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Sonic boom

A sonic boom is a sound associated with shock waves created when an object travels through the air faster than the speed of sound. Sonic booms generate enormous amounts of sound energy, sounding similar to an explosion or a thunderclap to the human ear.

The crack of a supersonic bullet passing overhead or the crack of a bullwhip are examples of a sonic boom in miniature.

Sonic booms due to large supersonic aircraft can be particularly loud and startling, tend to awaken people, and may cause minor damage to some structures. This led to the prohibition of routine supersonic flight overland. Although they cannot be completely prevented, research suggests that with careful shaping of the vehicle, the nuisance due to the sonic booms may be reduced to the point that overland supersonic flight may become a feasible option.

A sonic boom does not occur only at the moment an object crosses the sound barrier and neither is it heard in all directions emanating from the supersonic object. Rather, the boom is a continuous effect that occurs while the object is traveling at supersonic speeds and affects only observers that are positioned at a point that intersects a region in the shape of a geometrical cone behind the object. As the object moves, this conical region also moves behind it and when the cone passes over the observer, they will briefly experience the "boom".

Causes
When an aircraft passes through the air, it creates a series of pressure waves in front of the aircraft and behind it, similar to the bow and stern waves created by a boat. These waves travel at the speed of sound and, as the speed of the object increases, the waves are forced together, or compressed, because they cannot get out of each other's way quickly enough. Eventually, they merge into a single shock wave, which travels at the speed of sound, a critical speed known as Mach 1, which is approximately 1192 km/h at sea level and 20 C.

In smooth flight, the shock wave starts at the nose of the aircraft and ends at the tail. Because the different radial directions around the aircraft's direction of travel are equivalent (given the "smooth flight" condition), the shock wave forms a Mach cone, similar to a vapour cone, with the aircraft at its tip. The half-angle $$\alpha$$ between the direction of flight and the shock wave is given by:

 * $$\sin \alpha =\frac{v_\text{sound}}{v_\text{object}} $$,

where $$ \tfrac{v_\text{sound}}{v_\text{object}} $$ is the inverse $$\tfrac{1}{\mathrm{Ma}}$$ of the plane's Mach number $$\mathrm{Ma} = \tfrac{v_\text{object}}{v_\text{sound}}$$. Thus the faster the plane travels, the finer and more pointed the cone is.

There is a rise in pressure at the nose, decreasing steadily to a negative pressure at the tail, followed by a sudden return to normal pressure after the object passes. This "overpressure profile" is known as an N-wave because of its shape. The "boom" is experienced when there is a sudden change in pressure; therefore, an N-wave causes two booms – one when the initial pressure rise reaches an observer, and another when the pressure returns to normal. This leads to a distinctive "double boom" from a supersonic aircraft. When the aircraft is maneuvering, the pressure distribution changes into different forms, with a characteristic U-wave shape.

Since the boom is being generated continually as long as the aircraft is supersonic, it fills out a narrow path on the ground following the aircraft's flight path, a bit like an unrolling red carpet, and hence known as the boom carpet. Its width depends on the altitude of the aircraft. The distance from the point on the ground where the boom is heard to the aircraft depends on its altitude and the angle $$ \alpha $$.

For today's supersonic aircraft in normal operating conditions, the peak overpressure varies from less than 50 to 500 Pa (1 to 10 psf (pound per square foot)) for an N-wave boom. Peak overpressures for U-waves are amplified two to five times the N-wave, but this amplified overpressure impacts only a very small area when compared to the area exposed to the rest of the sonic boom. The strongest sonic boom ever recorded was 7,000 Pa (144 psf) and it did not cause injury to the researchers who were exposed to it. The boom was produced by an F-4 flying just above the speed of sound at an altitude of 100 ft. In recent tests, the maximum boom measured during more realistic flight conditions was 1,010 Pa (21 psf). There is a probability that some damage—shattered glass, for example—will result from a sonic boom. Buildings in good condition should suffer no damage by pressures of 530 Pa (11 psf) or less. And, typically, community exposure to sonic boom is below 100 Pa (2 psf). Ground motion resulting from the sonic boom is rare and is well below structural damage thresholds accepted by the U.S. Bureau of Mines and other agencies.

