Hypersonic Missiles -- FGFD: Field Guide to Flying Death

 

Hypersonic missiles recently exploded into the news when China tested their own version of the WMD du jour.

Speed is just one of many ways to classify missiles: from the subsonic Tomahawk cruise missile flying 500mph to the ICBMs breaking free of earth's gravity at more than 15,000 mph.   Hypersonic missiles fall in between at fives times the speed of sound around 4,000mph.  

As with aircraft, speed is not the only measure of missiles. Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) are very fast, but since ballistic means without power, they follow a very predictable parabolic flight/glide path to target.  They accelerate to 15,000 mph to break free of the atmosphere, then coast over the the north pole to their final destination. The intercept path is very predictable.  

At the other end of the scale, a Tomahawk (or other) subsonic cruise missile flies about the same speed as an airliner at around 500mph. They are very small, very light aircraft that are flown to their target. They can evade, maneuver and fly just feet above the ground and hit a target so accurately they can be flown into a particular car in parking lot.  

Hypersonic missiles fly five times the speed of sound, in the range of 4,000 mph, in powered flight. They can fly high, low, maneuver, and evade just like a subsonic cruise missile, but fly from New York to Los Angeles in 45 minutes.  Planes are very hard to shoot down. A hypersonic missile flies almost twice as fast as the Sidewinder air-to-air missile.  It flies faster than the bullets from every US Army rifle and machine gun, faster than 30mm cannon rounds from the gatling gun on the A-10 Thunderbolt II ground attack fighter.  

If China has operational hypersonic missiles, as recent news reports suggest, they could threaten other nations, including us, with dangerous, nuclear capable missiles.  

If Taiwan becomes Crimea Part II, hypersonic missiles may be the threat that keeps America from defending a nation that has been very loyal to us.  President Obama did nothing to stop Putin from seizing Crimea or invading eastern Ukraine.  President Trump sold out the Kurds in Syria after one phone call from the Turkish President.  Hypersonic missiles might seal the deal that puts Taiwan on the same path as Hong Kong.  

Other entires in Field Guide to Flying Death:

Cruise Missiles

Artillery 

Apache Helicopter 

Mutually Assured Destruction 

Gunships 

Armor piercing ammo 

And then there's the Sam Fender song, Hypersonic Missile

Why Doesn't He Care About His Legacy? Why Rush Limbaugh Lied with his (literal) dying breaths

Rush Limbaugh, 1951-2021 

Some very smart people I listen to wondered aloud in the past year why Rush Limbaugh did not care about his legacy? Why did he keep on lying for Trump with his dying breath. Hannah Arendt has an answer. 

Most of what is good in public life in our world we inherited from the the Ancient Greece and Rome.  In both of those cultures, reputation and legacy and honor were what elevated people.  We think of character as something within ourselves.  The Greeks saw character as the imprint of the culture on a person. Courage imprinted Heracles--as if Heracles were the coin and courage was the stamp that identified it.  

The Greeks and Romans lived in worlds where exile was a punishment as bad as death because true existence was in community. It is from Rome we get the compliment that someone is "A man among men."

In an age of faith, a scoundrel might repent when he knew death was near.  That repentance could be true and sincere because the spiritual world was real to everyone in the culture--even those who mostly ignored it.

But we live in an age of the Will.  We do not live for reputation, but live to control the future, to impose our desires on the future.  In an age such as ours, Hannah Arendt writing about the Will in her book Life of the Mind says:

"...old age consists in a shrinkage of the future dimension, and man's death signifies less his disappearance from the world of appearances than his final loss of a future."  

Limbaugh saw his future shrinking and became more desperate to control what time he had left. He wanted to remain relevant to the end.  I have known other rich old men who used what time and strength they had left in their 80s or 90s to remain relevant in the places they once had power.  

People who live for reputation and contemplation put their lives in order, to use an old phrase, when they know the end is near. Those who lived with a will to power go to death grasping and ignoring every form of goodness.  

If C.S. Lewis is right and the doors of Hell lock from the inside, Rush Limbaugh slammed and bolted that door--as an act of Will.

Machiavelli on the Problem of Monotheism

 

This week I listened to a talk by Harvard Professor Harvey Mansfield.  You can watch it here or listen to the podcast. One thing that came up which I had never considered before is how important it is that the Church (and the Temple and the Mosque) be separated from the state to have an effective government.

Machiavelli, like no political philosopher before him, squarely faced the problem of leading a government in a culture with a monotheistic religion. The Greek democracy and the Roman republic were not subject to absolute gods. Both fell to tyranny, but not to priests with power.

Monotheistic religions, especially at their extremes, see the entire universe as subject to their One God. Whether they are right or wrong in theology, we know what happens when priests control politics: Cruelty.

Eventually the heretics will be defined by prophets, condemned by priests and killed by mobs.

The brilliant, brave leaders who founded America knew this well. They wanted religion in the populace, but not in politics.

A priest, a Rabbi and an Imam can walk into a bar anytime they want to. But I never want them in charge of government.

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I re-read The Prince every four years in a Presidential election year to remind myself how politics works.

I have written about Machiavelli on Leadership, about re-reading The Prince under Trump, and comparing Trump and President Obama using The Prince.