When it comes to going fast through the atmosphere I always think of the Sprint anti-ballistic missile [1]. From zero to Mach 10 in five seconds, accelerating at 100 g, glowing white with a skin temperature of thousands of degrees, to intercept an incoming ICBM that is less than 10 seconds away from impact by detonating its own low-yield thermonuclear warhead in front of the target. There are also a few bits of footage [2] on YouTube.
Citing a conclusion about cost from WW2 era Germany isn't a great argument. Every such product cost more in the distant past when prevailing techniques are only just barely feasible.
Dyna-soar was a Space Plane; a human rated space vehicle. Yes it ultimately found no useful role and was shut down. There is little meaningful overlap between such a program and an unmanned missile system; the relevance of Dyna-soar is close to zero.
Twice it is stated that hypersonic missiles have "few" advantages over cruise or ballistic technologies. But few isn't zero and the difference could be crucial. Doubtless the authors would love to credibly claim there are zero advantages, but they can't, because that is false. The implicit advice here is that we learn about the importance of these "few" advantages when they're applied to our forces by an opponent.
We then end with the classic "pressing needs elsewhere" cop-out. "Pressing needs" are infinite. We seek value in our policies and investments and this writing fails to convince that hypersonic weapons have no value.
>> There is little meaningful overlap between such a program and an unmanned missile system; the relevance of Dyna-soar is close to zero.
Except that part of Dyna-soar was dipping back into atmosphere for plane change maneuvers. That dipping in and out of atmosphere to make course changes would seem very relevant to missiles.
But this quote is more telling of the author:
"Thus, while hypersonic weapons fly a more direct path to their targets, they lose much of their speed throughout flight, ultimately taking longer to reach their targets than comparable ballistic missiles."
No. A ballistic missile follows a ballistic trajectory. That means it is on a very fixed schedule, a tight min/max flight time to the target based on predictable spheres-in-a-vacuum physics. A hypersonic missile on a lower trajectory can indeed get to some targets sooner. It will require more fuel/energy to do so, as opposed to following the higher ballistic path, but fuel efficiency isn't a big deal when you are delivering nukes.
There are a range of ballistic trajectories that can work. If you want to get there faster, you can use a shallower trajectory (they usually call this a depressed trajectory). This takes more energy, so you get a shorter range for a given missile. The other problem is that the warhead spends more time in the atmosphere.
Most ballistic missiles use unguided reentry vehicles, so the best accuracy comes from a high trajectory that comes almost straight down onto the target, so it spends the least time interacting with the unpredictable atmosphere.
However, if the reentry vehicle is guided, depressed trajectories become more practical. The U.S. did this in the past with the Pershing II, which had terminal radar guidance, and we have a half-way version of this with path length fusing on the Trident II, where the warhead is not guided, but the detonation point is controlled based on trajectory error.
Russia has tested these in the past few years and could have deployed them. IMO it's an underappreciated threat because it could allow attacks against hard targets with less than 10 minutes of warning.
Sorry but citing technical similarities doesn't salvage the Dyna-soar argument for me. Dyna-soar program was a manned bomber/reconnaissance platform. The recent efforts of advanced nations centers on missile development. The lack of a mission for the former has nothing to do with the latter.
The difference is so great that I feel the use of Dyna-soar in this context to be misleading, and that probably deliberate.
> We seek value in our policies and investments and this writing fails to convince that hypersonic weapons have no value.
So for defence spending you need not ask for "good value", you're willing to spend billions as long as zero value can credibly be denied? If they have great values, surely you could list some of them? After all you imply hypersonics have many, and dire advantages!
Anyway, the article does mention some advantages (later detection by OTH radar and ability to perform some evasive manoeuvrers), and then explains why these do not provide outstanding benefits. I guess you found this bit lacking and wanted a mention of some of the many other unique qualities hypersonics have?
> After all you imply hypersonics have many, and dire advantages!
