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How To: Risk World War III, and Blow Billions Doing It
The Pentagon’s plan to fire ballistic missiles at terrorists isn’t just a nuclear Armageddon risk. It’s a ludicrously expensive way to accidentally start World War III: each weapon could cost anywhere from a few hundred million to $1 billion. The Defense Department wants to spend about $240 million next year on the controversial “prompt global strike” project. Eventually, it could lead to weapons that could strike virtually anywhere in the planet within an hour or two. (Here’s an interview I did with Rachel Maddow on Friday about the plan.) But that quarter-billion would be the tiniest of down payments.
“There are no accurate cost estimates for the program, largely because the technology is unproven,” writes Joe Cirincione at ForeignPolicy.com. His back-of-the-envelope calculation: $10 billion for 10 conventionally-armed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, meant to strike at terrorists on the move. “Each missile with its tiny payload could easily go over $1 billion each.”
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“There are no accurate cost estimates for the program, largely because the technology is unproven,” writes Joe Cirincione at ForeignPolicy.com. His back-of-the-envelope calculation: $10 billion for 10 conventionally-armed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, meant to strike at terrorists on the move. “Each missile with its tiny payload could easily go over $1 billion each.”
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Military's Hypersonic Falcon Missile Test a Dud?
FOXNews.com
On the heels of last week's top-secret X37-B launch, the U.S. Air Force launched -- and ultimately crashed -- an experimental hypersonic glider theoretically capable of hitting Mach 20.
Conspiracy theorists have long reported on a secret project known as "Aurora" -- a hypersonic spy plane capable of speeds up to Mach 6 (3,700 mph). The Falcon seems to be the culmination of that project, but it's capable of much, much more, according to a fact sheet from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency(DARPA).
The sheet explains that once the vehicle accelerates into the upper atmosphere, it is designed to separate from its booster and glide across the Pacific at around 13,000 mph, or nearly Mach 20.
The test vehicle launched last week reached Mach 5 on launch, and was designed to crash and sink into the sea and sink near Kwajalein Atoll, 2,000 miles south-west of Hawaii, 30 minutes later and 4,000 miles from the launch site.
But in a statement released Friday night, DARPA said that while “the launch vehicle executed first-of-its-kind energy management maneuvers, clamshell payload fairing release and HTV-2 deployment,” all wasn't perfect with the superfast craft. “Approximately 9 minutes into the mission, telemetry assets experienced a loss of signal from the HTV-2. An engineering team is reviewing available data to understand this event.”
The DARPA press release did not specify whether any of the test maneuvers were completed by the Lockheed Martin built craft before controllers lost communications with the craft, the site adds.
In the real world, Project Aurora is called the "Prompt Global Strike (PGS) program" and it's actually part of the President's solution to maintaining peace in non-nuclear times. President Obama signed a treaty with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev last week that put both countries on the path to full nuclear disarmament.
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http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/...roject-aurora/
I bet China isn't to happy financing this, even if it's not working.FOXNews.com
On the heels of last week's top-secret X37-B launch, the U.S. Air Force launched -- and ultimately crashed -- an experimental hypersonic glider theoretically capable of hitting Mach 20.
Conspiracy theorists have long reported on a secret project known as "Aurora" -- a hypersonic spy plane capable of speeds up to Mach 6 (3,700 mph). The Falcon seems to be the culmination of that project, but it's capable of much, much more, according to a fact sheet from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency(DARPA).
The sheet explains that once the vehicle accelerates into the upper atmosphere, it is designed to separate from its booster and glide across the Pacific at around 13,000 mph, or nearly Mach 20.
The test vehicle launched last week reached Mach 5 on launch, and was designed to crash and sink into the sea and sink near Kwajalein Atoll, 2,000 miles south-west of Hawaii, 30 minutes later and 4,000 miles from the launch site.
But in a statement released Friday night, DARPA said that while “the launch vehicle executed first-of-its-kind energy management maneuvers, clamshell payload fairing release and HTV-2 deployment,” all wasn't perfect with the superfast craft. “Approximately 9 minutes into the mission, telemetry assets experienced a loss of signal from the HTV-2. An engineering team is reviewing available data to understand this event.”
The DARPA press release did not specify whether any of the test maneuvers were completed by the Lockheed Martin built craft before controllers lost communications with the craft, the site adds.
In the real world, Project Aurora is called the "Prompt Global Strike (PGS) program" and it's actually part of the President's solution to maintaining peace in non-nuclear times. President Obama signed a treaty with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev last week that put both countries on the path to full nuclear disarmament.
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http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/...roject-aurora/