Weapons of War When the military first announced they had the f-35, a fifth generation fighter plane, all the problems with it came out and they were and still are being criticized for spending so much money on a plane which not only has so many problems and is much slower than planes before it, but I believe needs to be replaced with something much better. Having said that, the pentagon has given out five expensive contracts to build a sixth generation fighter plane, but is not giving out many facts about it. While the pentagon may be doing this to keep our secrets, critics are saying they don’t want people criticizing them if they find out there are problems. We are not the only country to announce the development of a sixth generation fighter. Other countries have also announced plans to build them. So far, those countries are France, China, United States, United Kingdom, and Japan. The escalation of building new weapons never stops, it is a shame we can’t get it under control. Imagine what we could do if we didn’t need those huge sums of money for the military. A lot of people, both in the area of China and out are getting worried about all the new weapons they are building and all the new aircraft carriers they are not only building but planning. I find one thing about them very strange and it is the fact none so far are nuclear powered. Why is this? There could be a couple of reasons for this. The purpose of nuclear power is to eliminate the need to refuel. It also has another advantage; it makes ships travel faster usually. The Chinese may feel the next war won’t last very long so they won’t have to worry about refueling, or they may be considering knocking out carriers as fast as they can and when they reach a certain number which satisfies them, they will begin the construction of nuclear powered carriers. It isn’t only planes and ships which are advancing not only in technology but in numbers, but all sorts of other weapons, such as missiles, torpedoes, small arms and so much more. The Russians thought their new tanks could withstand attacks but that has proven false in the Ukraine. The few they had were hit hard and they were forced to use older models in their attacks. It seems the tanks were no match for the new American weapons such as tank destroying drones and the Javelin. The drones use the technique the Japanese developed in World War II where they flew Kamikaze flights into targets. Our new drones do the same thing. One thing is for sure and that is we do not know all the new types of weapons the United States has developed. We do hear about some incredible weapons our adversaries have developed and they seem incredibly powerful. One such type of weapon it the hypersonic missile which can carry nuclear warheads and change its direction during flight making it, as some say, impossible to shoot down. There is also a torpedo which is said to have been developed by Russia which travels over 200 miles per hour and has the potential of going even faster. It travels in a bubble of air to cut down on friction with the water. As far as new weapons created by the United States I heard about a couple. One creates perfect copies of attack planes which it can make look real fooling radar. For example, a plane can attack and look like it is part of a fleet, fooling the enemy. We have been putting a lot of money into research and development and for this year the government admits for procurement and research and development, 276 billion dollars is allocated. While this sounds like a lot, remember how much it now costs to build one aircraft carrier. The latest one cost 12.9 billion dollars and was more than two years late. Submarines cost billions of dollars. The Columbia class Ballistic Missile Submarine was billions to build and maintain. Building a navy is a really costly endeavor. The same is true for an air force. Tanks cost between 2 to 4.5 million dollars each. The B2 bomber cost billions of dollars to build and maintain and the F-35 costs 104 million dollars to build. One weapon we have leaked out during the Iraq war. It was a weapon which fired what looked like lightning bolts, and when it hit a target, it shrunk that target. If it hit a human, the human was killed instantly and the body shrunk to the size of a baby. It was as if all liquid was taken out of the body. Since the war I haven’t heard any more about the weapon. We are getting an upgrade to the helicopter known as the MH-139A Grey Wolf. It is said it will be better armored, faster, carry bigger payloads and have better endurance. One of the areas we are heading in is not only drones, self-flying planes, but also unmanned ships. There is a lot of, lets improve what we have, going on. One of the things I am talking about is better armored vehicles which have multipurpose use. We are also looking to fire weapons without getting into the war zone. To this capability, we are developing the LRSO, which stands for Long Range Stand-Off weapon. The weapon is a type of cruise missile which is nuclear armed. We know the United States and other countries are working on directed energy weapons. The beam could be invisible and the target might not detect it before it was too late. There are different types of these weapons, but the most famous is a laser weapon. While some countries like China claim to have perfected the Railgun, a kinetic weapon which fires a solid metal object without explosive at a target and the force of the hit is tremendous. We have been working on acoustic weapons for a while now and a rumor states we can send a powerful beam over five miles. This beam will inflict pain within a target area. The pain is so bad it disables all in that area. We are also getting into an area which sounds more like science fiction and we have to remember these are only rumors. Supposedly we have a gun which can hit a target giving them a heart attack. One thing we have to remember is the fact probably many nations are working on using some type of biological attack if there is another war. One of my favorite rumors states we are working on flying aircraft carriers.
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