Is this real? I was happy till it said Russia also has a hypersonic weapon and then I felt it may just be USS Maine style propaganda.
and that's why we need to give more funding to the military! - the only thing this news will ever lead to
:this:
For the generals saying this stuff, truth isn't the goal. Nor is actual preparedness for war the goal.
someone please post a link to the Citations Needed episode about "The Always Lagging US Military"
TLDL: Everything you hear from the State Department about how advanced other nations are is a ploy to get budget increases and funnel money to private contractors that offer generals and politicians lucrative jobs after they leave the public sector
Libsyn: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-117-the-always-lagging-us-war-machine
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-117-the-always-lagging-us-war-machine
This is literally The Missile Gap lmao. They play the same exact tunes over and over and Americans are so brain dead they can't even tell.
if we can spend so much money and still be behind, maybe spending money isn't the problem
They talk about how the US is falling behind on military all the time to justify more handouts. Ignore.
I hope this is true because I think the US sucks and is evil. I also hope any attempts to improve are foiled by shitty, profit-hungry contractors who deliver absolute dogshit results over an absurdly long time-frame to really milk it for every dime. And when America finally loses any pretense of still being top dog, I hope those shitty defense contractors try to go into business with China, only to be used for whatever worth they actually can contribute, and then put down like animals.
hypersonic weapons are/have been a doctrinal goal of both the PRC and Russia, as a means of countering US carrier groups, which is why theirs are more advanced than the US' hypersonic program.
-"We were afraid of a Doomsday Gap...Our source was the New York Times."
-"Mr. President, we must not allow a mine shaft gap!"
The people who are supposed to be making this tech in the US - the smart young tech people - are currently occupied finding ways to show you ads while your eyes are closed, running crypto scams, or just gaming their lives away. Not a chance Yankee catches up.
Nah, the problem is the military industrial complex itself. It's hugely inefficient and dysfunctional.
As just one example, there was a secret project that literally got canceled for being too successful. The colonel in charge figured the scientists must be cheating on the tests.
The inefficiency plays a role in repelling talent from working on MIC projects, thankfully. Why would you deal with that bullshit for low pay when you can print money at Google (or trading crypto or options) and they don't harass you about smoking weed?
People like Oppenheimer are not making the radar to shoot down hypersonic missiles and never will.
A lot of these reports about how ahead Russian/Chinese military tech are, are really just trying to get more funding.
damn, turns out It’s usually more effective to just pay to get something built, instead of paying someone who wil pay someone who will pay someone to build a piece of shit that will explode so they can ask for more money
It's true, even though the "gib Pentagon more money" is true as well. Afaik, China is behind Russia on hypersonic rocketry, but with their money it won't last for too long and they'll overtake. Unless Russia and China decide on some division of labor in that regard, which is unlikely..
I you are interested in this topic, Andrey Martyanov writes a blog in English where he discusses hypersonics a lot, among other things miltary and his rants against "political science." It's quite polemical, but he's an engineer with military background, ex-USSR, now lives in the US, but judging by his texts obviously is not on the Pentagon or MSM dole. If you search "Avangard" / "Zirkon" / "Kalibr" you'll see there's a lot of stuf, here's one example: https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2021/02/now-they-finally-admitted-it.html
Oh no, it sounds like we need more military funding!
We love our 59mph passenger trains and supersonic aircraft are too loud! There's no public benefit in developing hypersonic tech.
Supersonic aircraft are definitely too loud. The Concorde was an absolute nightmare everywhere it went.
These days many(most?) major airports in the world have noise abatement procedures, the fact the general public was able to push back on this is a good thing at least when it comes to noise pollution. Obviously overall we still lost because there are some crazy stupid airports our there that are complete shit to the population, but it could be a lot worse.
The only reason China developed this tech is for military use because it was deemed extremely relevant to their survival i.e not just some novelty tech like US stealth planes, and the difference here is that usually the US would be the first one to waste money on this as long as you can claim it as part of the military budget it gets a green light.
