U.S. Military Considers New Super-Weapon to Counter Russia's Nuclear Warheads

[F-22Raptor]

The U.S. has begun considering adding a new kinetic energy weapon to its arsenal in hopes of countering advances in Russian nuclear technology that could potentially threaten U.S. tactical military dominance.

Called the Kinetic Energy Projectile, the weapon is a tungsten-based warhead launched at more than three times the speed of sound that bursts into numerous flaming, metal fragments easily capable of piercing most conventional types of armor, according to Aviation Week. The Army is looking into fitting the new super-weapon onto existing launch platforms that are capable of supplying sufficient charge to shoot the projectile at such speeds. One reason for the weapon would be to respond to Russia's pursuit of miniaturized nuclear warheads fired by tanks.

Major General William Hix, the Army’s director of strategy, has likened the Kinetic Energy Projectile, designed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, to "a big shotgun shell" that could travel "Mach 3 to Mach 6" and tear through its targets.

“The way that they have designed it, is quite devastating. I would not want to be around it. Not much can survive it," Hix said last month at the Booz Allen Hamilton Direct Energy Summit, according to Defense One. "If you are in a main battle tank, if you’re a crew member, you might survive but the vehicle will be non-mission capable, and everything below that...level of protection will be dead. That’s what I am talking about."

The weapon was first tested in 2013 at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico and remains in the conceptual phase, meaning the U.S. military likely has not yet taken ownership of the project, a U.S. Army spokesperson told Newsweek. The futuristic weapon was tested using the so-called Livermore method, which combines "advanced computer simulations with focused experiments."

“Kinetic energy projectiles are warhead systems that take advantage of high terminal speeds to deliver much more energy onto a target than the chemical explosives they carry would deliver alone,” said Randy Simpson, a weapons programs manager at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, according to a statement emailed to Newsweek by the laboratory.

Heightened international tensions between the U.S. and Russia could act as a motivation for the Army to develop the weapon. Last week, President Donald Trump launched 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Syrian military's Shayrat Air Base days after accusing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of conducting a chemical attack on civilians near the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib. Russia has supported the Syrian leader throughout his nation's six-year civil war, and has blamed Syrian rebels for staging the chemical attack to attract U.S. support in the conflict.

Moscow also said it would step up its defenses for the Syrian military and respond to any further aggressions by the U.S. Russia has not threatened the U.S. with an all-out nuclear war, but with an estimated 7,300 nuclear weapons in its stockpile, Moscow has embraced having the most nuclear warheads of any nation in the world. Developments in Russian military technology could soon bring these weapons of mass destruction to the battlefield.

Russia has already designed the T-14 Armata, described by a British intelligence report as "the most revolutionary step change in tank design in the last half-century," according to The Telegraph. Philip Karber, who heads the Potomac Institute and helped pen the National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency's 2015 report titled Russia's 'New Generation Warfare', said the next Armata innovation may be to make it nuclear.

"They’ve announced that the follow-on tank to the Armata will have a 152-millimeter gun missile launcher," Karber said, according to Defense One. "They’re talking about it having a nuclear capability. And you go, 'You’re talking about building a nuclear tank, a tank that fires a nuke?' Well, that’s the implication,"

While the Kinetic Energy Projectile may not produce the same tactical fallout as a tank-based nuclear warhead, it could perhaps help to prevent future conflicts from erupting between world power.

http://www.newsweek.com/military-new-weapon-russia-nukes-582974

 

[F-22Raptor]

Were the United States to go to war with Russia, both sides could draw on deadly weapons that the world has never seen on a battlefield. On the Russian side, there are new and smaller tactical nuclear weapons. To counter them, the U.S. Army is taking another look at a “devastating” weapon, one first tested by the Air Force and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2013, the Kinetic Energy Projectile, or KEP, a tungsten-based charge moving at three times the speed of sound that can destroy anything in its path.

“Think of it as a big shotgun shell,” Maj. Gen. William Hix, the Army’s director of strategy, plans & policy, said a few weeks ago at the Booz Allen Hamilton Direct Energy Summit. But unlike a shotgun shell, Hix said, the KEP moves at incredible speeds of “Mach 3 to Mach 6.”

Randy Simpson, a weapons programs manager at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, explains that kinetic energy projectiles are warheads that “take advantage of high terminal speeds to deliver much more energy onto a target than the chemical explosives they carry would deliver alone.”

Said Hix: “The way that they [Lawrence Livermore] have designed it is quite devastating. I would not want to be around it. Not much can survive it. If you are in a main battle tank, if you’re a crew member, you might survive but the vehicle will be non-mission capable, and everything below that will level of protection will be dead. That’s what I am talking about.”

The general emphasized that the exploration was in a conceptual phase and not yet any sort of actual program: “We’re looking at ways we might — key, might — use that capability in one of our existing launch platforms as part of the weapons suite that we have.”

He said the main contender for a launcher would be the Army Tactical Missile System, made by Lockheed Martin.

In October 2013, an Air Force test team strapped the projectile to a “sled” on the high-speed test track at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. The goal: to get it moving faster than Mach 3 and see how it might actually work in the air. The test showed that the warhead design worked; it also provided data to help simulations and modeling.

Why would the U.S. military, which has put untold billions of dollars into precision weapons over several decades, need such a blunt and terrifying weapon? To counter small Russian nuclear weapons.

“The Russians … maintain their tactical nuclear stockpile in ways that we have not,” Hix said.

Potomac Institute head Philip Karber, who helped write the Pentagon’s Russia New Generation Warfare Study, offered a bit more explanation when Defense One spoke to him in January. While the United States retains just a few of its once-large arsenal of tactical nukes, Karber estimates that Russia currently has anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 of the weapons.

“Look at what the Russians have been doing in low-fission, high-fusion, sub-kiloton tactical nuclear technology,” he said. “It appears that they are putting a big effort…in both miniaturizing the warheads and using sub-kiloton low-yield warheads.”

Why is that significant? By shrinking the warhead, you can shoot it out of a wider variety of guns, including, potentially, 152-millimeter tank cannons.

“They’ve announced that the follow-on tank to the Armata will have a 152-millimeter gun missile launcher. They’re talking about it having a nuclear capability. And you go, ‘You’re talking about building a nuclear tank, a tank that fires a nuke?’ Well, that’s the implication,” said Karber.

Hix says that the use of tactical battlefield nuclear weapons, even very low-level ones, is not part of official Russian military doctrine, but it is a capability that they are increasingly eager to show off (and discuss) to intimidate neighbors and adversaries.

“They certainly exercise the use of those weapons in many of their exercises, including the one that participated in the parking of 30,000 to 40,000 soldiers on the Ukrainian border right before [the 2014 invasion of] Crimea. That coercive intimidation is a part of their design,” he said.

And while even Soviet generals may have shied away from using tactical nukes, Blix said, Putin’s military is “a lot more inclined philosophically to see the utility of them.”

http://www.defenseone.com/technolog...vastating-new-weapon-event-war-russia/136943/

 

[Fledgingwings]

USA is always up to something.Mostly concerned about Russia.