No such implication exists for my part. I made no mention of a budget figure. Please don't ascribe to me things which I did not write. I don't know if my legislature or military do or will find hypersonics worthy of billions. My point is that this writing did nothing to convince me that they aren't.
> and then explains why these do not provide outstanding benefits
I don't believe we can really know how hypersonics might be employed. Militaries have been punished for their lack of vision many times in history. Until we do know what is possible the examples given are straw men.
> Twice it is stated that hypersonic missiles have "few" advantages over cruise or ballistic technologies. But few isn't zero and the difference could be crucial.
But isn't that the author's point? That these weapons are evolutionary, not revolutionary?
Whether hypersonic weapons are evolutionary or revolutionary isn't presently knowable or based on any meaningful measurement. Cleverly written guesswork.
This article ignores the primary use case for China and Russia: US carrier battle groups. In this roll, these missiles target the human element in the defensive systems by reducing the the time from detection to impact below human response capability. Humans monitor sensors, make decisions, and activate active defense systems. Until these systems are fully automated, hypersonic missiles are a huge advantage for China.
The point of a ballistic missile is that it's ballistic - the trajectory is defined during the launch phase with only limited control during midcourse phase and essentially none during the terminal phase.
This is fine if you're delivering a payload against a stationary target with an exact fix, and with a nuclear payload you get to be smart about fuzing to achieve maximum overpressure if your downrange distance isn't quite right.
For a target that's less than precisely fixed, and that's maneuvering (which is going to be a case for a carrier battle group), and for a conventional explosive munition, this isn't good enough.
Automated point defense systems are not a very far leap from the existing PDS systems which auto-acquire and auto-track. The difference, I think, is the effective range.
Uhh so the author is saying that missiles designed to go faster will actually be slower because of drag? Is there a source on that claim or is it just speculation? I'm imagining someone at DARPA reading this and thinking, "Drag! Of course! That's why our missiles keep going so slow! If only we had thought of that!"
The drag argument is that ballistic missiles spend a fair amount of time above the atmosphere, and that hypersonic missiles don't. Such that in the end, the ballistic missiles get there faster.
The article, though, doesn't mention that the arc trajectory of ballistic missiles means they are spotted faster.
But such missiles are nowadays - as far as I know - primarily detected via infrared from space and not radar stations near the target which turns the atmospheric trajectory into a disadvantage due to heating of the vehicle which is also mentioned in this article.
That’s a great visual! Thanks for sharing. One thing to note from the article is these hypersonic weapons will generate insane amounts of heat which will show up on satellite imagery so they’re not as stealthy as that visual purports. Additionally, they’re powered by the same type of rocket boosters as an icbm so the same type of early launch detection system would still work to alert the moment a missile has been launched.
They aren't designed to go faster than ballistic missiles, they are designed to go faster than cruise missiles, and just overall very fast for something moving in the atmosphere. On a space scale they aren't very fast, about a sixth of LEO orbital velocity.
Hypersonic missiles are faster than cruise missiles but slower than ballistic missiles and confusing the two is a common mistake in the popular press when talking about how fast hypersonic missiles are.
In terms of ground speed, yes, but in terms of flight time, no. ICBMs are also easily identified and tracked compared to low flying cruise missiles. Hypersonic weapons are essentially shorter range cruise missiles. How do you defend against these? The narrative is that as long as nuclear weapons are prolific, anything that sidesteps deterrence is a threat to the species.
Cool video of the (hypersonic) Sprint anti-ballistic missile, designed to intercept incoming ICBMs once they get below the ionosphere and are more visible to radar:
There was also Sprint follow-on called LoAD (LoADS can be seen as well, note that this was a later program than Sentinel's LoADS...) that was designed to protect MX silos. That was similarly sporty.
The Russians have lots of neat videos of their A-135 Gazelles launching. Those still protect Moscow and the all-important Don-2N battle management radar — once and probably still a massive warhead sink in a nuclear exchange. Reportedly the 1989 SIOP called for 69 consecutive warheads on that DGZ.