The power, or volume, of the shock wave, depends on the quantity of air that is being accelerated, and thus the size and shape of the aircraft. As the aircraft increases speed the shock cone gets tighter around the craft and becomes weaker to the point that at very high speeds and altitudes, no boom is heard. The "length" of the boom from front to back depends on the length of the aircraft to a power of 3/2. Longer aircraft therefore "spread out" their booms more than smaller ones, which leads to a less powerful boom.

Several smaller shock waves can and usually do form at other points on the aircraft, primarily at any convex points, or curves, the leading wing edge, and especially the inlet to engines. These secondary shockwaves are caused by the air being forced to turn around these convex points, which generates a shock wave in supersonic flow.

The later shock waves are somewhat faster than the first one, travel faster, and add to the main shockwave at some distance away from the aircraft to create a much more defined N-wave shape. This maximizes both the magnitude and the "rise time" of the shock which makes the boom seem louder. On most aircraft designs the characteristic distance is about 40000 ft, meaning that below this altitude the sonic boom will be "softer". However, the drag at this altitude or below makes supersonic travel particularly inefficient, which poses a serious problem.

Supersonic aircraft
Supersonic aircraft are any aircraft that can achieve flight faster than Mach 1, which refers to the speed of sound. "Supersonic includes speeds up to five times Mach than the speed of sound, or Mach 5." (Dunbar, 2015) The top mileage per hour for a supersonic aircraft normally ranges from 700 to 1,500 mph. Typically, most aircraft do not exceed 1,500 mph. There are many variations of supersonic aircraft. Some models of supersonic aircraft make use of better-engineered aerodynamics that allow a few sacrifices in the aerodynamics of the model for thruster power. Other models use the efficiency and power of the thruster to allow a less aerodynamic model to achieve greater speeds. A typical model found in United States military use ranges from an average of $13 million to $35 million U.S. dollars.

Measurement and examples
The pressure from sonic booms caused by aircraft is often a few pounds per square foot. A vehicle flying at greater altitude will generate lower pressures on the ground because the shock wave reduces in intensity as it spreads out away from the vehicle, but the sonic booms are less affected by vehicle speed.

Abatement

In the late 1950s when supersonic transport (SST) designs were being actively pursued, it was thought that although the boom would be very large, the problems could be avoided by flying higher. This assumption was proven false when the North American XB-70 Valkyrie first flew, and it was found that the boom was a problem even at 70,000 feet (21,000 m). It was during these tests that the N-wave was first characterized.

Richard Seebass and his colleague Albert George at Cornell University studied the problem extensively and eventually defined a "figure of merit" (FM) to characterize the sonic boom levels of different aircraft. FM is a function of the aircraft's weight and the aircraft length. The lower this value, the less boom the aircraft generates, with figures of about 1 or lower being considered acceptable. Using this calculation, they found FMs of about 1.4 for Concorde and 1.9 for the Boeing 2707. This eventually doomed most SST projects as public resentment, mixed with politics, eventually resulted in laws that made any such aircraft less useful (flying supersonically only over water for instance). Small airplane designs like business jets are favored and tend to produce minimal to no audible booms.

