geminicricket
04-02-2007, 21:20
Greg Easterbrook on Slate has a column lamenting that the U.S. does not have enough B-52 and B-2 bombers and no budget for developing or building any more bombers even though the JDAM makes bombers as accurate and safer for precision close air support as fighters.
Greg Easterbrook is an idiot.
Here's why:
As you know, the next frontier of combat aircraft is going to be the UCAV. As you know, the Predator has already successfullylaunched a Hellfire missile at a moving point target.
We already have the ability to build thousands of Predators rapidly if we need to, to build millions of JDAM packs if we need to, to train thousands of pilots if we need to.
The only thing we need is a way to protect the satellites against a first strike blinding attack. The point is, a first strike blinding attack against satellites would disable our manned bombers as well as our unmanned platforms. There's no point in having hundreds or thousands of billions of dollars each bombers sitting useless in Kansas when you could have millions of thousands of dollars each of remotely piloted craft which could be quickly reconfigured as a flying communication relay network/ bomber fleet in the event of a first strike blinding attack against satellites.
So, is the gummint working to develop a Predator or Global Hawk-transportable package of receive-retransmit redundant communications resources to make us immune to a first-strike satellite blinding attack?
Greg Easterbrook is an idiot.
Here's why:
As you know, the next frontier of combat aircraft is going to be the UCAV. As you know, the Predator has already successfullylaunched a Hellfire missile at a moving point target.
We already have the ability to build thousands of Predators rapidly if we need to, to build millions of JDAM packs if we need to, to train thousands of pilots if we need to.
The only thing we need is a way to protect the satellites against a first strike blinding attack. The point is, a first strike blinding attack against satellites would disable our manned bombers as well as our unmanned platforms. There's no point in having hundreds or thousands of billions of dollars each bombers sitting useless in Kansas when you could have millions of thousands of dollars each of remotely piloted craft which could be quickly reconfigured as a flying communication relay network/ bomber fleet in the event of a first strike blinding attack against satellites.
So, is the gummint working to develop a Predator or Global Hawk-transportable package of receive-retransmit redundant communications resources to make us immune to a first-strike satellite blinding attack?