Yes, David Wright, the guy who wrote that article, recycles the same opinion piece about how the Patriot Missile wasn't very effective in Gulf War I and never mentions that every part of that system has been upgraded 2 or 3 times since then.
What about hypersonic anti-ship missiles? I guess generally speaking, missiles against moving targets. Perhaps that's useful? US Navy sure seems concerned about those being deployed by China.
That said, ballistic missiles can actually maneuver quite a bit during the terminal.
Also, I always understood that the very impossibility of confusing them with ballistic missiles headed for Moscow was the decisive feature.
> the claim that hypersonic weapons can reach their targets faster than existing ballistic missiles
The majority who are seriously working in these fields do not advocate for such systems based on this class of claims.
> This extreme heating limits performance in two ways. First, it constrains glider geometry, as features like sharp noses and wings may be unable to withstand aerothermal heating.
Everybody working in this field understands this and has various approaches to the problem.
> Second, this heating renders hypersonic missiles vulnerable to detection by the satellite-mounted sensors that the United States and Russia currently possess, and that China is reportedly developing.
Also well-known. While you are going to be thermo-structurally constrained, Boyd's Energy-Maneuverability theory is decades old and relevant to these systems.
> Yet the performance of hypersonic weapons against missile defenses is strategically meaningful only if it offers a new capability (i.e., if these weapons do something existing missiles cannot). This is not the case.
The speed and what it confers is a new capability.
> the technical basis fails to justify the price.
In the U.S., this is more a reflection of the U.S.' failure to maintain its leadership in hypersonics since the 1960s and 1970s. NASP was a disaster of a program and a bad idea (though it did provide huge benefits in terms of learning and technology programs). As is typical in U.S. behavior, upon the cancellation of NASP, there was a slamming shut of funding to hypersonics that undermined healthy sustainment of expertise and facilities. Present-day expenditures are helping the country get out of the pit it entered.
There are a number of valid technical & programmatic criticisms of hypersonic systems and the U.S. hypersonic efforts. This article touched only on cost without any compelling support.
While I'm not a credentialist, neither of the authors appear to be aerospace engineers, and it shows in this article. They would have been well-served by vetting this through people actually involved in the programs referenced.
> The majority who are seriously working in these fields do not advocate for such systems based on this class of claims.
Come now, just openly admit it is and important claim to dispel, don't hide behind careful conditionals like "most" and "serious". It's not like the "few" and "nonsensical" actors are unimportant:
"Hypersonic weapons move faster than anything currently being used, giving adversaries far less time to react, and they provide a much harder target to counteract with interceptors"
DOD News, "Hypersonics Testing Accelerates"
"New tanks, military satellites, rockets and missiles, even a hypersonic missile that goes 17 times faster than the fastest missile currently available in the world."
US Commander in Chief, West Point graduation speech.
> "Hypersonic weapons move faster than anything currently being used, giving adversaries far less time to react, and they provide a much harder target to counteract with interceptors"
This is true if you understand the context. Ballistic missiles are for nuclear strikes. Whoever is saying "anything currently being used" means conventional. These hypersonic weapons are conventional, i.e., non-nuclear.
> US Commander in Chief, West Point graduation speech.
That's not at all germane. No one in the DoD or in Congress is working on or funding these systems because Donald Trump thought they were the fastest possible weapons system. Heavy U.S. spending in hypersonics preceded Trump. You'll also note for example, Trump sticking his technically illiterate self into debates about the catapults used in the new generation of aircraft carriers. It changed nothing in terms of what DoD or Congress did with that program.
Recent American military interest in hypersonic missiles definitely feels like a case of "Russia and China are playing with these, we want to play with one too".
This was a big upgrade on the original Pershing missile that kept the same launcher but was competitive with the Soviet SS-20 that weighed three times as much because it had an autonomous guidance that could directly impact a target even when the mobile launcher was at an unsurveyed location.
