How much money will this cost to research/build?
http://www.space.com/21089-hypersoni...air-force.html
Billions.
We will end up with hypersonic weapons that don't need explosives to devastate targets. Kinetic energy weapons.
The other thing that we will get out of it, is much cheaper access to space. Re-useable boosters seem to be pretty practical once the tech is matured a bit more.
Hypersonic stuff like scramjets has been in development for a while now, so billions sounds about right. All the branches plus NASA have invested our money into it. And who cares? We need more stuff in the event of a Neo Nazi zombie alien godzilla invasion.
Anyway this is just the (ch)Air Force just trying to stay relevant tbh. The defense money should be going to the other services and we all know the future of space is with the Navy and Marines anyway. Marines wanted a hypersonic troop transport to deliver infantry anywhere within 2 hours. But instead of the Air Force delivering close air assault or rapid cargo aircraft designed for fighting terrorists globally we are getting cold war-ish tech instead. Feel free to prove me wrong armchair generals. Carry on.
let's see, best guess based on history is hyper-sonic missiles will be extremely late, way over budget, and miss performance targets, and nobody will be held accountable.
do they hit the targets at hypersonic speeds, where the slightest aiming error would be a huge miss, or slow down for better accuracy?
America The Imperial Merchant of Death, what's not to love.
Not sure what makes you think that the Navy/Marines are the future of space. And yes, hypersonic weapons seem like a pretty dumb thing to invest in, but generals need their projects and politicians need their pork. I'm sure they'll cut some TA somewhere to fit it in the budget.
Navy/USMC have the experience of working together in ships which seems like one of the next steps for the spacefaring military, and IIRC there's been a bias towards Navy/USMC experience and pilots for astronaut stuff too.
Imo the Air Force should be merged with other branches and the reason why it was separated in the first place seems outdated, but I am just an armchair general
Eh, the Air Force reintegrating would cost more money than it is worth. Just look at some of the costs of Joint Base initiatives.
Besides, the Air Force has a few missions that aren't being performed as much in the other services, like SaR, mobility trans, and cyber to some extent.
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