sorghum comments on Iran and Houthi rebels used Anthropic's Claude AI to target US warships and build hypersonic missiles — Houthi rebels also used the bot to code ballistic missile guidance systems

Ok. So now lets shoot the rocket at the warship. Ok, it didn't do much damage. Maybe it was even shot down by anti-air defenses. Now try shooting 900 of them at the ship. They're cheap, they're disposable. Sure, the anti-air might shoot a lot down, but you're shooting down a $3 rocket with a 1 million dollar anti-air missile.

Even if you never hit the ship, you're causing financial drain that cannot be sustained. You spend $10,000 on $3 rockets, fire them all off all day and all night, and the USA is using military grade defenses. That $10,000 might drain the USA half a billion dollars just to defend one ship.

Now scale that for every ship in the military. Little tiny unmanned rafts basically, shooting off cheap rockets at close range, and being defended by expensive ammo. All across the ocean. With the proper planning, you could probably drain the USA's global navy in a day without sinking, or even hitting a single ship. All without losing anything at all.

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[–] sorghum@sh.itjust.works 27 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

I'm not talking about making missiles or mass produced missiles or AI guided missiles. Hypersonic has an exact definition (Mach 5+) and calling something a hypersonic missile should set off your bullshit detector. In ballistic missile terms usually there is only a short portion of its flight that is hypersonic, but that doesn't make it a hypersonic missile. The western definition of a hypersonic missile is sustained hypersonic flight in the atmosphere. Russia and China define hypersonic missiles as hypersonic at any point in their flight likely for propaganda purposes.

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[–] AppleTea@lemmy.zip -2 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

It's only the bit right before it hits where in needs to be hypersonic, isn't it? Fast enough to avoid interceptors. It's why if Taiwan ever turns hot, the plan is for all the US navy boats to do a strategic retreat.

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[–] sorghum@sh.itjust.works 17 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

It's only the bit right before it hits where in needs to be hypersonic, isn't it?

No, that's the China, Russia definition.

Fast enough to avoid interceptors.

Ballistic trajectories still have a long arc that makes it easier to detect and deploy countermeasures. It's how patriot, iron dome, and other systems are allowed to work.

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[–] AppleTea@lemmy.zip 1 point 2 weeks ago (2 children)

In principle, sure. But in practice, its easier to spend a lot of cheep ballistics running the interceptors dry. After that, it doesn't really matter how long you can maintain hypersonic speeds.

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[–] sorghum@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

Again, this conversation was about calling something a hypersonic missile when it really isn't by definition not the economics or viability of the war nor the actuall capabilities of their missiles (which I suspect are just run of the mill ballistic missiles that might be guided by AI). It really makes me think Tom's hardware made all this up for clicks or they are gullible enough to buy into propaganda. IF Tom's Hardware can't be truthful about something that's easily verifiable, how can we trust the rest of the article?

In all likelyhood there is some truth in the article, but someone calling anything hypersonic should really set off your bullshit detector, just like a company selling solid state batteries with fantastic claims or anything being revolutionized with carbon nanotubes.

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[–] AppleTea@lemmy.zip 1 point 2 weeks ago

I agree with your analysis of the article.

I also think its funny to say China or Russia or whomever is using the term wrong, 'cus lets be honest; the primary purpose of a hypersonic mistle isn't its capabilities or whatever strategic advantage it confers. It exists to justify its own price tag, so the manufacturer has a wide profit margin and enough on top of that to contribute to their local senator's campaign fund.

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[–] daychilde@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

$3 rocket

This is ridiculous on its face. You're talking $15k-$50k for such a missile. You can't use model rocket engines. Hardware costs real money.

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[–] InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago

Still its crazy to think an average person could finance one. I've seen brokies in Texas with trucks they paid more than one of these rockets.

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[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 weeks ago

Even more effective given that they're probably shooting at civilian ships.

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[–] belochka@lemmy.world 1 point 2 weeks ago

Except the USA too makes small drones. It's asymmetric, shields are temporarily useless, as if your adversary were no longer shooting arrows or soft lead musket rounds, using rifles with fast piercing rounds instead (I know there were shields against rifle rounds in WWI, just didn't work well enough, because those were too heavy).

Sometimes empires crash because of such tendencies, but we are talking about the empire which is propelling them, so - no. They'll just start clearing trade routes with their own cheap autonomous weapons, probably.

Might be genocide involved. Or perhaps with modern precision that won't even be required.

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