This is not advanced or exotic technology for a missile with the P II's range, you don't need exotic materials (that little dome on the bottom is a radar antenna, not a heat shield) and it can get 25 g acceleration with those little fins that you might not notice if you don't look carefully. Thus it is something third-world countries can field if they want to.
That kind of missile can break unpredictably two or more times on reentry and thus confound anti-missile defenses of all kinds. The Russians had a nuclear-armed ABM system in the Moscow area at that time (and still do) and they found it intimidating.
That kind of nuclear-armed ABM might be able to fire a large number of shots and get lucky, but the kinetic kill systems that we use to protect our naval groups would be helpless against it.
That's why China is developing an anti-ship weapon with similar capabilities; instead of soaking up the inaccuracy of the launch point, the missile can handle the uncertainty of where a ship is going to be when the missile arrives.
With a nuclear warhead that kind of missile could obliterate an aircraft carrier -- but even with conventional warheads it could cause a lot of trouble, this is what a smaller ship looks like when it has been hit by 4 2000 lb conventional bombs
That answers the question of how China benefits from a hypersonic missile program. It doesn't answer the question of how the US does. The US doesn't need to hold American aircraft carriers operating in East Asia at risk.
We also had the Mk.500 Evader and AMaRV programs, nuclear-armed SLBM and ICBM ballistic missile warheads designed specifically to evade missile defenses with nuclear warheads.
We didn't produce them because they weren't needed at that time against their near-term target sets, not because they didn't work.
The US must have some secret trump cards up their sleeves? How could they be so far ahead by the 1990's and now we in the situation it looks like we're in? They must've been investing and planning...
>I think it would be extremely naive of us, Mr. President, to imagine that these new developments are going to cause any change in Soviet expansionist policy. I mean, we must be... increasingly on the alert to prevent them from taking over other mineshaft space, in order to breed more prodigiously than we do, thus, knocking us out in superior numbers when we emerge! Mr. President, we must not allow... a mine shaft gap!
There's logic to the idea that, if your adversaries are suddenly interested in something, it is probably worth your time to make sure you're not missing anything.
Of course, there's also logic to generating red herrings to waste your adversaries' resources, and the US has done that to others.
Their logic is known though, and it's simply to deliver nukes in the face of American ballistic missile defence (BMD) systems. The US doesn't face any BMD to defeat, so they just want hypersonics because the others have them. And with the heating mentioned in the text being such that you can't put any good sensing into them, a hypersonic without a nuke is simply a very fast missile that almost always misses its target.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile)
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msXtgTVMcuA
Citing a conclusion about cost from WW2 era Germany isn't a great argument. Every such product cost more in the distant past when prevailing techniques are only just barely feasible.
Dyna-soar was a Space Plane; a human rated space vehicle. Yes it ultimately found no useful role and was shut down. There is little meaningful overlap between such a program and an unmanned missile system; the relevance of Dyna-soar is close to zero.
Twice it is stated that hypersonic missiles have "few" advantages over cruise or ballistic technologies. But few isn't zero and the difference could be crucial. Doubtless the authors would love to credibly claim there are zero advantages, but they can't, because that is false. The implicit advice here is that we learn about the importance of these "few" advantages when they're applied to our forces by an opponent.
We then end with the classic "pressing needs elsewhere" cop-out. "Pressing needs" are infinite. We seek value in our policies and investments and this writing fails to convince that hypersonic weapons have no value.
Except that part of Dyna-soar was dipping back into atmosphere for plane change maneuvers. That dipping in and out of atmosphere to make course changes would seem very relevant to missiles.
But this quote is more telling of the author:
"Thus, while hypersonic weapons fly a more direct path to their targets, they lose much of their speed throughout flight, ultimately taking longer to reach their targets than comparable ballistic missiles."
No. A ballistic missile follows a ballistic trajectory. That means it is on a very fixed schedule, a tight min/max flight time to the target based on predictable spheres-in-a-vacuum physics. A hypersonic missile on a lower trajectory can indeed get to some targets sooner. It will require more fuel/energy to do so, as opposed to following the higher ballistic path, but fuel efficiency isn't a big deal when you are delivering nukes.