Building on the earlier research of L. B. Jones, Seebass, and George identified conditions in which sonic boom shockwaves could be eliminated. This work was extended by [https://www.thematildaproject.com/scientists/christine-darden Christine. M. Darden] and described as the Jones-Seebass-George-Darden theory of sonic boom minimization. This theory, approached the problem from a different angle, trying to spread out the N-wave laterally and temporally (longitudinally), by producing a strong and downwards-focused (SR-71 Blackbird, Boeing X-43) shock at a sharp, but wide angle nose cone, which will travel at slightly supersonic speed (bow shock), and using a swept back flying wing or an oblique flying wing to smooth out this shock along the direction of flight (the tail of the shock travels at sonic speed). To adapt this principle to existing planes, which generate a shock at their nose cone and an even stronger one at their wing leading edge, the fuselage below the wing is shaped according to the area rule. Ideally, this would raise the characteristic altitude from 40000 ft to 60,000 feet (from 12,000 m to 18,000 m), which is where most SST aircraft were expected to fly.

This remained untested for decades, until DARPA started the Quiet Supersonic Platform project and funded the Shaped Sonic Boom Demonstration (SSBD) aircraft to test it. SSBD used an F-5 Freedom Fighter. The F-5E was modified with a highly refined shape which lengthened the nose to that of the F-5F model. The fairing extended from the nose back to the inlets on the underside of the aircraft. The SSBD was tested over two years culminating in 21 flights and was an extensive study on sonic boom characteristics. After measuring the 1,300 recordings, some taken inside the shock wave by a chase plane, the SSBD demonstrated a reduction in boom by about one-third. Although one-third is not a huge reduction, it could have reduced Concorde's boom to an acceptable level below FM = 1.

As a follow-on to SSBD, in 2006 a NASA-Gulfstream Aerospace team tested the Quiet Spike on NASA Dryden's F-15B aircraft 836. The Quiet Spike is a telescoping boom fitted to the nose of an aircraft specifically designed to weaken the strength of the shock waves forming on the nose of the aircraft at supersonic speeds. Over 50 test flights were performed. Several flights included probing of the shockwaves by a second F-15B, NASA's Intelligent Flight Control System testbed, aircraft 837.

Some theoretical designs do not appear to create sonic booms at all, such as the Busemann biplane. However, creating a shockwave is inescapable if it generates aerodynamic lift.

In 2018, NASA awarded Lockheed Martin a $247.5 million contract to construct a design known as the Low Boom Flight Demonstrator, which aims to reduce the boom to the sound of a car door closing. As of October 2023, the first flight was expected in 2024.

Perception, noise, and other concerns
The sound of a sonic boom depends largely on the distance between the observer and the aircraft shape producing the sonic boom. A sonic boom is usually heard as a deep double "boom" as the aircraft is usually some distance away. The sound is much like that of mortar bombs, commonly used in firework displays. It is a common misconception that only one boom is generated during the subsonic to supersonic transition; rather, the boom is continuous along the boom carpet for the entire supersonic flight. As a former Concorde pilot puts it, "You don't actually hear anything on board. All we see is the pressure wave moving down the airplane – it indicates the instruments. And that's what we see around Mach 1. But we don't hear the sonic boom or anything like that. That's rather like the wake of a ship – it's behind us."

In 1964, NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration began the Oklahoma City sonic boom tests, which caused eight sonic booms per day over six months. Valuable data was gathered from the experiment, but 15,000 complaints were generated and ultimately entangled the government in a class-action lawsuit, which it lost on appeal in 1969.

Sonic booms were also a nuisance in North Cornwall and North Devon in the UK as these areas were underneath the flight path of Concorde. Windows would rattle and in some cases, the "torching" (pointing underneath roof slates) would be dislodged with the vibration.

There has been recent work in this area, notably under DARPA's Quiet Supersonic Platform studies. Research by acoustics experts under this program began looking more closely at the composition of sonic booms, including the frequency content. Several characteristics of the traditional sonic boom "N" wave can influence how loud and irritating it can be perceived by listeners on the ground. Even strong N-waves such as those generated by Concorde or military aircraft can be far less objectionable if the rise time of the over-pressure is sufficiently long. A new metric has emerged, known as perceived loudness, measured in PLdB. This takes into account the frequency content, rise time, etc. A well-known example is the snapping of one's fingers in which the "perceived" sound is nothing more than an annoyance.

