One possibility is that Russia can read the encryption. They push, or allow, people to use Telegram because it gives false confidence that messages cannot be read which encourages people to share information they otherwise wouldn't.
That exact strategy has been employed by the Security and Intelligence services of other nations. Here's an example from 2021 of the FBI pushing Anom.
I thought the laser CIWS was deemed a failure and shelved too?
I don't know about a laser CIWS but the Army already has DE M-SHORAD units deployed.
but it looks like a new and improved scramjet.
You could say that, just like you could say a 2024 Mustang GT is just an upgraded Model T. :)
Combined Cycle Combustion has been worked on for at least 40 years now and adding Rotating Detonation to it is on another planet of complexity. In the end it's a Jet Engine with fewer moving parts capable of efficient output at speeds from Zero to Mach 5+.
Rapid Dragon is just putting missiles on a pallet instead of on a pylon, so I’d hardly call it groundbreaking.
It's not the weapons system that breaks ground, its the capability that it enables. A single stealth plane of any type can be hundreds of miles forward of cargo planes and relay targeting data for dozens or hundreds of missiles dumped out of those cargo planes.
And this is the first I hear about Manta Ray.
Manta Ray is an amazing platform that solves some real operation challenges for the US Navy and I predict they will end up deploying hundreds of them. How it communicates seems to be a secret right now but I'm sure it will come out eventually.
You and I have very different memories of Yugos.
Mexico and Canada are still in North America.
The 183 was cancelled, no?
Maybe yes, maybe no. There's no official decision yet but it exists and that means it or something like it will soon find its way into the inventory. I agree that there's always lots of small scale high-tech demonstrators but things like E-SHORAD (Laser Air Defense system) are already out there. The combined cycle rotating detonation jet engine already exists at Hermeus (and they supposedly got it from Lockheed), Rapid Dragon exists, Manta Ray exists.
I agree with you on CyberSec. It's a real and urgent problem.
It undeniably does until the DoD gets spooked and starts burying defense contractors in unspeakably large piles of money. Then you get the AGM-183A and where did the US choose to test it? Guam where China could would have a front row seat.
There's so much ludicrous tech rolling out of the US MIC right now that it's honestly getting hard to keep track of. Rapid Dragon missile deployment, hypersonic missiles, hypersonic planes, combined cycle rotating detonation jet propulsion, laser defense systems, next gen ICBMs, quantum radar, quantum lidar, underwater autonomous drones that can self power and remain hidden for months at a time...the list of verifiable stuff hurts my brain.
Just put in a call to the Americans to do it for them.
Japan has its own domestically developed Surface to Air missile system.
Still not clear why anyone is shooting down Chinese cargo planes.
The Y-9 has several variants, some of which are ELINT and AWACS. I'd trust the Japanese to know which are which, they see them often enough on their radar screens.
I’m the one saying hypersonic missiles are pointless.
Old generation non-maneuvering were pointless. The new ones though...
I mean, we’re saying this with a Boeing Starliner stranded at the ISS.
Meanwhile another US company, which is also a defense contractor, has revolutionized the space industry. It regularly launches satellites by the dozens and can rendezvous with the ISS anytime that NASA asks. The fact that one company, Boeing, is struggling with a product means absolutely nothing to the industry as a whole.
But sure, America has a super-secret anti-hypersonic missile system that’s just like the Iron Dome
It's absolutely no secret. It's a Patriot System and it's quite capable of handling the laughable "Hypersonic Missiles", i.e. repurposed non maneuvering ballistic trajectory junk from the 80s and 90s, that adversaries field today.
Does the US have perfect gear that never fails? Absolutely not, some of our stuff is junk or near junk, but when it comes to this kind of thing the the US has no peer.
You’re even fan-casting the existence of anti-missile systems the US admits it doesn’t have.
We we have an entire Department dedicated to it along with platforms like SBX-1 and THAAD (among other things.)
Again its not perfect but it definitely exists and it gets better every single year.