Most ballistic missiles use unguided reentry vehicles, so the best accuracy comes from a high trajectory that comes almost straight down onto the target, so it spends the least time interacting with the unpredictable atmosphere.
However, if the reentry vehicle is guided, depressed trajectories become more practical. The U.S. did this in the past with the Pershing II, which had terminal radar guidance, and we have a half-way version of this with path length fusing on the Trident II, where the warhead is not guided, but the detonation point is controlled based on trajectory error.
Russia has tested these in the past few years and could have deployed them. IMO it's an underappreciated threat because it could allow attacks against hard targets with less than 10 minutes of warning.
The difference is so great that I feel the use of Dyna-soar in this context to be misleading, and that probably deliberate.
So for defence spending you need not ask for "good value", you're willing to spend billions as long as zero value can credibly be denied? If they have great values, surely you could list some of them? After all you imply hypersonics have many, and dire advantages!
Anyway, the article does mention some advantages (later detection by OTH radar and ability to perform some evasive manoeuvrers), and then explains why these do not provide outstanding benefits. I guess you found this bit lacking and wanted a mention of some of the many other unique qualities hypersonics have?
No such implication exists for my part. I made no mention of a budget figure. Please don't ascribe to me things which I did not write. I don't know if my legislature or military do or will find hypersonics worthy of billions. My point is that this writing did nothing to convince me that they aren't.
> and then explains why these do not provide outstanding benefits
I don't believe we can really know how hypersonics might be employed. Militaries have been punished for their lack of vision many times in history. Until we do know what is possible the examples given are straw men.
But isn't that the author's point? That these weapons are evolutionary, not revolutionary?
The point of a ballistic missile is that it's ballistic - the trajectory is defined during the launch phase with only limited control during midcourse phase and essentially none during the terminal phase.
This is fine if you're delivering a payload against a stationary target with an exact fix, and with a nuclear payload you get to be smart about fuzing to achieve maximum overpressure if your downrange distance isn't quite right.
For a target that's less than precisely fixed, and that's maneuvering (which is going to be a case for a carrier battle group), and for a conventional explosive munition, this isn't good enough.
The article, though, doesn't mention that the arc trajectory of ballistic missiles means they are spotted faster: https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/images/print-e...
But such missiles are nowadays - as far as I know - primarily detected via infrared from space and not radar stations near the target which turns the atmospheric trajectory into a disadvantage due to heating of the vehicle which is also mentioned in this article.
He isn't. He's saying the drag creates a large heat signature which makes them vulnerable to existing detection techniques.
Deleted Comment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dl9Ovwmnxw
It looks fake. I'm bummed I'll likely never see something like that in person...at least in a test.
There was also Sprint follow-on called LoAD (LoADS can be seen as well, note that this was a later program than Sentinel's LoADS...) that was designed to protect MX silos. That was similarly sporty.
The Russians have lots of neat videos of their A-135 Gazelles launching. Those still protect Moscow and the all-important Don-2N battle management radar — once and probably still a massive warhead sink in a nuclear exchange. Reportedly the 1989 SIOP called for 69 consecutive warheads on that DGZ.
That said, ballistic missiles can actually maneuver quite a bit during the terminal.
Also, I always understood that the very impossibility of confusing them with ballistic missiles headed for Moscow was the decisive feature.
> the claim that hypersonic weapons can reach their targets faster than existing ballistic missiles
The majority who are seriously working in these fields do not advocate for such systems based on this class of claims.
> This extreme heating limits performance in two ways. First, it constrains glider geometry, as features like sharp noses and wings may be unable to withstand aerothermal heating.
Everybody working in this field understands this and has various approaches to the problem.
> Second, this heating renders hypersonic missiles vulnerable to detection by the satellite-mounted sensors that the United States and Russia currently possess, and that China is reportedly developing.