The energy range of sonic boom is concentrated in the 0.1–100 hertz frequency range that is considerably below that of subsonic aircraft, gunfire and most industrial noise. Duration of sonic boom is brief; less than a second, 100 milliseconds (0.1  second) for most fighter-sized aircraft and 500  milliseconds for the space shuttle or Concorde jetliner. The intensity and width of a sonic boom path depend on the physical characteristics of the aircraft and how it is operated. In general, the greater an aircraft's altitude, the lower the over-pressure on the ground. Greater altitude also increases the boom's lateral spread, exposing a wider area to the boom. Over-pressures in the sonic boom impact area, however, will not be uniform. Boom intensity is greatest directly under the flight path, progressively weakening with greater horizontal distance away from the aircraft flight track. Ground width of the boom exposure area is approximately 1 smi for each 1000 ft of altitude (the width is about five times the altitude); that is, an aircraft flying supersonic at 30000 ft will create a lateral boom spread of about 30 mi. For steady supersonic flight, the boom is described as a carpet boom since it moves with the aircraft as it maintains supersonic speed and altitude. Some maneuvers, diving, acceleration, or turning, can cause the focus of the boom. Other maneuvers, such as deceleration and climbing, can reduce the strength of the shock. In some instances, weather conditions can distort sonic booms.

Depending on the aircraft's altitude, sonic booms reach the ground 2 to 60 seconds after flyover. However, not all booms are heard at ground level. The speed of sound at any altitude is a function of air temperature. A decrease or increase in temperature results in a corresponding decrease or increase in sound speed. Under standard atmospheric conditions, air temperature decreases with increased altitude. For example, when the sea-level temperature is 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15 °C), the temperature at 30000 ft drops to minus 49 degrees Fahrenheit (−45 °C). This temperature gradient helps bend the sound waves upward. Therefore, for a boom to reach the ground, the aircraft's speed relative to the ground must be greater than the speed of sound at the ground. For example, the speed of sound at 30000 ft is about 670 mph, but an aircraft must travel at least 750 mph (Mach 1.12) for a boom to be heard on the ground.

The composition of the atmosphere is also a factor. Temperature variations, humidity, atmospheric pollution, and winds can all affect how a sonic boom is perceived on the ground. Even the ground itself can influence the sound of a sonic boom. Hard surfaces such as concrete, pavement, and large buildings can cause reflections that may amplify the sound of a sonic boom. Similarly, grassy fields and profuse foliage can help attenuate the strength of the overpressure of a sonic boom.

Currently, there are no industry-accepted standards for the acceptability of a sonic boom. However, work is underway to create metrics that will help in understanding how humans respond to the noise generated by sonic booms. Until such metrics can be established, either through further study or supersonic overflight testing, it is doubtful that legislation will be enacted to remove the current prohibition on supersonic overflight in place in several countries, including the United States.

Bullwhip
The cracking sound a bullwhip makes when properly wielded is, in fact, a small sonic boom. The end of the whip, known as the "cracker", moves faster than the speed of sound, thus creating a sonic boom.

A bullwhip tapers down from the handle section to the cracker. The cracker has much less mass than the handle section. When the whip is sharply swung, the momentum is transferred down the length of the tapering whip, the declining mass being made up for with increasing speed. Goriely and McMillen showed that the physical explanation is complex, involving the way that a loop travels down a tapered filament under tension.

title: Sonic boom


text:
Talk:Public opinion in the United States on the invasion of Iraq

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Untitled comments
This text was originally located at Support and opposition for the U.S. plan to invade Iraq. A complete history for the text may be found there. - Montréalais 05:03 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)

This needs to be fleshed out and wikified. Use full names, not just "Saddam". -- Zoe

Right now, I'm just cutting and pasting from the full Support and Opposition article. I could use some help polishing each resulting segment. - Montréalais

--

Is an encyclopedia really the right place for what thematically is a recording of an op-ed article ? Also, shouldn't such articles be added in retrospect if at all ?

