By the time that you're close enough to the strike group that you have a serious risk of seriously missing, it's already too late for the faster interceptors to

By the time that you're close enough to the strike group that you have a serious risk of seriously missing, it's already too late for the faster interceptors to be effective. As far as only so much maneuvering you can do before being too slow for the engine, yes that's probably an issue for the HAWC, but scramjet missiles have been demonstrated to achieve Mach 9 in atmospheric flight which allows a lot of energy to bled out before you drop out below Mach 4.