SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
America's top nuclear commander described a grim scenario for U.S. forces facing off against a new breed of high-speed weapons that Russia and China are developing.
"We don't have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us," Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. This means that, as of now, the U.S. has to rely on deterrence against these so-called hypersonic weapons, he said.
Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., then asked the general to explain what a hypersonic weapon is and what it does. "A hypersonic threat is a system that starts out ballistic, so you'll see it like a ballistic missile, but then it depresses the trajectory and flies more like a cruise missile or airplane," Hyten said. "It goes up into the lower reaches of space and turns immediately back down and then levels out." At that point, Hyten said, the weapon will fly at very high speed, which is where the term hypersonic comes from.
"Both Russia and China are aggressively pursuing hypersonic capabilities," Hyten told Inhofe. "We've watched them test those capabilities."
See also: Russia will put advanced mach 20 hypersonic boost and glide missile into service in 2019
(Score: 5, Insightful) by toddestan on Saturday March 24 2018, @04:08PM (2 children)
The other thing that bothered me a lot about Cash for Clunkers is that it was supposed to be "green", but if your car's EPA mileage rating was higher than 18 MPG, it was ineligible for the program no matter its current condition or how much of a clunker it really was. So the people who did the right thing and chose more efficient cars got the finger, and the program was just bailing out the irresponsible people who bought into the whole SUV craze a few years previous and now were facing $3-$4/gallon gas.
There's a lot of better ways the program could have been run, but if it was up to me I would have just canned the whole thing as economically irresponsible.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday March 24 2018, @10:48PM (1 child)
Spot on, toddestan. I wasn't aware of the MPG requirement, but I do remember something about MPG being part of the deal.
Please remember, when you talk about things like "people who did the right thing..." - some of us have to drive work trucks. I happen to drive one of the most efficient, but there's only so much you can do when you need to carry lots of heavy stuff sometimes.
I think a MUCH more important metric is the total fuel consumption. Maybe I have a 35 MPG vehicle, but I drive 50K miles / year. Or maybe I have a 14 MPG vehicle, but only drive it 4K miles / year. Again, do-gooders (the govt.) rushing into stupid decisions. My point is: if congress would implement a correction system, like maybe a good network of, IDK, SN moderators? And revise and refine laws, maybe society would start improving.
Maybe a bunch of us need to organize a case study and report on the Linux kernel development model, or SN moderator model, and extrapolate that model into an augmentation / addon for our govt.
BTW, is toddestan near Tajikistan?
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Monday March 26 2018, @11:21PM
Well, I was writing that from a "Greenie" perspective. Though actually, the Clunkers program did have different rules for commercial vehicles, which ended up meaning that very few of them got turned in - because as you might expect, it doesn't make sense to intentionally destroy a productive asset. Unless of course the vehicle was pretty much used up and would have been scrapped soon anyway.... in which case free money!
Of course, I really don't have a problem with people driving trucks and SUVs, it's just that they shouldn't get a handout for doing so. Or for that matter, a handout for driving an efficient vehicle. And certainly no bailouts if you make a poor choice.
I agree on you with the mileage thing. I don't actually drive that many miles a year, and I've kind of wondered if I had a truck and would let people borrow it if they topped off the tank, if I would almost never have to pay for gas. And of course, it's always fun to out-smug the Prius drivers who brag about the mileage they got coming into work by pointing out I biked in and used zero gas.
Actually closer to Uzbekistan :)