
U.S. Has Been Watching Russia's Nuclear-Powered Cruise Missiles Crash and Burn - IntronExon
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/18948/u-s-has-been-secretly-watching-russias-nuclear-powered-cruise-missiles-crash-and-burn
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obblekk
Does anyone else get a sense of de ja vu from the news this week?

\- Nuclear weapons development, specifically targeted at the US

\- Trade Tariffs

\- Improper security classification in the whitehouse

\- Israel, Iran threatening war

\- China becomes a dictatorship

Feels like we're going backward in time for some reason.

~~~
adventured
It's the inflection switch from globalism, back to nationalism. A substantial
increase in military conflict is guaranteed to come from it. We'll also see a
massive leap forward in new, particularly stunning technologies again as
nations begin to aggressively compete through technology to ensure survival.
Nothing drives a leap forward quite like that.

~~~
analogic
How long till we reach the point where the only viable strategy against the
enemy bot ai is to give full control to our bot ai? Even smallest delay would
matter so too dangerous to have human in the loop.

~~~
rocqua
You made me think of roko's bassilisk [1] I must say that I, for one, welcome
the rule of our robot overlords.

[1]
[https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Roko's_basilisk](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Roko's_basilisk)

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roywiggins
And that's why we didn't test one ourselves back in the 60s. You need a
special kind of attitude to be willing to fly one of these things over your
own country.

Or perhaps just ready access to barely-populated Arctic regions where nobody's
watching you drop nuclear reactors around.

These things are the most over-the-top method of beating missile defenses. A
normal response would be to just deploy more missiles, which are cheaper and
faster to build than defense, so it's easy to keep up. But no, apparently they
went in this direction.

~~~
eveningcoffee
> _These things are the most over-the-top method of beating missile defenses.
> A normal response would be to just deploy more missiles_

Deploying more missiles would be visible and would clearly demonstrate
aggressive intentions.

~~~
roywiggins
More aggressive than a radiation-belching nuclear ramjet?

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garmaine
We don’t know the design used here. There are nuclear thermal designs that do
not enit contaminated exhaust.

~~~
brerlapn
Not according to TFA. Do you have a source for your counterassertion? I doubt
Tyler Rogoway would get such a point of fact incorrect - even when I've
disagreed with his analysis I've never found him to be dishonest.

~~~
garmaine
I have prior training as both aero and nuclear engineer and there are obvious
design space solutions? NERVA was an open cycle reactor meaning the propulsive
intake air made direct contact with the core, and ablation is what caused
radioactive exhaust. Closed cycle designs are more typical in production
systems in which a high temperature conventional radiator would transfer heat
from the core to the jet reaction chamber. The article is flat out
wrong/misinformed.

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gaius
The joke's on Russia. American anti-missile defences couldn't stop their old
missiles anyway!

~~~
adventured
It's baffling why either Russia or China would be concerned about US efforts
around missile defense. There's no scenario in the next 20 years where any
nation can stop 50 or 100 incoming nukes. I've always assumed it's mostly a
propaganda battle, as Russia can't be that stupid. They can't afford to spend
what the US can to develop missile defenses over the coming decades, so they
want to reassure their people that it's not a problem regardless.

~~~
blackrock
Have you really thought this through?

Did you realize that China is still in a state of civil war with Taiwan?

The two had a civil war after WW2. The Taiwan side lost the mainland, and fled
to Taiwan.

Normally, when you lose a civil war, you don't create a new government.
Otherwise, when the United States had their own civil war, then the southern
states would have created the Confederate States of America, and slavery would
still be alive and legal today.

Do you agree with this premise?

Taiwan is very strategically important to China. But, the United States is now
using Taiwan to contain China. And they are using all the excuses like
democracy and all that, but it's easy to see through the propaganda.
Otherwise, why isn't Saudi Arabia a democracy by now?

If you think through all the angles, then you might actually realize the
insane rationality behind China's motives.

That said, the United States is not China's enemy. But with the way
geopolitics plays out, the United States is now firmly committed to securing
Taiwan. Thus, both nations are now going to head into conflict.

The thing is, any military conflict between the United States and China, will
turn nuclear. Once those missiles start flying, then sell your stocks, because
the world is going to burn down. This is a pretty grim analysis, so I hope it
never happens.

~~~
megaman22
The one china policy is retarded. One would hope that the US government would
stand with a long-time ally above passing pressure from an authoritarian
dictatorship.

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wcarss
I'm glad that this story notes the elevated isotope detection levels last year
and the possibility that the US detection plane sent up around that time may
have been doing some classified investigation of evidence of an engine of this
sort. The article sadly (I mean, of course, but still sadly) has nothing
conclusive or very new to say on that topic, but it's still interesting to see
others are also curious about whether there's a link.

Makes me wonder also, though probably a lot less likely of a link, about the
other story run by thedrive recently of the released FAA and ATC conversation
regarding the unknown, fast moving, large white airplane-like craft that
wandered up the west coast late last year.

