Down at the bottom of the article it's revealed that Contrary Research (article host) is an investor in Galadyne and another of the discussed manufacturers. Galadyne is introduced as a company with a stake in the liquid propulsion angle that the article pushes. One of the authors is listed as CEO of Galadyne. Bit like an advertorial?
The author should have disclosed their affiliation more clearly at the top. But their arguments are solid, and I respect them putting their money where their mouth is.
Solid-fueled rockets should not be the backbone of our missile forces anymore. That doesn’t mean we get rid of them. But we should be adding mass-produced liquid-fueled missiles to the mix. And our entire rocket force shouldn’t be able to be nerfed by hitting one plant in Utah.
Anyone who describes hydrocarbon fuels and high-test peroxide oxidiser as a stable and proven combination is a charlatan trying to sell you something questionable. If you want a proven liquid fuel combination that works in missile environment conditions with well-behaved ignition, Hydrazine/UDMH+N2O4 is the king.
Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases; anyone making a sincere case for liquid fuels should be making it on the basis of munitions that are best designed around them (notably, of course, most of the long range cruise missiles that have received the most hand-wringing about stockpile depletion are already air-breathing jet-fueled). The actual stockpile issues wrt solid rocket fuel are high-performance SAM/ABM interceptors, and those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents.
> Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases
The article says this. Liquids are better from a production perspective. In the Cold War, storage and deployment dominated. That need isn’t gone today. But it’s supplanted in priority by the need to be able to rapidly produce these munitions.
> those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents
Again, the article acknowledges this. It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online, and even then, we’d still be unfavorably production constrained compared to China.
Given the misadventures the missiles are currently being used for, it seems like less of a crisis and more of a blessing that the US's capacity for self-destruction isn't unlimited.
American security, and indeed the entire pax Americana has been predicated upon your country's network of global military bases and your carrier battle groups. This is what enables the USA to decisively influence any conflict anywhere on the globe.
Those bases would need to disappear in order for your comment to be true, and despite two thirds of your electorate who didn't vote against the future dementia ward patient currently in office, I don't think Americans are ready to accept a world where American foreign policy cannot be promulgated more or less at will, which is what isolationism would entail.
We only won World War II because we could produce our tanks faster than the Germans could destroy them and we could destroy their tanks faster than they could produce them. The Germany tanks were superior but our supply lines and manufacturing capacity are ultimately why we won. If we fought a large scale war today, we would be supply constrained by China and other 'rivals' who we can't rely on. We've outsourced everything in the name of efficiency, but have left ourselves spread incredibly thin and exposed huge weaknesses. Remember how fast supply chains broke down during the pandemic? Imagine how fast that breaks down for complex logistics needed to produce complex weapons... I think America is one war away from losing its 'super power' status and being diminished to a much lower status. Look at how we've already empowered Iran into an even more powerful adversary through this war/conflict.
Is that really true regarding what we know of WW2? I thought their designs had major flaws, not just the goldplating issues you mention. Besides, they mostly lost because they spend all their manpower and material on pointless incursions far away from their country.
Famously, of course, not at all the case, with Enterprise, Saratoga, and Ranger all surviving. Yes, losses of pre-war carriers were severe (Lexington, Yorktown, Hornet, and Wasp).
The author should have disclosed their affiliation more clearly at the top. But their arguments are solid, and I respect them putting their money where their mouth is.
Solid-fueled rockets should not be the backbone of our missile forces anymore. That doesn’t mean we get rid of them. But we should be adding mass-produced liquid-fueled missiles to the mix. And our entire rocket force shouldn’t be able to be nerfed by hitting one plant in Utah.
Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases; anyone making a sincere case for liquid fuels should be making it on the basis of munitions that are best designed around them (notably, of course, most of the long range cruise missiles that have received the most hand-wringing about stockpile depletion are already air-breathing jet-fueled). The actual stockpile issues wrt solid rocket fuel are high-performance SAM/ABM interceptors, and those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents.
The article says this. Liquids are better from a production perspective. In the Cold War, storage and deployment dominated. That need isn’t gone today. But it’s supplanted in priority by the need to be able to rapidly produce these munitions.
> those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents
Again, the article acknowledges this. It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online, and even then, we’d still be unfavorably production constrained compared to China.
Nobody is going to attack us unless we go out into the world creating enemies.
Those bases would need to disappear in order for your comment to be true, and despite two thirds of your electorate who didn't vote against the future dementia ward patient currently in office, I don't think Americans are ready to accept a world where American foreign policy cannot be promulgated more or less at will, which is what isolationism would entail.
Wow
Lol what?! No, binary fuels have two components that are both neccesary for operation.
Also like commented elsewhere, peroxide fuels are... an adventurous choice
What these basic errors mean for the perception of the rest of the article is left as an exercise for the reader.
https://newtotse.com/oldtotse/en/bad_ideas/ka_fucking_boom/c...
More missiles do not make the world safe, and due to human fallacy it almost always make us less safe.
This article isn’t about nuclear-tipped missiles outside a historical context.