[nprecup]

A hypersonic vehicle can travel much faster than that. We're talking about the ability to strike targets anywhere on the globe in minutes. That IS destabilizing. The example of striking carrier groups in the pacific is only the tip of the iceberg.

This race amounts to a global game of chicken, and the stakes of a mistake are world war. Let's hope cooler heads prevail.

On the other hand, there are some pretty amazing applications of air breathing hypersonic technology. You could use it to launch equipment, satellites and people into space much more efficiently (air breathing means you don't need to carry an oxidizer!). Or imagine being able to fly from NY to Hong Kong in an hour! This kind of tech is not as imminant as the article is implying. We've only barely demonstrated small air breathing hypersonic vehicles as feasible (see X-51 and X-43). The X-43 was a crude initial test that demonstrated flights of only up to 12 seconds. The X-51 managed to go for 6 minutes. Scaling this up to a transportation vehicle will pose a significant engineering challenge.

[mikeash]

That capability has been around since the 1950s, and has been deployed widely enough to wreck civilization on a moment's notice since the 1960s. What do hypersonic weapons do in this respect that ICBMs don't? Is it just that they're cheaper and so could potentially be more numerous?

[eternalban]

ICBMs are held in mutual check by MAD.

US enjoys conventional dominance due to ability to project conventional force anywhere. This capability is in part supported by the ability to effectively shield remote force projection platforms from conventional threats. (For atomic, see MAD.)

HS conventional weapons can neutralize the defensive shields. This undermines the projection platforms. That would make US insecure. If it insists on remaining hegemon, it needs to shoot its load first. So, destablizing.

HS conventional and nuclear armed weapons look and act the same. An HS projectile coming your way gives you a short window of time to determine if it is conventional or atomic. Not a good time to toss coins. Shoot off atomic load first. Destabilizing.

That is the thesis.

[mikeash]

I thought the main things allowing for MAD at this point were the ability of retaliatory ICBMs to launch quickly before incoming weapons destroy them, and the ability for ballistic missile submarines to survive a strike by being hidden, and thus retaliate at leisure.

I don't see how hypersonic weapons change either of that. They're not any faster than a missile, so the response time isn't worse, and they don't do anything to uncover submarines. What am I missing?

[eternalban]

There is less critical ambiguity in the triad weapons. HS weapons introduce ambiguity in the above calculus. So with former, the global mafia could (safely) play proxy war in far flung location. Now, they can't do so, safely. All members of the global mafia cartel are concerned, since proxy wars are very good for [(settling)] business.

[mikeash]

There's no ambiguity only because nobody has bothered to mount conventional weapons on ICBMs. There's nothing preventing that, and indeed the US has seriously considered it as a way to implement Prompt Global Strike. Those plans have been held back by the fear that launching such a weapon could be mistaken for a nuclear launch, of course.

Is the problem with hypersonic weapons just that it looks like the players won't make that same choice?

[breatheoften]

Based on the arguments in this thread -- I don't see the difference with respect to m.a.d. either.

HS launch could carry conventional or nuclear threat, it's not possible to know which after detection of launch. For mad, we must always treat these launches as nuclear -- and therefore in the end, no one uses these weapons (unless they are intending to launch global nuclear war)...?

[treebeard901]

> All members of the global mafia cartel are concerned

Who are these members?

[chucksmash]

A lot of the apparent ambiguity could be resolved by looking at the number of launches and their trajectories:

A) there are simultaneous launches against many different targets. Conventional or not, the enemy is trying to remove your ability to retaliate. The implication is clear.

B) Only a small number of weapons have been fired off at one or just a few targets. Even if the weapons inflict heavy casualties, your ability to retaliate remains intact.

[mikeash]

There's another option as well: have enough redundancy to have substantial forces survive even a massive first strike, absorb it, and then retaliate at leisure. This seems to be the US's approach:

https://www.armscontrol.org/act/1997_11-12/pdd

I imagine other countries with smaller arsenals may not have that option. Even your B may not necessarily be an option, if their command structure relies on centralized control and would be vulnerable to a decapitation strike.

[throwanem]

> That would make US insecure.

My earlier point about Moskits was that such weapons already exist, and have already had this effect. We just haven't admitted it yet, and almost certainly won't until we overstep ourselves and somebody sends one of our carrier strike groups to the bottom.

[M_Grey]

You think that blowing carrier battle groups out of the water wouldn't lead to a nuclear strike?

[eternalban]

The side using these weapons hopes that US is rational and would rather lose face and backdown rather than take down the whole world with it.