Also well-known. While you are going to be thermo-structurally constrained, Boyd's Energy-Maneuverability theory is decades old and relevant to these systems.
> Yet the performance of hypersonic weapons against missile defenses is strategically meaningful only if it offers a new capability (i.e., if these weapons do something existing missiles cannot). This is not the case.
The speed and what it confers is a new capability.
> the technical basis fails to justify the price.
In the U.S., this is more a reflection of the U.S.' failure to maintain its leadership in hypersonics since the 1960s and 1970s. NASP was a disaster of a program and a bad idea (though it did provide huge benefits in terms of learning and technology programs). As is typical in U.S. behavior, upon the cancellation of NASP, there was a slamming shut of funding to hypersonics that undermined healthy sustainment of expertise and facilities. Present-day expenditures are helping the country get out of the pit it entered.
There are a number of valid technical & programmatic criticisms of hypersonic systems and the U.S. hypersonic efforts. This article touched only on cost without any compelling support.
While I'm not a credentialist, neither of the authors appear to be aerospace engineers, and it shows in this article. They would have been well-served by vetting this through people actually involved in the programs referenced.
Come now, just openly admit it is and important claim to dispel, don't hide behind careful conditionals like "most" and "serious". It's not like the "few" and "nonsensical" actors are unimportant:
"Hypersonic weapons move faster than anything currently being used, giving adversaries far less time to react, and they provide a much harder target to counteract with interceptors"
DOD News, "Hypersonics Testing Accelerates"
"New tanks, military satellites, rockets and missiles, even a hypersonic missile that goes 17 times faster than the fastest missile currently available in the world."
US Commander in Chief, West Point graduation speech.
This is true if you understand the context. Ballistic missiles are for nuclear strikes. Whoever is saying "anything currently being used" means conventional. These hypersonic weapons are conventional, i.e., non-nuclear.
> US Commander in Chief, West Point graduation speech.
That's not at all germane. No one in the DoD or in Congress is working on or funding these systems because Donald Trump thought they were the fastest possible weapons system. Heavy U.S. spending in hypersonics preceded Trump. You'll also note for example, Trump sticking his technically illiterate self into debates about the catapults used in the new generation of aircraft carriers. It changed nothing in terms of what DoD or Congress did with that program.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pershing_II
This was a big upgrade on the original Pershing missile that kept the same launcher but was competitive with the Soviet SS-20 that weighed three times as much because it had an autonomous guidance that could directly impact a target even when the mobile launcher was at an unsurveyed location.
This is not advanced or exotic technology for a missile with the P II's range, you don't need exotic materials (that little dome on the bottom is a radar antenna, not a heat shield) and it can get 25 g acceleration with those little fins that you might not notice if you don't look carefully. Thus it is something third-world countries can field if they want to.
That kind of missile can break unpredictably two or more times on reentry and thus confound anti-missile defenses of all kinds. The Russians had a nuclear-armed ABM system in the Moscow area at that time (and still do) and they found it intimidating.
That kind of nuclear-armed ABM might be able to fire a large number of shots and get lucky, but the kinetic kill systems that we use to protect our naval groups would be helpless against it.
That's why China is developing an anti-ship weapon with similar capabilities; instead of soaking up the inaccuracy of the launch point, the missile can handle the uncertainty of where a ship is going to be when the missile arrives.
With a nuclear warhead that kind of missile could obliterate an aircraft carrier -- but even with conventional warheads it could cause a lot of trouble, this is what a smaller ship looks like when it has been hit by 4 2000 lb conventional bombs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Direct_Attack_Munition#/...
That won't sink a carrier but it could stop flight operations for a while and have them steaming back to San Diego.
We didn't produce them because they weren't needed at that time against their near-term target sets, not because they didn't work.
Of course, there's also logic to generating red herrings to waste your adversaries' resources, and the US has done that to others.
Or at least that's the story we tell when the budget it spent with nothing to show for it.
Dead Comment