[cpgxiii]

Anyone who describes hydrocarbon fuels and high-test peroxide oxidiser as a stable and proven combination is a charlatan trying to sell you something questionable. If you want a proven liquid fuel combination that works in missile environment conditions with well-behaved ignition, Hydrazine/UDMH+N2O4 is the king.

Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases; anyone making a sincere case for liquid fuels should be making it on the basis of munitions that are best designed around them (notably, of course, most of the long range cruise missiles that have received the most hand-wringing about stockpile depletion are already air-breathing jet-fueled). The actual stockpile issues wrt solid rocket fuel are high-performance SAM/ABM interceptors, and those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases

The article says this. Liquids are better from a production perspective. In the Cold War, storage and deployment dominated. That need isn’t gone today. But it’s supplanted in priority by the need to be able to rapidly produce these munitions.

> those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents

Again, the article acknowledges this. It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online, and even then, we’d still be unfavorably production constrained compared to China.

[nixon_why69]

Solving a chemical manufacturing problem in the US has GOT to be easier than taking on additional operations and mechanical complexity for every single missile in combat theatres.

The article cites permitting and procurement snafus for why it's so hard to stand up new AP plants, but the same procurement process would apply for new liquid engine designs with all their moving parts, no?

[JumpCrisscross]

> Solving a chemical manufacturing problem in the US has GOT to be easier

Why? We are currently scaling rocket-engine production for the launch industry. We aren’t doing the same for anything like AP. I don’t think anyone would blink at a well-resourced effort to build a new small-satellite launch vehicle in a couple years, for instance.

[cpgxiii]

Satellite launch is so much easier than storable SAM/ABM, the comparison is not really useful.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Satellite launch is so much easier than storable SAM/ABM

Sure. But the hard part of SAM/ABM doesn’t need to be in the propulsion for many use cases, e.g. those where heightened readiness states are predictable. We’re using storable missiles for use cases where that storability isn’t adding any value.

[cpgxiii]

Where exactly is that storability not needed? In the VLS cells of USN warships? In the missile canisters of field-mobile SAM batteries being driven cross-country (which, for survivability on the modern battlefield need to be moving a lot more)?

The only real cases a non-storable SAM/ABM is viable are where the target being protected is so small and so known that (1) all missile infrastructure on/near the target is vulnerable and (2) sufficient advance warning is available to handle liquid fuels as needed. There is really only one case of this: Guam. I think there is a case that a dedicated unique-to-Guam liquid-fueled SAM/ABM farm would go a long way to addressing stockpile and magazine depth concerns.

[cpgxiii]

The munitions that (1) are currently solid-fueled and (2) represent a stockpile depletion issue are all SAM/ABM interceptors. The only new liquid-fueled missiles worth the development effort are a liquid-fueled ramjet equivalent to the MBDA Meteor and air-breathing hypersonics.

> It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online

Oh boy, have you seen how long SAM/ABM development takes? The critical munitions that actually need to be designed here would be liquid-fueled equivalents to THAAD, PAC-3, SM-2, SM-3, and SM-6. Not yet-another-cruise-missile which is already liquid-fueled.

[JumpCrisscross]

> critical munitions that actually need to be designed here would be liquid-fueled equivalents to THAAD, PAC-3, SM-2, SM-3, and SM-6

Correct. If we design it now we can build it at massive scale within a decade. If we stick to the current, broken model we might be able to 4x in the same timeline.

[_DeadFred_]

I personally am excited for more military base superfund sites across the country from all the liquid fuel spills.