Bild Magazine. Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California, in a recent interview with Reuters, commented on the Oreshnik, noting that, “This is a new capability, but this is not a new capability that represents a dramatic change in the way that conventional weapons are developed.” He continued, “It’s a series of old technologies that have been put together in a new way.”

>Lewis added that using the Oreshnik with conventional warheads was an expensive means "to deliver not that much destruction,” noting that, given the expense associated with ballistic missiles of the Oreshnik class, using this type of weapon to hit Ukraine was more likely designed to achieve a psychological effect than military impact. “If it were inherently terrifying, [Putin] would just use it. But that’s not quite enough,” Lewis said. “He had to use it and then do a press conference and then do another press conference and say: ‘Hey, this thing is really scary, you should be scared.’”

>While Lewis’ analysis is open to scrutiny (his claim that the Oreshnik was simply a bunch of “old technologies” that have been “put together in new ways” is refuted by Russian statements and the evidence—his analysis of the reentry system is sophomoric, and does not take into account Russian reports which suggest the Oreshnik made use of new independent post-boost vehicles, or IPBVs, known in Russian as blok individualnogo razvedeniya (or BIR). Likewise, Lewis’ critique seems to simply parrot Ukrainian battle damage assessments without any attempt to delve further into the new technologies associated with the kinetic rods used by the Oreshnik.
Schematic of Oreshnik warhead by Theodore Postol incorporating new Russia BIR technology

>(It should be noted that Theodore Postol, in conducting his analysis, has incorporated these new technologies in his work.)
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 No.485954

if you fire anti-matter weapon on projectile it will probably dissapear [spoiler]but so probably you[/spoiler]
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 No.485957

>There also is the arms-race aspect, i wonder how that will play out.

Probably not very well for the US. Apparently the Oreshnik involves new technologies or technological principles, and the US doesn't really seem capable of developing those any more.

Then you look at its new weapon systems and its nothing but cost overruns, delays, and failure.

Dark Eagle? Delayed.
Zumwalt? Failure
F-35? Massive cost overruns and significant operating problems.
Gerald Ford Supercarrier? Cost overruns, significant systems failures, and delays.

Under the current circumstances the US needs to play serious catch up, but it is institutionally incapable of doing so. Without serious changes the best it can do is just give weapons contractors a hundred billion dollars for the promise of developing a weapon sometime in the indistinct future and hope everything works out.
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 No.485958

>>485948
>well people depend on some order
>some infrastructure
>you really think projectile hit your water station is better (in ww3) ?
I don't know what these hyper-sonic multi-hammers cost, but they're probably too expensive to attack random civilian infrastructure. Also there is a strong political incentive not to destroy that kind of civilian infrastructure. Lessens learned from the foolishness of the Israeli.

>>485949
>also that was already a puzzle in these arab wars of early 90s
>because basiscally you don't have tomahawk for literally every single target
>tomahawk just cost more than the AK
That is true, but the tomahawk was a weapon developed to "degrade the advanced capabilities of a technological peer adversary". It was never intended as a whip to enforce an occupation of countries in the west-asia/middle-east.
You're not wrong to draw parallels between the advances that led to cruise-missiles and hyper-sonic-multi-hammers. But the Russians developed this thing to counter Nato's stuff. They didn't intent this for hunting "rebel-terrorists".
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 No.485959

>>485954
>if you fire anti-matter weapon
within an atmosphere made out of regular matter ?
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 No.485960

>>485957
>Under the current circumstances the US needs to play serious catch up, but it is institutionally incapable of doing so.
Seems true. The privatized weapons industry wants to maximize the profits on the capital they already have. Leaps in weapons-technology like this depreciates a hole bunch of capital that was used to produce now defunct weapons systems. They thought they could get away with stagnation as long as all the competing powers could be held down, and prevented from advancing. This is such a classical blunder.

>Without serious changes the best it can do is just give weapons contractors a hundred billion dollars for the promise of developing a weapon sometime in the indistinct future and hope everything works out.
They were able to milk the forever war in Afghanistan despite it being a failure, but this is a different kind of failure.

Loosing the forever-war was like a giant that completely smashed up the porcelain-goods store and then eventually was driven out. The power-relation was that the US was still able to smash up the place. For this new failure the metaphor changes to the giant getting shot in the head before he can smash up the store. That's not a "milk-able" failure mode.

