An independent panel recently provided a boost to a coolly received Pentagon initiative that would convert some long-range, submarine-launched ballistic missiles to deliver conventional warheads instead of nuclear ones.
A National Academy of Sciences panel has recommended that Congress withhold production and deployment funding for a Defense Department program to modify Trident missiles to carry conventional warheads.
A U.S. Navy program called the Revolutionary Approach to Time-Critical Long-Range Strike (or Rattlrs) aims to build a hypersonic missile demonstrator "with trace-ability to an eventual tactical weapon."
The authors, two former U.S. Secretaries of Defense, argue that the U.S. needs prompt global strike capability to provide maximum flexibility for dealing with the threat of global terrorism. They wrote the article in support of a Pentagon proposal to replace the nuclear warheads on two of the Trident D5 missiles on every deployed strategic submarine with a new type of warhead incorporating four highly accurate, independently targetable, nonnuclear reentry bodies.
The U.S. Strategic Command announced yesterday it had achieved an operational capability for rapidly striking targets around the globe using nuclear or conventional weapons, after last month testing its capacity for nuclear war against a fictional country believed to represent North Korea.
The author looks at the military motivations behind the development of the X-34 hypersonic aircraft and warns that the test could herald a new era of warfare and a new space race between the U.S. and Russia.
The Pentagon is planning a new, more lethal, remotely operated aircraft that could bomb targets anywhere on Earth within a scant two hours of taking off from the United States.
The US military has begun development of an ultra-high speed weapons system that would enable targets virtually anywhere on Earth to be hit within two hours of launch from the continental US.
The Defense Department wants to develop a high-speed drone able to launch attacks anywhere in the world within two hours of leaving a U.S. base.
The Pentagon is planning a new generation of weapons, including huge hypersonic drones and bombs dropped from space, that will allow the US to strike its enemies at lightning speed from its own territory.