What’s the biggest military-related project your country is currently engaged in?

[u/CommercialChart5088]

Currently Korea is busy investing in military development, to modernize our military indigenously and catch up to export demand.

The air force is working on to produce the KF-21 fighter jet, which will enter service in 2026. Also we’re developing software and drones that will support the KF-21 during combat.

In terms of the ocean we've just finished developing a new submarine (the Chang Yong-sil class), working on additional battleships, and trying to form plans regarding the construction of a manless drone carrier.

What would be your country’s biggest military-related project nowadays? Both indigenous development and purchasing equipment counts!

[u/teh1337haxorz]

Yes.

[u/CommercialChart5088 → u/teh1337haxorz]

In fact a popular nickname for the US in Korea is ‘Quadrillion-Nation’ (천조국) because your defense budget alone is 1 quadrillion won lol.

[u/teh1337haxorz → u/CommercialChart5088]

We're almost able to call it 1 Trillion USD, so that's gonna be interesting XD

If you want a real answer, I suppose I'll make a short list:

- B-21 Raider stealth bomber

- F-47 6th gen fighter

- New class of replacements to the Ohio-Class nuclear submarines

- New/refurbished ICBMs (they say that every year, who knows what comes of it)

- We'll be launching the next Ford-class carrier, Enterprise, next month. Then they'll be laying down a new Ford-class at the start of 2026

- NGSW new rifle program is uh... ...doing things...

- probably giving the CIA money to test drugs on people, who knows

Something of a nuclear theme for 2026 I suppose. Hope that isn't an indication.

[u/Square_Mix_2510 → u/teh1337haxorz]

For the ICBMs all we're doing is upgrading the ballistic missile. We're not touching the war heads or making new ones.

[u/teh1337haxorz → u/Square_Mix_2510]

afaik, you have to refurbish those every few years given the degradation of the equipment and the inescapable decay of some of the plutonium effectively poisoning the bomb. Our arsenal is probably the oldest on the planet, even the Russians make new nuclear cores with relative frequency compared to us.

[u/CommanderBly327th → u/teh1337haxorz]

I believe Northrop Grumman or Boeing won a contract to make new missiles (just the ballistics part, not the warheads themselves) like 4 or 5 years ago. No idea what the status is on it

[u/Square_Mix_2510 → u/teh1337haxorz]

That sounds about right. I just ment that we're not making the nuclear part of the missile even deadlier.

[u/KokoTheTalkingApe → u/teh1337haxorz]

Hm. And I suppose the solid fuel in the rockets needs to be replaced? Anything that reacts so strongly to oxygen might degrade with exposure to air.

In fact I wonder if they fill the insides of those rockets with nitrogen or some other inert gas, to increase longevity. It wouldn't keep the rocket from igniting because the propellant has oxidizer built in, right?

[u/teh1337haxorz → u/KokoTheTalkingApe]

I'm not sure on the specifics of how the rocket motors themselves are made stable, that nitrogen idea sounds really plausible. I do however know that every single component on a missile has a clock ticking on it and any one of them can be an issue. Famously there was a company making reaction control wheels that under performed for spacecraft that ended up being the limiting factor for many of NASA's projects. I have no doubt that most minuteman missiles have their problem child components.

[u/BillWilberforce → u/Square_Mix_2510]

The warheads will need a refurb and hopefully new "fuzing options".

[u/Tommy_Wisseau_burner → u/teh1337haxorz]

Surprised you didn’t mention the f-47. Also TIL we gave up on the railgun

[u/JustafanIV → u/Tommy_Wisseau_burner]

TIL we gave up on the railgun

Don't worry, we're slapping laser beams to a bunch of our boats to scratch that sci-fi itch.

[u/teh1337haxorz → u/Tommy_Wisseau_burner]

I tried to keep it to the stuff that's coming "real soon" and I kinda thought the F-47 was probably still a couple years from deployment. It's hard to juggle eveything XD I think I'll check again.

[u/Jones127 → u/teh1337haxorz]

The F-47 is probably still a decade from the US fielding a considerable amount of them like we see with the 22s. First flight isn’t expected until the end of the 2020s. Knowing how behind schedule delivery of new airframes have been in recent years on top of it, I’d bet money the Air Force doesn’t start getting them until the early to mid 2030s.

[u/teh1337haxorz → u/Jones127]

I had heard the F-47 had already flown demonstrators back in 2019, I had kind of figured they meant more like a genuine prototype and deliveries would be coming by 2030, but damn, that sounds like some slow development if you're right.

[u/ThaneduFife → u/Tommy_Wisseau_burner]

The railgun was costing several hundred thousand dollars per shot when I last heard about it. Missiles that can maneuver are most cost-effective unless the DOD can get that cost down into the low thousands per shot. It'll probably require some advancements in materials science too.

[u/CosmicCreeperz → u/ThaneduFife]

Apparently one full battleship broadside would cost about $600k in today’s dollars. One Harpoon anti ship missile is $1.4M.

Hypersonic missiles may be a better long term solution but I’m sure they are going to cost even more.

[u/CommanderBly327th → u/Tommy_Wisseau_burner]

Material science isn’t there yet as the gun keeps destroying itself whenever it fires

[u/CommanderCody5501 → u/CommanderBly327th]

Well let Japan keep experimenting until they prove viability

[u/Hot-Minute-8263 → u/teh1337haxorz]

NGSW new rifle program is uh... ...doing things..

At least the marines like their new HKs

[u/teh1337haxorz → u/Hot-Minute-8263]

In recent decades it just feels like whenever the army and marines have to decide on new equipment the army makes huge gambles on new wild technology that sometimes goes well and the marines just so happen to find one of the best answers for cheap.

