how many more of these technological defeats will the US suffer before they launch an all-out attack on China out of pure desperation
this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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I once moved a bunch of firewood away from a retaining wall only to discover the wall was rotting from the bottom and had to be completely ripped out and rebuilt from the ground up. That's sorta like what this is.
Except in this circumstance, the wall will collapse and bring half the house down with it before anyone acknowledges the problem
@MarmiteLover123@hexbear.net what's your read on the significance of dropping this program? my understanding is that while the US is behind other parties on hypersonics, especially russian ones that have been used in combat, the US has a number of hypersonic weapon programs still underway and in late development, such as the dark eagle.
The problem with HALO is it didn't really provide any significant upgrades over current capabilities compared to other air launched anti ship weapons. The people behind it admitted that didn't even fly at hypersonic speeds, just high supersonic. SM-6 missiles can be fitted to F-18 Super Hornets now, fly at Mach 3.5 and can be used in an anti air or anti ship role. So HALO ended up being a money sink that didn't offer any advantages. What's the point in spending a ton of money on a programme that won't even achieve its initial goal (hypersonic flight) and only offers a small speed boost over the SM-6? The US Navy has ditched HALO in favour of Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare Increment 1 for now (OASuW Inc 1), which uses the subsonic stealth JASSM and LRASM cruise missiles. So they'll buy more of those, and more SM-6s, in air launch and ship launched configuration. The air launched SM-6 is acting as a stop gap here for various programs, like the AIM-260 and now HALO. HALO got cancelled, but I can't see the AIM-260 being cancelled.
As for air launched hypersonics that attack ground targets, no one is quite there yet. Russian, Israeli, and Chinese systems (Kinzhal, Golden Horizon/ROCKS, and KF-21/KD-21 respectively) are all air launched ballistic missiles. The US doesn't have an air launched ballistic missile program because the cruise missile lobby won during the 80s based on arguments around stealth/low observability and flying low (see JTACMS, air launched ATACMS being cancelled). But Russia has the Zircon ground and sea launched hypersonic cruise missile, which has been deployed in combat and is a capability that no one else has demonstrated in combat.