3 ms·
Typical airplanes and missles have very thin skins, often of aluminum or titanium. Fairly easy to track, fairly easy to puncture. You also have time to carefu
by sliken 10y ago
Typical airplanes and missles have very thin skins, often of aluminum or titanium. Fairly easy to track, fairly easy to puncture. You also have time to carefully track, deploy, and fire.
Problem with hypervelocity weapons is that they have to be heavily armored and cooled just to survive the onslaught of air at mach 5 and above. You also are surrounded by a hot dense plasma, so much so that radios can't get through it.
So the power, tracking, accuracy, and compensation for radical differences in air pressure, air temperature, and related just to get to the surface which is radically stronger than your average airplane or missle.
Also note that there doesn't even necessarily need to be a big easy to set of bomb on said missle. Even a pure kinetic weapon can be pretty effective at mach 5 and up.
So certainly not impossible, but not going to be practical for awhile.