Putin's Xmas gift

[berth]

Russia's hypersonic missile system is claimed to be up and running: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-50927648

I find this kind of alarming - it's probably not actually ready but I wouldn't want to play poker against Vladimir Putin.

But neither would I fancy playing against Trump. The timing is no coincidence is my take on it.

[Observe]

Doesn't change much really. Other countries could still lob conventional ballistic missiles at Russia and there isn't much they could do about it and supersonic surface hugging cruise missiles will still do the job, because anti-missiles defense systems remain fairly ineffective in most cases. Future high energy lasers will probably be the best defense against missiles regardless of speed. At least that's my take on it.

[Vertigo 7]

I know the Navy has a lot of anti missile defense systems that are highly effective. 75% of the Navy's armament is defensive in nature, but specifically the Standard Missile... I know SM2 was in service while I was in, and SM3 and SM4 were in development, but there's some crazy tech involved with those missiles and the AEGIS platform. Then there's RAM and CIWS and the hybrid variants of the 2 combined. But those are super sonic systems and how they would fare against a hyper sonic missile would be questionable, but given enough launch notice and a projected course of the incoming missile, it's feasible they could be shot down. The just have to detonate in the path of the missile, not on top of it.

Really the entire purpose of an antimissile system is not to detonate the incoming missile, but to render the incoming missile incapable of flight. All of these anti air missiles send shrapnel out like a grenade, except larger, that's designed to rip apart air frames. SMs can be passively guided by the AEGIS platform and control can be handed off from ship to ship, eg., a DDG parked off the coast of Virginia can launch a missile, another AEGIS equipped ship 256NM away can take over guidance of the missile, so on and so forth and detonate it in the path of a threat without ever going to active target tracking. I know the newer SM variants are even capable of intercontinental flight.

But yes, the new laser systems seems to be the latest and greatest in defensive systems. Plus we have rail guns now too, so that's a thing. Massive impact force with ammo consisting of nothing but a chunk of metal and capable of pinpointing a targets thousands of miles away....

Russia has always been trying to one up the US in the arms race and there's been some scary stuff I've heard about over the years, like a torpedo that's capable of super sonic speeds. Supposedly it operates by generating an air bubble around it allowing it to basically fly underwater. There's no ASW platform that would be capable of defending against it. Of course, this was never confirmed AFAIK. But Russia would be damn foolish to get into a shooting war. It's not just the US they would have to contend with and MAD has been the single biggest deterrent in that regard throught he cold war with the Soviet Union and beyond.

[felter]

All I can say is why, what's the point of it. It's not actually something one can brag about. Of course maybe he is trying to compensate for something he is rather lacking in, who knows.

[fiksal]

I won't be able to confirm nor deny any of this... Russian news is usually full of propaganda of this kind. Weapons is a sort of a pride thing.

But I did say before that Putin's machine has been ramping up anti US propaganda for last 5 or so years, internally especially.

[berth]

Yeah, I think it's his gift to the Russian people as much as the West. A bit of "aren't we awesome?" posturing, just ahead of their Xmas holidays.