Ideally, this piece should be a part of "American history in early 21st century" or "Iraq War : 2003"(should it occur). -- Gyan

 * Thank you, Gyan. I've been fighting this battle for a while now.  -- Zoe

I renamed the article from "war on" Iraq to "invasion of" Iraq for two reasons:
 * 1) The article is completely about the decision to invade or not -- I saw nothing about reactions to the progress of the war itself or the occupation afterwards, let alone the current Iraqi government's campaign against the insurgents
 * 2) The phrase "war on" promotes the POV that the purpose (or effect) of the war was against the legitimate interests of the Iraqi people -- a position which is not a fact but a point of view still hotly disputed. "Invasion of" carries no such connotation. It's strictly neutral, raising no questions of purpose or legitimacy. --Uncle Ed 19:10, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Iraqi opinion?
Sort of covered in other articles, but why not have Iraqi popular opinion of invasion of Iraq? The rest of the world's opinion seems adequately covered in other articles.

Apparently people don't even think this article is valid. I know I'd like a clear, NPOV account of how Iraqis feel about being "liberated", though. Iraqi resistance has some info. - Omegatron 21:01, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

Military Opinion ?
Is there an article which deals with the US military opinon, or is there an intentions to address the question in this one ? I think that with Anthony Zinni, Karen_Kwiatkowski, the recent stories about Rumsfled and humvees, there is something to talk about... Cheers ! Rama 11:05, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Leaves in Autumn
The following quote is taken out of context: On the 16th of June 2005, Foxnews editorialist John Gibson aknowledged that " Bush's support for the war is falling off like leaves in autumn".

If you read the article, Gibson is stating not that popular support for Bush's war is falling, but that Bush's support for the war is falling. While it may be true that fewer and fewer Americans support the war, Gibson did not make that point in that editorial. He was lamenting President Bush's failure to more strenuously defend the rightness of the war.

--Henrybaker 21:17, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

 * What makes you think this ? I agree that it could be understood like this (and I admit that I never though of this interpretation), but before this, you have "People want to know you've thought long and hard before ordering men and women to war. They want to know you have good reasons and that the reasons stand up to vigorous attack.", and right after, you have "[Bush] should be able to convince people that this was a war worth fighting and it's a war worth winning. The latter is harder than the first. It's hard to hang in long enough to actually win. But it is worth it."; to me, this clearly points to the picture of a resolute but misunderstood president, and less and less wanting population. Rama 21:32, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Rama, nowhere in the article, before or after the statement in question, does Gibson talk about US popular support for the war. The quote is at best ambiguous, more likely taken out of context. This is not professional behaviour for an encyclopedia or any intellectual excercise. --Henrybaker 00:35, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

 * What about "People want to know you've thought long and hard before ordering men and women to war" ? Rama 07:37, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Henrybaker, if you yourself admit the "quote is at best ambiguous," then you can only accuse Rama of being unprofessional if you assume bad faith, which is the opposite of Wikipedia's foremost commandment. Further, you're pushing a novel interpretation, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.  FireWeed 19:15, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

"But Bush's support for the war is falling off like leaves in autumn. And that shouldn't be. He should be able to articulate the reasons we're there without sounding like a broken record. He should be able to say why we'll stay a certain length of time — long enough for them to get ready to protect themselves — and then if they seem like they will fail forever, we'll probably have to go, and say, "Hey, we gave it a good shot." "

Do you really think the line that you quoted is about Public Opinion? It is clearly not. Rama, it is unprofessional, at any level of academia, to take a quote out of context like that. --Henrybaker 16:16, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I am really sorry, but I still understand this as the popular opinion toward Bush's war, and "He should be able to articulate ..." as what Bush should do to win back this popular support. I understand that two interpretations of the sentence can be made, but I fail to see what is decisively better with yours. Rama 20:40, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I think that in the light of this further article, with things like "you may have noticed the American people seem to have lost their ardor for the war", it is safe to think that my interpretation was correct. I am restoring the part. Rama 16:12, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