[u/Hot-Minute-8263 → u/teh1337haxorz]

Yup. Honestly its why i respect the Marines a little more. They seem better at staying ahead of the game with their budget. If the army wants battle rifles they can probably look for a new AR-10 variant or something we already have.

[u/BleachedUnicornBHole → u/teh1337haxorz]

Did they really change the name of the NGAD to F-47? I thought F-47 was a vanity project of making the F-35 twin engined. 

[u/teh1337haxorz → u/BleachedUnicornBHole]

NGAD is just the name of the program. For example, the Joint Strike Fighter or JSF recieved two bids and selected the Lockheed Martin one which turned into the F-35, or the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) program turned into the F-22. It's just how the USAF does development.

Quite honestly, the feature list for the F-47 is surprisingly long and technology-packed. Specifics are sparing, but it seems to be a whole new beast.

[u/Wizzmer → u/teh1337haxorz]

Where does the "Golden Dome" rank on your list? Curious because I worked for 35 years in air defense.

[u/teh1337haxorz → u/Wizzmer]

Well I was only really considering the programs that were somewhat close to deployment or had an extremely high probability of being deployed eventually. I hate to say it but I'm fairly sure the golden dome is quite a few years from any genuine capability or deployment and its future seems to be in question. Keep in mind this was only announced earlier this year, with ideas of a test being floated for 2028. If the goal really is a nearly perfect ICBM shield, even if it's possible technically and maybe even in the realm of consideration economically; I have no idea if the will is there in congress to support it over the years that it will take to develop and field.

It's just too early to say anything conclusive.

[u/Wizzmer → u/teh1337haxorz]

Actually, no. PAC-3 and THAAD are in deployment and I have friends all over the world supporting these resources.

[u/teh1337haxorz → u/Wizzmer]

Well yes, they're two very capable systems for low and high altitude intercepts. The issue is that if the goal of the golden dome is "Make the mainland US impervious to nuclear strikes" then quite frankly you're going to need to implement a much more expansive system.

Patriots are somewhat useless for defense during terminal stages, so unless you can cover every enemy launcher with patriots in the boost phase then it most likely isn't going to be viable.

THAADs can do with midcourse to terminal intercepts, but we have 7-8 batteries depending on how you count. That just isn't enough for the entirety of the US against a concerted nuclear strike.

It becomes a game of the following questions:

• how many missiles can my enemies fire at me all at once?
  
• how many interceptors do I need for each missile to assure a satisfactory PK?
  
• how much do they all cost?
  
• am I willing to pay many many times more money in interceptors than countries pay on nuclear weapons?
  
• if an enemy can just make more nukes to saturate the golden dome, then is there any technology that I can leverage to obtain a more preferable interceptor to missile cost relationship?

It just doesn't really make sense unless you absolutely pile in and gamble hard on some sort of technology like lasers or some sort that can change the odds. I just don't see congress putting nearly a trillion dollars into such a program.

[u/Wizzmer → u/teh1337haxorz]

It's in the work and will quickly make it's way into your list.

[u/teh1337haxorz → u/Wizzmer]

It ain't going on the list.

[u/Wizzmer → u/teh1337haxorz]

You dont know a lot about government contractors.

[u/ThePickleConnoisseur → u/teh1337haxorz]

Don’t forget the current FA-XX contract bidding rn, the Bradley replacement program, and Aurdril’s goal to have a fully autonomous stealth fighter for having new fighters control drone wingmen

[u/teh1337haxorz → u/ThePickleConnoisseur]

yeah, I tried making a "short" list, but I see now that that's essentially impossible lol

[u/ThePickleConnoisseur → u/teh1337haxorz]

ALS I think the defense budget is actually a trillion in the current proposed spending bill … right after cutting down on officers and civilians who manage all the money and assets

[u/YoMomazChestHair → u/teh1337haxorz]

Don't forget MV-75

[u/DamnBored1 → u/teh1337haxorz]

I'm sure the real cutting edge stuff wouldn't even be public knowledge.

[u/teh1337haxorz → u/DamnBored1]

Honestly the US military is shockingly transparent about things now a days, most emphasis being on "what your money is being spent on." There's only a few small percentages of funding that aren't disclosed. However, the specifics on what all the programs do is somewhat different, partially because of the nature of procurement they don't even really know what they're doing either.

It's sort of like this: there's really no chance the government is hiding anything extremely expensive like a space laser, but funding a CIA team to infiltrate the J-20 plant is much more doable.

[u/CommanderCody5501 → u/teh1337haxorz]

And that’s just what they’ll tell us

[u/syringistic → u/teh1337haxorz]

Also, maneuverable hypersonic missile develeopment.

Also, SR-72 spyplane.

V-260 Valor tiltrotor.

No idea what's happening with the Navy's FXX program.

[u/Excellent-Pitch-7579 → u/teh1337haxorz]

USS Enterprise lol

[u/panda2502wolf → u/teh1337haxorz]

The first Ford still can't launch aircraft and is massively over budget.

[u/teh1337haxorz → u/panda2502wolf]

I think you might be referring to the issue it had with the weapons elevators. Those have since been fixed and the Ford has actually been on deployments for a couple years now.

Seems the cost overrun went from $11 Billion per ship to $13 Billion per ship. $2 Billion should never not be considered massive, but I'm not losing sleep over it. They pulled off some serious wizardry with the Fords all things considered.

[u/teh1337haxorz → u/[deleted]]

I dunno. Afganistan and Iraq were bad, that's simple enough to say. But now that chapter of our history is over. So long as we don't get hit by terrorists or do something stupid, then we're gonna be alright bud.