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Saddam Hussein's survived the 1991 Gulf War, and so did his regime. The Americans weren't satisfied with accomplishing the UN-authorised mission of liberating Kuwait. They wanted the whole Saddam regime gone despite it being hostile to the favourite bogeyman Iran and despite them being just fine with Saddam gassing his own people and shooting Scuds into Iranian cities just a few years earlier.
The USAF thought that it could do its part easily in the future if only it had some super fast precision missile that it could use to kill another country's politician based on intelligence. The whole process from intelligence gathering to giving the order to shoot would last hours, so at least the missile would have to be super quick to assassinate before the perosn is somewhere else.
This led to the 1997 FastHawk program. Nothing came of it, but the USAF stayed fixated on the idea, and the incredible 100% every time failure with 'decapitating' strikes attempts at Hussein's life in 2003 did not change this.
The 'hypersonic' missile saga went on and on, much money was spent, additional rationales (hypersonic missiles manoeuvre more and are supposedly harder to intercept than normal cruise missiles or (quasi)ballistic missiles) and very recently the USAF had to cancel its ARRW program.
Don't worry, they're continuing another program (HACM), so they're going to spend more money.
Meanwhile, the army is buying a quasi-ballistic missile (LRPF) and both air force and navy keep using subsonic cruise missiles, all of which are supposedly effective enough to justify thier spending. I wonder what hypersonic missiles are needed for if the other missiles work as advertised? The 'decapitation' strategy never really worked due to poor intelligence and slow process, after all. A quicker missile won't fix that.
related:
/2014/08/will-marine-corps-apc-racket-ever-end.html
/2021/11/hypersonic-missiles-of-long-range.html
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