"Popular Opinion"?
There is no "popular opinion" on the Invasion of Iraq, and I doubt there ever will be. Until someone can show other than a few media polls, I can't find the notability of this article, other than it trying to push a political view. Putting up for DR. --Mrmiscellanious 01:21, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

 * "There is no "popular opinion" on the Invasion of Iraq" ??? I though that the USA were a free country were people were free to have any opinion they wanted ? What are you trying to say with this enormously shocking statement ? Rama 06:56, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
 * That's the point I'm making. There can be no one "popular opinion", which makes me think from reading it that it is pushing one.  --Mrmiscellanious 02:39, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

 * The popular opinion regarding this Invasion is many, varied, changing, yet it exists. If you are dissatisfied with this artcile, you are welcome to suggest it be renamed to a plural and work on its content, but suggesting its deletion does not strike me as a particularly good idea. Rama 05:55, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

 * The article desperately need to spell out wherefrom it gets it seemingly near divine insight into the American mind. Especially the intro where it’s forwarded without a scrap of evidence that popular opinion is this and that and what not. That all it is in fact are some random more or less (and more less than more) trustworthy and biased polls and no general voting has ever been made, except for the presidential election in 2005. Rune X2 17:41, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

 * This why I think this article is desering of a

POV-check
 * tag. 70.106.36.134 00:50, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Quality
The article is of a very low quality. Filled with unsubstantiated and uncited polls and many vague (and in the context quite useless) snippets like "some polls", "other polls showed", "most polls showed", "a consistent pattern", etc. The uncited polls should be removed and the vague, the "hearsay" tone of "some" and "most" cleaned up.

 * This article is really unworthy of Wikipedia. I am surprised that the originator hasn't done more to "wikify" the entries.207.200.116.8 20:17, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

 * I agree. These weasel words make me cringe. 70.106.36.134 00:52, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

 * Although this article strikes me as fairly accurate in the way it describes "the public mood" as an American can understand it from watching and reading the American media, it's still unencyclopedic. In what's essentially a timeline of poll results, there are four references.  It seems like half the results in this article don't mention which poll they're from!

 * I realize weasel words are perfectly acceptable on Fox News ( "some people think ..." ), but not in an encyclopedia.

 * FireWeed 19:36, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

 * The article may not be “encyclopedic” but it is a valuable resource if someone is interested in a centralized collection of opinion polls concerning the American public’s support of the Invasion. Granted, in order to serve this function the article requires a massive overhaul.  I have a few proposals that I will begin working on unless there is contention:
 * Remove all uncited claims
 * Remove all polls not directly portraying the opinion towards the invasion. This page was born from the “Support and Opposition of the U.S. Plan to Invade” article, and should continue to provide information under that topic.  We can find another home for the opinion polls concerning the President, the surge, etc.
 * Separate the issues from the timeline. i.e. the discussion of President Bush’s speech is useful but clutters the timeline section and might be better placed under a general section entitled “Influencing Factors”
 * Nishspeak 06:04, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

 * That sounds good to me.  Thanks. --Orcasgirl 19:32, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I updated the intro to contain polls through May of 2007 using the Associated Press-Ipsos and a CNN poll in order to maintain a neutral point of view --Orcasgirl 23:10, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

