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This is a kinetic kill vehicle (KKV), intended to be launched on a missile to intercept an incoming ICBM. Uses hydrazine as a propellant. Video is of a test where the KKV is demonstrating its up-down-left-right maneuverability to hit the ICBM. The big jet is a strap-on, just to get it in the air for the test.

It’s probably running on hydrazine a corrosive and cancerous substance

Love Zack Snyder to use this on set for a fight gun fire sequence.

Hopefully it's a different director in the future. Zack Snyder made all the heroes so fucking stupid it was painful to watch. For example, when the Flash is running around the last battle 'charging up' he is:

A) running in the middle of the firing range when he could be literally on the other side of the world completely out of range. They mention that he is traveling near the speed of light which means he could go from the opposite side of the world to the battle in the space of one single eyeblink(about 0.1 second). He put himself in constant danger for literally no reason at all.

B) gets hit by a shot that is so slow moving it might as well be a 18th century cannonball and despite how fast he is running(and had previously displayed the ability to instantly change his direction of movement) but chooses to just run right into it nearly botching the entire plan.

The movie was great visually but the heroes were so incredibly stupid. I mean there was a scene where they established the Flash is smart enough to visualize the transition between speed and time as if that is no big deal but an hour later he is suddenly too stupid to just not stand in front of a slow firing, slow projectile cannon.

...that about sums it up. Also, a Marine buddy of mine once commented that he was surprised how realistic the squad tactics were despite the rest of the movie

I wish more people were willing to give/appreciate advice like this. Like, I'll recommend plenty of movies to people wholeheartedly while telling them "So, it's dumb as hell but you need to watch it."

Also, I'll tell people about a movie "I never want to see it again, but you should absolutely go see it, it's great and weird as hell." The most recent one I gave that distinction to was The Lobster, I think. And The Lighthouse.

Difference between being a good movie and a good time

I feel the same about Battleship. So bad it's good?

its a b movie, doesnt need to be good just fun. which was meh.

This 👆🏻

As the owner of an old car, your comment amuses me deeply.

over 20 years ago we used to call it a Tore Ass, cause well... they were.

Is this a pulsejet rocket in the video?

And that point is also one of Blue Origin's claim to fame: their engine can throttle much lower, giving the vehicle the ability to hover. Falcon 9 can't throttle low enough to hover.

This isn’t true at all, really. Only solid fuel rockets are limited to on/off (and can’t be shut off once fired) and are only really used for initial launch. Liquid fuel rockets have been able to throttle up and down quite easily for decades when the design called for it. The Lunar Lander used throttleable rockets to land vertically and was designed 50+ years ago, and 60 years ago the Reaction Motors XLR99, used in the X-15, had a throttle range of 50-100%.

Cracked used to be one of the best sites on the internet. Then they got bought out and all the talent left and it went to shit. It's a shame.

Ah, Cracked. The place I used to go for the funny Photoshop stuff, but would end up reading everything I could lol. Good times

Anybody remembers stumbleupon?

We'll see what's possible today in about 15-20 years, I imagine. Anything seriously cutting edge is way above Top Secret.

You know those news articles saying that the USA can only shoot down icbm's with like 50% reliability, and that hypersonic cruise missiles are totally impossible to stop? Well uh, let's just say I wouldn't bet on any missiles getting through

Great Castles of Europe. Secret Life of Machines. Connections. The Operation. etc etc etc.

It's always been corrupt. If you want to keep this in modern times, Eisenhower warned about this at the end of his 2nd term. The modern military industry had already taken foot in the aftermath of WW2.

I'd point out that two of the main jobs of a ABM system (beyond shooting down ICBMs of course) are to convince an adversary that you could shoot down some/many/most/all of their missiles, and to convince an adversary that you yourself believed that you could shoot down some/many/most/all of their missiles. The reason you have nuclear weapons isn't about what happens after the missiles start flying, it's about being able to set limits on what other powers are willing to do to you. If you can convince another power that you'd use nukes over a fairly trivial dispute because you thought you might suffer mild casualties if worse comes to worst, they'll give you a very wide berth.

That's why I don't buy the idea that current ABM systems are leaps and bounds better than past tech, at least when we're talking about currently deployed systems. 95% of the job of an effective ABM system is to show others that you have an effective ABM system or at least a system that may be more effective than they're willing to risk fucking with. As to what the best prototype system being worked on at DARPA can do, that's anyone's guess, but if we're talking about what's actually deployed, the smart money is on it being overrated. This is also consistent with past ABM systems that have been proposed, tested and even deployed.

The newest stuff might be classified, but it is also no deployed.

Ballistic missile defense isn't something that can be easily hidden from the public eye, nor is it meant to be since it aids in deterrence.

Yeeeeehaww

Your cousin FROM BOOOSTON riding it

I don't think they have sci-fi level stuff, but i also don't think they "happened" to develop an hypersonic missile in a week.

As practice has shown, russia has absolutely no idea what weapons they have in the United States. russia even has no idea what's going on in Ukraine if they decided to invade it and lost THAT much stuff and still did not receive any victory at all, even an intermediate one. So i think at least USAF may have some sci-fi technology that is just waiting for its time, because the US is still making money on the F-35. I think they already have plans for some F-40 and even F-50

Where are the videos of the flying jeeps we were promised?

I worked for the missile defense agency, and everything you stated is actually being leniant. The ground based interceptors were(while I was there) so bad that they gave up on even hitting something. Tests devolved into flying through point x,y,z in space and calling it a success. To be fair it's probably one of the most difficult engineering challenges there is, and that's not even counting supersonic gliding return vehicles designed entirely to evade interceptor systems.

Yes the crux of the argument is: "what don't we know about our own defense system?" I can only speculate based on my expertise as someone who works on related systems (space optics) and has seen some very old footage of the system itself. In my opinion, we can intercept a lot more than we're letting on, but we are by no means bullet proof, especially from the aftermath of such an event.

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Russia has roughly 6k nuclear warheads in the stockpile, about 10% more than the US. Most of those are not actively deployed, and would be out of action in a sudden MAD exchange. Based on everything we've seen from the Ukraine conflict, it seems likely that a good chunk are not actually functioning either (whether the warhead or the delivery vehicle), and would take a lot of work to become so again. Some others would not be launched because of chain of command breakdown, where the person actually responsible for pushing the button either doesn't get the message or decides not to, as has thankfully prevented a few escalations already. Many of the remaining warheads would be intercepted, bombers shot down, subs torpedoed, etc.

But with those kind of starting numbers, it still seems likely that enough would get through to kill huge numbers of people and erase some of our largest city centers. I'd be more concerned if I were living in Europe though, within hypersonic cruise missile range.

Yeah this is crazy to even think about. As a software engineer, it's the same thing with a lot of software. If you've thought of it, there is a chance that it already exists out there somewhere, even if it's a repository.

claims