Even with the big arms control news today, conventional missiles look like the wave of the future. Get used to cheap, non-nuclear and ballistic weaponry.
I’ll be writing more about this, but these programs have been sorta on the fringes of the defense community for some time. Lockheed, a few years ago, got funds to do concept work on a mid-range submarine-launched intermediate range missile, and–even though the program faded–the company demonstrated
that cheap missiles for conventional strikes are within easy reach.
Well, now that Prompt Global Strike is getting trendy, it seems everybody is getting into the game. Sharon Weinberger, over at AOL News, catches Boeing proposing a global strike missile:
The company says it has a missile concept ready, and that if it gets the go-ahead and funding from the Pentagon, the weapon could be ready for fielding within 30 months. The missile, which was developed in the 1980s, is already “flight proven,” Margaret Morse, Boeing’s director for strategic missile systems, told reporters today at a press briefing on the company’s missile defense work.
Boeing dresses the project up with a “hypersonic” moniker, but…I have my doubts about how applicable ’80s tech actually was. Sorta sounds like Boeing has a missile, and wants to fold research on a fancy whamodyne re-entry vehicle into the project. We’ll see. But there may be a market out there for this kind of weapon–a conventional ballistic missile.
And that kinda scares me. And it probably should scare everybody.
More–a lot more–on this later.
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Given that the ICBMs currently in use cost over $20 Million-a-pop, there’s going to be a LOT of $$$pork$$$ in this program…
Good Lord Almighty. Have any of those putzim even thought about what will likely happen if a nuclear-armed state sees an inbound ICBM?
“Global strike” is a very bad idea.
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