So it probably won't be pay and pray, a shakeup in the arms-industry is more likely.
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 No.485967

>>485959
technically it can fly tru atmosphere maybe in some containment or dunno plasma


i think if you shot high-energy plasma ball at it it will also destroy
but we sort of don't have anything like this
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 No.485971

>>485960
It seems like the current answer is "more startups, war as a service."


<Moving Toward Defense as a Service
https://warontherocks.com/2024/11/moving-toward-defense-as-a-service/

>Product capabilities delivered as a service may seem like a new idea to some, but the model is one that goes in and out of favor in government contracting. For example, during the Global War on Terror, Predator drones were operated by General Atomics contractors. More recently, the U.S. Coast Guard awarded Shield AI almost $200 million on an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract to provide surveillance and reconnaissance as a service, for which the company will use its V-BAT platform. And Metrea, which describes itself as providing “effects as a service,” has “as a service” contract with U.S. Naval Air Systems Command that has it conducting aerial refueling operations for aircraft from multiple U.S. services as well as allies.

>New processes like Replicator or programs like TITAN are great steps in the right direction. The genius of TITAN is in fielding hardware that is inherently software-defined, and therefore primed for rapid battlefield adaptation. To the extent feasible, more programs should look like TITAN. However, even there, the Department of Defense is still a little too solution-oriented for the future fight. The requirements and contract structure for TITAN should have laid the groundwork for replacing it with a battlefield-adapted system for a date, hopefully far in the future, when TITAN itself has outlived its usefulness. Only an outcomes orientation lays the foundation for infinite adaptation.
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 No.485973

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/11/sputnik-2-0-oreshnik-and-the-western-military-capabilities-gap.html

>This post endeavors, at a very high level, to discuss how the US/NATO shortcomings against Russia and the so-called West’s geostrategic competitors, are more foundational than most commentators recognize. This is due at least in part to an onslaught of propaganda maintaining long-standing prejudices against Slavs and non-white countries that industrialized after Europe.1
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 No.485974

>>485971
<Defense as a Service
They got some ballz to try that scam on people with the most guns.
But then again maybe the guns don't work because they can't ping the server that checks for the subscription licenses. The soldiers will have to install a crack to make sure their equipment works.

Maximum late stage capitalism.
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 No.485975

>>485974
It worked with the F-35.

It seems like the natural next step as far as Amerifat procurement goes. They'd have to undo 50 years of government sabotage and corporate/political imbalance in order to go any other direction than "hit the privatization button." I don't think there's any political will for that.
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 No.485995

>>485967
>plasma
Until we figure out plasma instability, we can't make sophisticated plasma configurations like a stable plasma ball.
However a plasma projector that acts like a highly localized shield against most types of weapons is conceivable. Think about a long range sandblaster wearing down incoming weapons fire with ionized particles. But we probably don't have a power-source for that, I'm guessing 200 gigawatts continuous is the barrier to entry for this.

>anti-matter bullets
We can't use anti-matter as the main energy carrier, because we can't make that stuff in quantity, and because we can't do low enough tolerances to make storage reliable enough.
We probably don't want to set off anti-matter explosions anyway since it will cause really nasty highly energetic particle emissions that make the stuff that comes out of nukes look harmless by comparison.

It is more plausible to use a few anti-matter particles as a means to set off a really small fusion reaction, (maybe with an intermediate fission reaction to further economize on anti-matter, which at the moment is the most expensive stuff by a huge margin). You can trap a few anti-matter particles in a magnetic vacuum bottle, if you have good enough or cold enough superconductor material.

There is a somewhat more low-tech way to make "nuclear bullets" small enough even for a regular rifle. It requires synthesizing a specific radio-active fissionable element, so it's not a cheap proposition by any means. And those bullets also would require a lot of cooling so there would be practicality limits of carrying a big ammo refrigeration unit around. If you set it off it would generate mostly gamma radiation but it would be powerful enough to melt a tank into a puddle of molten metal.

I'm not sure where you are going with this, but if i had to guess i'd say you are trying to make weapons munitions really small ? Maybe you can explain your motivation for that ?
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 No.485996

>>485975
>It worked with the F-35.
It worked in the sense that arms producers got rich off this.
However the US had a huge lead in air-power over anybody else and the F35 has shrunk that lead by a considerable amount.

>They'd have to undo 50 years of government sabotage and corporate/political imbalance in order to go any other direction than "hit the privatization button."
I agree that the problem came from privatization, but i don't know what you mean with:
government sabotage
corporate/political imbalance

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