Lockheed CEO James Taiclet said Ukrainian forces the Patriot—invented in the 1970s but upgraded many times to shoot down a Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missile. This was done in May, 2023. Software upgrades can sometimes enable an existing system to deal with a more advanced threats.
The Defense Department is still holding too many competitions in which companies present white papers with proposals instead of working prototypes. Competitions should be actual product-driven ‘bake-offs,’ and not paper-based evaluations.
Taiclet said the Pentagon should move toward software standards so it does not have many wildly different frameworks.
The telecom industry used cellphone standards to move from 3G to 4G to 5G in the amount of time it usually takes the Pentagon to design and build a new plane.
The Pentagon is shifting from big, expensive programs that make overly sophisticated weapons and moving toward buying arms faster and more cheaply.
Patrick Tucker of Defense One described CEO Taiclet’s testimony. He reported that Taiclet would not talk about capping Lockheed profits at 20% per weapon system.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Hypersonics always seemed to be overhyped. Two points:
They’re very hot. With space as a background, they are very detectable.
They’re maneuverable, but at that speed, not very.
So just put something in front of it.