So it is true, these new weapons are destabilizing.

The fact that US stumbled like a drunk into these conflicts that allowed these test cases by Russia and China to be on the table has to be one of the line items against the treasonous criminals that have been running this country for the past few decades. It did not have to be this way.

[M_Grey]

It didn't, but I think you're still underestimating the panic reaction of a country losing its major strategic assets. There is a reason that superpowers fight through proxies; we all have nuclear recourse if it goes sufficiently wrong.

[gozur88]

>A hypersonic vehicle can travel much faster than that. We're talking about the ability to strike targets anywhere on the globe in minutes. That IS destabilizing.

Not really. Everything you can do offensively with a hypersonic cruise missile you can do more cheaply with ballistic missiles, which use a 70 year old technology. It takes about twenty five minutes to hit something on the other side of the world.

We've been in that global game of chicken since the early days of the cold war. Nothing has changed, in that respect. SLBMs have been within five minutes coastal land targets for more than fifty years.

To really upset the nuclear applecart you'd need something like a reliable submarine detection system that could be deployed on satellites.

[Retric]

They however are less cost effective and thus less dangerous.

[3pt14159]

Not if you run the simulations. A city or three might get nuked in a tit-tat-tit exchange, but total war isn't currently likely. During the 60s and 70s there was the _chance_ we could just nuke all their nukes at once and maybe they'd get London, NY, or Washington, but we'd survive. A total strike is no longer even a first reach option because even if they level us and somehow cripple our nukes or kentic weapons we can just unleash a bioweapon on everyone and it's payback game over. I look at these weapons in the same way. There might be a couple dozen million deaths from an exchange that starts with them, but after some tense phone calls things will deescalate.

What I worry about is actors smaller than a well funded nation state getting weapons like these, and for that we need intelligence.

[nprecup]

I don't imagine things de-escalating after a couple dozen million deaths... But I hope you're right.

[ekianjo]

Thats not how the chain of command would actually work in a nuclear exchange. You are much more likely to go all in anyway.

[Spooky23]

That's the assumption that MAD rests upon.

Personally, I don't buy it. We've had many known near miss incidents that should have been escalated. I don't think that the people sitting in front of the keys will turn them.

[3pt14159]

Chain of command starts with the president. Look to how Moscow has acted multiple times when there were nuclear worries due to faulty equipment. Multiple times they waited until confirmation of a hit. Now thank goodness nuclear weapons haven't been used since multiple parties have had them, but had a strike actually occurred what do you think the response from Moscow would have been? Full military preparedness (obviously), including potential launching of a tit for tat response. But what do they have to gain from launching everything? For all they know some insane general in America launched the thing. If they don't see anything else coming why would they commit suicide by launching everything?

There is no benefit.

[adrianN]

A decade after the release of “Strangelove,” the Soviet Union began work on the Perimeter system—-a network of sensors and computers that could allow junior military officials to launch missiles without oversight from the Soviet leadership. Perhaps nobody at the Kremlin had seen the film. Completed in 1985, the system was known as the Dead Hand. Once it was activated, Perimeter would order the launch of long-range missiles at the United States if it detected nuclear detonations on Soviet soil and Soviet leaders couldn’t be reached. Like the Doomsday Machine in “Strangelove,” Perimeter was kept secret from the United States; its existence was not revealed until years after the Cold War ended.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/almost-everything-in...

[3pt14159]

The episode I'm referring to was after 1985, with Boris Yeltsin in the early 90s. However Perimeter was designed or used, I'm sure the Russians didn't create a system that caused total war after a skirmish of a couple small nuclear weapons.

[breatheoften]

The premise in the thread seems to be that after the first nuclear skirmishes, the only optimal strategy is to delay all-out response on the hope that initial firings were a fluke, an error, or a mistake. And that the ability for a delayed response is assured, so there's no point in rushing to press the annilihation button.

It may be true that delay would be the best option for maximizing probability of survivability in that scenario, however I do not think the capability exists to actually do this -- it might not even be possible to implement this strategy. I don't think it's possible to construct a control system that would manage the diverse array of retaliatory launch systems in a way that both preserves "guaranteed total annihilation of aggressor" and "arbitrary delay for retaliation after first strike"

[3pt14159]

You only need a very small number of doomsday devices in order to allow arbitrary delay for retaliation after first strike. Ten sleeper agents with extreme bio weapons in the likely aggressor country, for example.

There is no purpose in rushing to doomsday and a great deal of interested parties in not doing so.