For the record, I'm as big a detractor of the "military industrial complex" as anyone. That said, the "military industrial complex" brought you the transistor, GPS, the Internet and a whole bunch of other stuff you take for granted. As anyone who has ever played Civilization can tell you, many of the technological advances in the history of the human race have started with "can we kill somebody with it?" and then made their way into the "quality of life" segment. More importantly, the exact same legislators that would happily starve NASA to nothing will jump at the chance to pay for newer, better ways to kill bad guys. ...which is what we're looking at here. The "Advanced Hypersonic Weapon" is the smallest iteration of the DARPA Falcon project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Falcon_Project Every aspect of this project is some variation on the theme of "get something going really fucking fast and see how long we can make it fly." They're basically instrumentation packages thrown through the air in order to generate data on hypersonic flight, because data on hypersonic flight is extraordinarily sparse. Ever looked into what it takes to create a hypersonic wind tunnel? It's kind of a bitch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersonic_wind_tunnel Such a bitch, in fact, that when the HTV-2 goes tits-up 9 minutes in, twice, the air force regards it as a roaring success: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-08/darpas-htv-... See, thing is, if you want actual data above Mach 9 you get to do it for less than half a second at a time. Cruising along for Mach 10 for 9 minutes? That's such a data windfall it's like that happy scene at the end of TWISTER where Dorothy releases her little cans into the tornado. As far as "bombing the fuck out of someone within an hour", well, a few things. 1) Trident missiles have been going faster than this since 1979. 2) The Soviets deployed a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System in 1969, giving them first-strike capability in 30 minutes (the primary impetus for the SALT treaty). 3) Any ballistic missile system gives you this capability; the US developed a conventional warhead system for the Trident II in 2006 but chose not to deploy it. 4) Not to put too fine a point on it, but in order to launch this particular testbed, you have to put it on a Minotaur, which is a re-purposed MX missile, which was capable of delivering 10 300kT nuclear warheads to the other side of the planet with an accuracy of a couple dozen feet, in 1986: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Peacekeep... So. This "Hypersonic bomb" of which you speak, as a weapon, is slower, less efficient, more error-prone and with vastly less payload than that which we have deployed since Gerald Ford was president. As a test bed, however, it's the first real project to pierce high-mach flight in a measurable way. As far as I'm concerned, if the DoD wants to spend my tax dollars on collecting data (rather than indiscriminately killing Pashtun up in the 'Kush) they're more than welcome to.
I'd love to see the motivation put behind more productive goals, and let the military take advantage of the spin-off, rather than the other way around. we can't get there quickly, but I do think that it is a destination that could be realized. Terrorism is dangerous, but so is cancer and global warming. If we are going to spend ridiculous amounts of money fighting battles, let's spend it on these.
Mine is an argument of pragmatism. Having grown up neck-deep in the Military Industrial Complex, I can say without reservation that arguments of principle gain no traction. On the other hand, saying "You should give us a bazillion dollars to invent satellites. We can probably figure out a way to kill people with them andmaybefosteraglobalcommunicationnetworkmumblemumblemumble" generally works pretty well. After all, ArXiv.org was developed by Paul Ginsparg in his spare time while working at T division at LANL - and T division is all about killing the shit out of Russkies.
The world is shrinking, and war isn't what it used to be. It's too messy, and doesn't provide the returns it used to. It once provided a tax base. Now it doesn't even guarantee puppet states. If anything, it's just become dirty work and a distraction. This isn't just principle as far as I see it. It's a smart move in an evolving game.
We have been able to have troops on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq - simultaneously - for longer than we had troops on the ground in Vietnam simply by sanitizing their coverage and framing their participation. This was one of the primary reason we "embedded" reporters with our troops - it eliminates their impartiality. And while UAV attacks on civilians has been an occasional issue in US papers, it has been the.driving.issue for much of the Arab world. War certainly isn't what it used to be. It is now sustainable, engageable by remote, and practical 24/7. When your frontline warriors live in the suburbs of Vegas and get to clock out at the end of the day to hug their families, there is zero pressure to remove them from battle. Not only that, but when the majority of your armed forces on the ground aren't regular military but "contractors" you don't even have to report most of what you do. We've done to the military what we did to the power companies - created Enron. It's extraordinarily lucrative and there's no oversight. You are, in fact, pushing for a pie-in-the-sky love-fest. The culture has shifted, man. You missed it. You're saying "we can just give more for cancer research" as if NASA's budget hadn't been cut ~7 percent every year since 1991. As if the NSF weren't cut deeply every year since 2003. DARPA gets $3 billion a year. NASA gets 18. If DARPA wants to do NASA's research, let 'em do it. DARPA is not going to be sending probes to Mars any time soon and if DARPA simply wanted a novel way to kill people, they've got a long fuckin' list that costs less, kills more and doesn't require a Vandenberg launch to test.
In time, the everyday Joe is going to be able to confound traditional governance. IMO the next Rome is going to be riding a wave that has little to do with national interests or geography. Trust me, I'm no hippy. I just see that the writing is on the wall that the military industrial complex is not what it used to be. The US is probably going to follow it down the drain. We are spending a lot of resources sewing redcoats.
The US must race to the place where a general only need imagine the death of people and it is made so. Yet, the US must then desperately race beyond this place, because other generals might be able to imagine such things about OUR people and OUR generals. Thank God for this race. It protects us all. It protects freedom. /sarcasm -However, if you need this tag, take a walk. Get some fresh air. :)