📌 TOPINDIATOURS Breaking ai: China proposes mass-produced cruise missiles to cripp

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) claims that its new YJ-18C missile could be the ticket to defeating the US Navy should things turn hot in the Pacific. Since these missiles are relatively cheap to build, the PLA argues, they could be converted for use to overwhelm US logistics rather than take on its powerful aircraft carriers.

Originally designed as a subsonic land-attack cruise missile, the YJ-18C has the ability to be turned into a cheap anti-ship missile instead. Being subsonic, this missile is obviously relatively slow compared to other missiles of its kind.

It does, however, benefit from having a relatively long range and a small radar signature. Critically, it is relatively cheap to build and can be mass-produced.

These features make the missile “good enough” for its intended purpose, and if enough can be launched at one time, it would be almost impossible to stop them all.

Quantity, not quality, wins the race

As previously mentioned, the intended targets wouldn’t be the US Navy’s main warships, but rather their support vessels. This would include things like fuel shops, ammunition ships, roll-on/roll-off transports, and the like.

These ships are huge and tend to have minimal defenses of their own compared to warships. They also need to operate close enough to contested regions to support any fleet they are attached to.

Just as an “army marches on its stomach,” the Navy also needs its fair share of dependable logistics support to operate for extended periods of time. If this can be disrupted, even for a short period, the overall effectiveness of America’s powerful fleet could be eroded enough to make a difference.

Theoretically, if enough can be knocked out, it could lead to aircraft being grounded. destroyers starved of missiles, ultimately needing the entire fleet ot withdraw.

But for a strategy like this to work, the PLA will need many of them to be fired in one salvo, with a very high attrition rate to be expected. Against carrier strike groups, Aegis-equipped destroyers, and other dense layered air defenses, missiles like the YJ-18C can easily be intercepted.

“While we should not overestimate its penetration capability against modern, heavily defended surface task forces, it could prove highly effective against lightly defended targets such as transport ships and supply vessels,” the PLA explained in an unnammed a Chinese military magazine, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports.

YJ-18C could be fired from civilian ships

But being cheap and having a long range means firing en masse could mean at least one or two get through to hit the “soft underbelly” of the fleet’s logistics ships.

What’s more, the PLA explains that these missiles could be launched from a wide variety of launch platforms. This could include secondary PLA ships, coastal batteries, and even, in theory, converted civilian vessels.

If achievable, this would prove to be a nightmare for the US Navy, as it would make it much harder to identify or predict potential YJ-18C threats. For this reason, missiles could be fired from various locations at once, making defensive planning a nightmare.

To this end, the real innovation here is not about a new technology, but rather a shift in thinking from making “superweapons” like hypersonics to threaten the US Navy.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com

📌 TOPINDIATOURS Hot ai: Cybertruck Attempts to Fling Baby Onto Highway Wajib Baca

A couple says their Tesla Cybertruck nearly dumped their baby onto the side of the highway after its passenger door latch failed, The Oaklandside reports.

The husband, Oakland resident Viral Shah, says he and his wife were driving up a ramp to get on the highway when the back passenger door next to their one-year-old child suddenly swung open. Shah and his wife screamed and immediately pulled over to check on their kid. Fortunately, the car seat saved the baby from being flung out the car, but it was an alarmingly close call. And had the 60-pound stainless steel-clad door swung back closed, it could have smashed the child’s hand or arm.

If anyone had been sitting back there without a seatbelt, Shah told The Oaklandside, “they would’ve been mush on the street.” His wife had to take the child’s seat, buckle herself in, and hold the door closed for the rest of the drive home. ​​”This is f*cking nuts,” she said, Shah recalled.

Upon inspecting the passenger door, Shah discovered that the metal loop that the car door latch hooked into, called a striker, was missing one of its two screws and had come loose. He also found that the driver door had a screw loose as well. Alarmed, he submitted a complaint to the National High Traffic Safety Administration.

“That’s what made me really scared and furious, because this wasn’t a simple defect,” he told The Oaklandside. “This wasn’t an oversight with one thing where shit happens. This was a systemic design flaw that was affecting those two doors because they were the most heavily used.” 

“There’s no doubt in my mind the same thing would happen to all four doors had they been used with the same level of frequency,” he added.

An expert who reviewed photos and videos taken by Shah and his wife suspected that the “weld-nuts” on the backside of the door’s steel pillar appeared to improperly welded, gradually dislodging as the doors were shut.

“This should never, ever happen, but weld-nuts do occasionally break free if there is a process or setup error in the welding equipment or if protective coatings that are used to limit corrosion during shipping of parts are not properly cleaned,” Sam Abuelsamid, a car engineer and vice president of market research at Telemetry, told Oaklandside.

The Cybertruck has been recalled a staggering ten times, a number that probably flatters the vehicle, as it has been accused of all kinds of serious reliability issues beyond those that became official record. Many of the recalls, in any case, were pretty serious. One was for its accelerator pedal getting stuck in the down position, and another was for losing power while driving. It’s also been recalled for other body-related issues, including its stainless steel panels flying off because they were adhered with crummy glue.

The latches aren’t the only apparent issue. Other aspects of the electric doors, which do not have a traditional handle, have been criticized for being unsafe. The doors are operated by a push button from both the outside and inside, systems that can easily fail in an accident. And critics say its emergency release mechanisms are too hidden and impractical. In 2024, three recent high school graduates died after being trapped in a Cybertruck that crashed and caught fire. A bystander at the scene tried to let them free, but couldn’t open the electric doors after the buttons failed.

Shah said that after his incident, he took the vehicle to a Tesla service center, which admitted on an invoice that the rear passenger door was “damaged due to a loose striker.” Tesla offered to buy back the vehicle for nearly its full purchase price, so long as he agreed not to sue the automaker. He took the offer.

More on Tesla: Cybertruck Sales Show Stomach-Churning Drop

The post Cybertruck Attempts to Fling Baby Onto Highway appeared first on Futurism.

🔗 Sumber: futurism.com