Wampum

Here's a Poisson d'Avril gem, taken from NBC this morning.

Despite lacking nuclear warheads, the rockets could advance Iran's alleged quest for nuclear weapons -- they could reverse engineer the missiles, and double the range of its most powerful rocket, the Shahab-3, US intelligence officials told NBC.

With Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko coming to Washington next week, the story of Ukraine's complete withdrawal from Iraq by October has to be buried by something, so the January story of six abandoned X-55 cruise missiles carcasses, minus their warheads, fuel, and launcher motors, being "illegally sold" to Iran is a good candidate for recycling.

So, the X-55 cruise missiles, in the Kh-55, long-range with nuclear weapons package, or the AS-15, short-range with high-explosive package models, are powered by a turbofan and fly at Mach 0.48-0.77, at an altitude of 40 to 110 meters. The guidance system is standard follow-on-board-map in terrain following / terrain avoidance mode. Something I personally worked on at Hughes Radar in 1977-79.

The Shahab-3 is derived from the North Korean Nodong-1, itself derived from the Soviet Scud, is a ballistic missile, with a single thrust chamber that delivers 1.6 gees of thrust (at lauch weight) over 110 seconds to a cut off velocity of 3,700 meters/sec, or about Mach 11, and a range of 1,500 km. The guidance system is standard inertial with GPS.

Two possibilities exist. Either access to the six X-55 carcasses will allow Iranian rocket scientiests to make the Shahab-3 22 times slower than it is at present, in "ballistic" mode, or make the Shahab-3 operate in "nape of the earth" mode, at a wicked healthy Mach 11, 22 times faster than any cruise missile in the US inventory. For 110 seconds (less, but lets ignore drag).

We'll take these two possibilites to our scientists at the ACME labs.

Using our ACME computers, if Wyle E. Coyote is moving at between Mach .47 and .74, or less than 250 m/s, he is moving 5.4 times slower than the V-2 rocket of 1943-45, and when and oriented near-vertically, the resulting ballistic manuver envelope closely resembles the lauch point, adjusted for local breeze directionality and vigorous arm waving on descent.

Again, using our ACME computers, if Wyle E. Coyote is moving at 3,600 meters/second at an altitude of 110 meters at a distance of 396 km from his launch point, when the burn ends, at 9.8m/sec, gravity should reduce Wyle E.'s altitude to zero (ground strike liklihood greater than 100%) in under 5 seconds, giving Wyle E. a post-burn run of 18 km, for a total range of 414 km (minus drag effects, solved by Warner Bros. engineering).

Since a camel can go for a week or so without water, and can cover about 250 miles before pegging out "dry", this provides the defense planner with the footprint of the new threat -- Iran will be able to project force via overwhelming technical means at a stand-off range of about 1 camel (no refills) from its boarders.

Wicked scary stuff either way.

Another possiblity pair exists. That US intelligence officials think NBC is dumb as a post, and will swallow Wyle E. Coyote attempting to go ballistic transported by ballons, birds, and so on, or the Wyle E. Coyote burning a hole through hill and dale at Mach 11 for the length of a dehydrating camel (no refills!).

Or. US intelligence officials who brief NBC on faux casus belli, and therefore operate out of either the Firth Ballroom at the Pentagon, or the Rove Alcove off the Oval in the Whitehouse, believe Wyle E. (either model) is a credible threat to the United States.

Wicked scary stuff either way.