I'm not sure if an infinite range nuclear-reactor-containing "cruise
missile"'s visible characteristics would necessarily be "missile-like", i.e. a
cigar with small fins, or if it could reasonably at that point just be... an
airplane. It would be ballsy as hell for a Russian experimental nuclear-
missile-plane to fly deep deep into American airspace in a common corridor
with civilian commercial airliners, like, that would seem to be way too far
into an insane possibility that would demand a war-like response, and it's far
likelier to have been a US craft from a base in the region, but... it would
really be the _ultimate_ test of the system's penetrative and evasive
capabilities, if it were such a thing.

What do other folks think?

~~~
chiph
Running a live test of a nuclear powered aircraft/drone would certainly be an
environmental incident (I'm avoiding the use of the word "disaster" until one
crashes).

Running such a test in the airspace of a potential 1st tier opponent would be
madness - it would absolutely be seen as a warlike act and repercussions would
be immediate and widespread.

It's not like having a moving radiation source would be "stealthy" in any way
- after 9/11 many US police departments bought portable Geiger counters so
tracking one would just be a matter of correlating the readings.

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n1000
Anyone knows of some reading material on how such an engine could technically
work? I wonder how a nuclear reactor could create propulsion.

~~~
stevenwoo
IIRC in Feynman' Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, some government folks
surveyed the people working on the Manhattan Project for prospective usages of
nuclear power to patent and a nuclear powered airplane was one of his first
ideas, using the heat from the nuclear plant to heat air for a jet turbine.

~~~
castratikron
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc9gwPB78lk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc9gwPB78lk)

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clon
> At the most basic conceptual level, the weapon could conceivably reach
> supersonic speeds, fly at very low altitudes, and have effectively unlimited
> range thanks to its nuclear powerplant

If the Ruskies have developed a reactionless rocket engine capable of crashing
further down range than experimental error, I would keep silent as well /s

~~~
voidmain
Reactionless? Presumably the reaction mass would be... air.

~~~
clon
Oh my.. Never thought of that. Surely it does not use the atmosphere as the
primary circuit coolant?

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TheOtherHobbes
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto)

~~~
behindmyscreen
If only there were a good way of heating the air without contaminating it with
radioactive emissions. If we could figure that out, such an engine would be
useful in many non war related jobs.

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exabrial
The good news is, no one wants a nuclear war anymore... at least I hope.

I think what changed is largely trade. China, usually the USA's enemy, has
benefited enormously by trading with the USA and providing a cheap labor pool
for manufacturing after Unions made it too expensive to continue manual
manufacturing in the United States.

So if my theory is true, it's probably worth allowing vestment in our fellow
nuclear superpowers. Seems backwards, but most things in economics and game
theory are.

~~~
behindmyscreen
Unions didn't make it too expensive to manufacture. China just made it way
cheaper (slight difference there). A Union made product doesn't increase the
cost of the product much, but employing people at wages that provide a
moderate income level does reduce profitability.

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desireco42
Usually when you are testing things, they will fail a lot. Like SpaceX, a lot
of boosters crashed, that doesn't mean it is less awesome what they developed
and it worked in the end once they got kinks out.

This is weird article.

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exabrial
I'm curious if the orbital infrared detection satellites we have would see
this object. Seems like the theory of operation means it has to be
ridiculously hot to work.

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golergka
Why would US bother? All the news about new Russian missiles were mostly for
interior propaganda consumption anyway.

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thegreatcosmo
Maybe but either way the era of USA unilaterally pushing wars just ended.
Russia with their hypersonic nukes and proxy wars wins have just made western
imperialism via war and culture have very high costs.

~~~
adventured
Nothing has changed at all in fact. For better or worse.

Russia just rattled their sabre because they're desperate. They've recognized
an inability to keep up economically with the US and China, and they will fall
further and further behind because of that.

Russia's population hasn't expanded in nearly four decades. In that time the
US has added 100 million people. China added 400 million people. That
population expansion is an economic weapon.

Russia's economy hasn't expanded since 2006-2007. Putin entirely failed to
transition the Russian economy off of dependency on energy prices. Without
economic growth, they can't keep spending more on their military. Meanwhile
the US and China perpetually expand their economies.

The gap between the US and Russia economically has gone from 11 to 1 in 1989,
to 15 to 1. And it's worth noting that output gap in 1989 was already extreme,
as Russia was effectively a bankrupt nation at that point. That the US has
continued to put distance between it and Russia economically, is a massive
failure by Putin. Or to put it in another perspective, Canada now has a larger
economy than Russia.

And then the China story. Well, that's just a joke of a comparison. In 1989
China had an economy 1/3 smaller than Russia. Today it's 10 times larger. It
leaves Russia wilting in contrast, they've become a second tier power.

~~~
thegreatcosmo
While your logic makes sense, there is far more to war then economics,
otherwise the middle east wouldnt be a mess, and then there is the vietnam
war.

Something has changed greatly. It is the fall of globalism and the rise of
nationalism. Putins reminder he has the will to use MAD is sign of the new
times.

