Pentagon Readies New Ship-Killers for Pacific Showdown · By David Axe

---
Military Industrial Complex crap.. when are humans going to f'ing GROW UP?

I grow weary of the search for ever more expensive weapons which allow for a more effective killing of other human beings.. I just don't get it any more.. We have to have really good capabilities to kill a whole bunch of Chinese humans as fast as possible just in case they decide they want to kill off a whole bunch of American humans real fast.. Ok..

Like I said before.. freaking grow up..

Trouble is I don't really believe it is immaturity causing it.. I think it is an effective way for the United States government to pump untold hundreds of billions of dollars into the U.S. economy any time they please.. What if all the wars we are now in are merely to help prop up a shattered economy and major corporations that are in danger of collapse, through government military spending?

If you prefer you may read the source post by clicking here
---



Pentagon planners were wary of China’s double-digit military-budget growth rates even before the global economic crisis put the squeeze on America’s own defense investment. Now the Chinese army’s growth continues while America’s flat-lines. That’s got the U.S. military, especially the Navy, scrambling for new ideas.

The most hopeful is an emerging concept for mixing U.S. Navy ships and subs with Air Force planes to form a tightly-knit, super-lethal, ship-killing force meant to counter an increasingly powerful Chinese fleet. The Pentagon calls it “AirSea Battle,” an homage to NATO’s Cold War “AirLand Battle” concept that pioneered tactics for taking out thousands of Soviet tanks with smart weapons. U.S. Secretary of Defense Bob Gates called the classified AirSea Battle concept “encouraging.”

It seems AirSea Battle mostly involves better communications and command procedures for integrating ships and planes into the same task forces. But there’s at least one new piece of hardware: a new, more deadly anti-ship missile. On Wednesday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded Lockheed Martin a 3-year, $160 million contract to develop the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile. The goal is for LRASM to give Navy ships “the ability to attack important enemy ships outside the ranges of the enemy’s ability to respond with anti-ship missiles of their own.”

LRASM must fit into the Navy’s existing vertical-launch cells and should rely less on “off-board” targeting — drones, planes, satellites — than current weapons. In other words, the LRASM must have its own, smart sensors. That would allow even isolated or electronically-jammed American ships to sink enemy vessels.

Darpa’s interest in ship-killing missiles represent a major sea change — or a blast from the past. Time was, 20 years ago, the Navy had a bigger arsenal of anti-ship missiles, ranging from the tiny Penguin to the mid-size Harpoon and the huge, long-range Tomahawk. Today the Tomahawk is used strictly for land-attack and only a few ships carry Harpoons.

Meanwhile, other nations have pulled ahead in ship-sinking technology. Russia, India and Japan all have new ASMs. Indeed, those weapons — particularly the Japanese XASM-3, pictured — might offer a preview of LRASM’s eventual design elements. Look for a stealthy shape, supersonic speed and several overlapping sensor types. And don’t expect it to be cheap.