False Public Perception
According to a Harris Poll released July 21 found that 50% of U.S. respondents said they believe Iraq had the forbidden arms when U.S. troops invaded in March 2003. This was reported in numerous news articles, such as The State (http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/15215272.htm) and The Washington Post (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/offbeat/2006/08/do_you_believe_in_wmd.html). PJ 06:53, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Proposal to rename article
It seems like this article should be retitled American public opinion of Iraq war. Public would replace popular, as I think "public opinion poll" is a far more common usage than "popular opinion poll". Popular has several other connotations (as in populist, or something that people generally favor) that I don't think are intended here. Iraq war would replace invasion of Iraq, since the polls in this article cover the entire war, both invasion and occupation. I think there is a fairly consistent split on the Iraq war articles between those two phases of the war, with the title "Iraq war" encompassing both pieces. Does anyone object to my retitling the article? Thanks. --Mackabean 00:15, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I do not have a problem with replacing the term public for popular though. Orcasgirl 21:37, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

(which we could link to, of course). Nishspeak 04:21, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I Agree renaming the article to American public opinion of Iraq war is a good idea because popular seams like the social latter idea --Jeffrd10 (talk) 13:18, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Deleted sentence
I deleted this sentence- They did this without thinking about the consequences the war might have on Iraq's Christian communities (Armenian, Assyrian, Chaldean), let alone of course, every other community- due to flagrant bias and it being an unverifiable claim. 81.90.21.125 00:26, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a bar graph
A graph aggregating the various polls showing change over time would be fantastic here! --Ephilei 01:23, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Bad link
This source contains no poll from 2003: An ABC News/Washington Post poll taken after the beginning of the war showed a 62% support for the war, lower than the 79% in favor at the beginning of the Persian Gulf War.[2]

More recent data?
The article basically ends almost a decade ago. I found a bit of newer data here: http://www.people-press.org/2014/01/30/more-now-see-failure-than-success-in-iraq-afghanistan/#more-say-u-s-has-failed-than-succeeded-in-achieving-iraq-goals Should it be added? Too busy to do it myself. HCA (talk) 18:07, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

I think more recent data should be added for the 10 year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. In 2013-2014, President Obama fulfilled his promise of pulling US troops out of the area. Based on this decision, I found a source from the Pew Research center that polled citizens asking if they felt the war was a success. The poll showed an all time low (52%) that the invasion was not successful and failed to achieve the goals the US set out to accomplish. This attitude could be a direct result from an authoritative government rising up and the early beginnings of ISIS.

Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/12/more-americans-say-us-failed-to-achieve-its-goals-in-iraq/ Kfill (talk) 18:49, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Peer Review Article
The Structure of the Article is pretty good as the headings are clear and show what is in each section. The exception to this is the heading "The Change" which is too broad and confusing. Something like The flip in Opinion on the war or something like that I feel would be better. In the lead section the last few sentences which show polling data is that should probably be in the body of the article.

Some of the Polling data seems to be misrepresented in the article. For example in the January 2003 section the UN poll that is referred to as showing that "Approximately two-thirds of respondents wanted the government to wait for the UN inspections to end" is incorrect. The Poll actually say that nearly 2 thirds (63%) support diplomatic solutions now instead of military ones, not that they want are just wanting to see the U.N. report and then decide. While small, it is still inaccurate and should be fixed.

Some of the sources seem to be too old or broken links, some even use the wayback machine to access pages and information. These sources need to be updated but it might be difficult to find old news articles that aren't behind pay walls or on databases. There are also several places needing citations but many already have the need citation subscript but not all.

The good news it seems that everyone of the talk page is realistic about the articles problems and are working to make positive changes. I agree that adding a graph showing the change overtime could be very useful and enhance the article heavily as most users don't read a fully article and often only read lead sections and look at photos as they scroll throw. It would be a great, quick and easy way to dispense the information. I trust the article will be better soon and good luck! Sean Ruddy (talk) 17:35, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Gallup Source does not support this statement, unless I am missing something
"In March 1992, 55% of Americans said they would support sending American troops back to the Persian Gulf to remove Saddam Hussein from power" the referenced archived source does not seem to contain anything to support this sentence

Aisleway (talk) 04:10, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Can this include support for war by demographic and state residency factors?
Is it only for the United States as a whole or anything within the United States Hikeddeck (talk) 03:55, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

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