3 ms·

Seeking arguments against hypersonic weapons is as futile as arguing against every other leg of the perpetual arms race. The advantages are clear; the speed of

Seeking arguments against hypersonic weapons is as futile as arguing against every other leg of the perpetual arms race. The advantages are clear; the speed of hypersonic missiles makes all current anti-missile systems (limited as they already are,) obsolete. The first iterations of hypersonic missiles are already in service with two major powers and a third will join soon. Everyone else will follow.

dragontamer 5y ago
> The advantages are clear; the speed of hypersonic missiles makes all current anti-missile systems (limited as they already are,) obsolete But if two Neptune cruise missiles are all that was needed to destroy one of Russia's cruisers (with some of Russia's latest anti-missile CRAMs / anti-missile RADARs), why should the USA develop hypersonic missiles? That's the thing. Ukraine just showed that regular ol' cruise missiles are still sufficient to destroy Russian warships. There's no point making an "unbeatable hypersonic missile" if the Russian equipment/training can't even beat a regular-ol cruise missile. ------ In contrast, Russia / China *MUST* create hypersonic missiles, because USA's CRAMs and USA's defense systems have proven to defeat subsonic and even supersonic missiles. USA should have hypersonic missiles ready just in case Russia/China suddenly shows off world-class missile defense systems. But... under the current estimations, regular old cruise missiles / Tomahawks / Harpoons remain an efficient weapon, and aren't obsolete yet. I'm sure that Russia / China will eventually develop adequate missile-defense systems. But this Moskva sinking event (especially a Flagship / cruiser) proves that the Russians don't have an adequate defense yet vs a cruise missile, let alone a cruise missile salvo.
- gamblor956 5y ago
  I think the idea is to have hypersonic missile capability if it is needed, but keep the loadout stocked with cheaper regular missiles that have proven themselves capable of taking out Russian/Chinese warships.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    There's also the option of developing subsonic cruise missiles further: ex... random movement patterns, or "cruise missile swarms" (intelligent cruise missiles that communicate with each other to maximize the chance that at least one hits the target), etc. etc. Hypersonic is the brute force and "obvious" approach to defeating enemy defense systems. But its important to not let the hype get carried away.
    - topspin 5y ago
      > (intelligent cruise missiles that communicate with each other to maximize the chance that at least one hits the target) The Moskva was designed to launch exactly that system. The P-500 Bazalt/P-1000 Vulkan missiles that are launched from the huge battery of launchers that dominate the deck of the Moskva class coordinate among themselves in flight to minimize the attack profile and prioritize targets. The thing you're thinking of is already old hat. Hypersonic weapons seek to deliver equivalent power in a far smaller, lower cost and more agile platform.
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        But you can always decrease the costs of such systems, improve their mass-production, and maximize their smarts. The "Gray Wolf" cruise missile system that USAF is investing into (or maybe more accurately: experimenting with) is one such "cruise missile swarm" that's quite modern, for example, and is competing against Hypersonic missiles for development. The Gray Wolves seem like they're small enough to be deployed on common fighter-aircraft, like F16 or F35. ------ Lets say you only need 8 Gray Wolves to reliably hit and kill an enemy cruiser. That's only 2x F35 fighters that need to be deployed to launch those 8x Gray Wolves. It might be easier logistically speaking, to launch 2x or 3x F35B or F35C fighters off a US Navy Carrier / US Marine Assault Ship to launch 8x missiles, rather than figuring out how to launch a larger bomber who can carry the larger Hypersonic missile. No one really knows how the next war is going to face. Even though we're getting more information in this Ukrainian/Russian conflict, we're not really seeing major naval battles (Ukraine after all, doesn't have a Navy). Therefore, we don't really have much insight at all to how carriers / destroyers / frigate missile platforms vs airplane systems work. > Hypersonic weapons seek to deliver equivalent power in a far smaller, lower cost and more agile platform. But the Hypersonic missiles themselves need to be much larger and full of propellant to break not only the sound-barrier, but the hypersonic barrier. That's a lot of drag to breakthrough. Can those systems be shrunk to a small enough size to fit onto an F35 or F16? If you can only "shrink" those missiles to B52 size, that limits their deployment. Its not like you can launch a B52 from a carrier. And even if you could, B52 doesn't have any stealth capabilities like the F35, so you wouldn't want to use it in anything resembling a contested airspace. Subsonic weapons are naturally going to be smaller than hypersonic weapons. Subsonic weapons always have exponentially less drag, since they're flying at far slower speeds. Less drag means more range with less propellant, and smaller weapons yet yielding more payload (bigger explosives, since you're spending less precious "weight" on propellant). EDIT: Case in point, the USA's HAWC project has no explosives at all, and is purely a kinetic-energy projectile.
- topspin 5y ago
  > Ukraine just showed that regular ol' cruise missiles are still sufficient The attack on Moskva wasn't simply a pair of R-360 missiles. It was a coordinated attack using drone threats to distract the target combined with poor weather conditions and the naivety and perhaps (in)competence of the Russian Navy. A hypersonic weapon, at least while they remain unstoppable, could forego these sort of preconditions. A cruise missile salvo requires a salvo launching platform. A large ship with many launchers and a large magazine, for example. A hypersonic weapon could forego that as well; a small, agile and far lower cost platform such as a single aircraft or frigate class ship could deliver the same result. The high probability of destruction means a stealthy long range aircraft such as B2 armed with air launched hypersonic missiles could deny entire oceans to enemy ships. That is far too compelling and ensures the pursuit of this capability. Like it or not this arms race is already under way. The argument is already settled.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    > It was a coordinated attack And modern AIs can coordinate those attacks for us automatically. Not even a "deep learning" AI either, we're talking about old-school flocking behaviors that's well studied and understood. It will be cheaper to write an AI to coordinate those attacks, rather than building larger engines to break the hypersonic barrier. Defeating the enemy air-defenses with cheap computers automatically swarming the enemy at 500mph is a lot cheaper than trying to build a 3000mph rocket.
    - topspin 5y ago
      > It will be cheaper to write an AI to coordinate those attacks, rather than building larger engines to break the hypersonic barrier. 'Cheaper' has to factor in all costs, including salvo launching platforms and logistics. Not everyone has (as you speculated on in another reply) an abundance of aircraft carriers and their F-35 squadrons and those that do will still place a high value on having the choice. This is why those than can are all developing hypersonic weapons and no amount of arm chair theorizing will stop it. In any case, my original question, prompted by our brand new Moskva data point, was can surface ships be protected? They've already proved vulnerable to existing anti-ship missiles and the future will inevitably include hypersonics and flocks of AI missiles and anything else we here can dream up to make already poor defense even less viable. The implication being that they can't, and that this is the important question. If one seeks a clever way to save money perhaps the costly floating targets that are large surface ships should be at issue.

dragontamer 5y ago

> The advantages are clear; the speed of hypersonic missiles makes all current anti-missile systems (limited as they already are,) obsolete But if two Neptune cruise missiles are all that was needed to destroy one of Russia's cruisers (with some of Russia's latest anti-missile CRAMs / anti-missile RADARs), why should the USA develop hypersonic missiles? That's the thing. Ukraine just showed that regular ol' cruise missiles are still sufficient to destroy Russian warships. There's no point making an "unbeatable hypersonic missile" if the Russian equipment/training can't even beat a regular-ol cruise missile. ------ In contrast, Russia / China *MUST* create hypersonic missiles, because USA's CRAMs and USA's defense systems have proven to defeat subsonic and even supersonic missiles. USA should have hypersonic missiles ready just in case Russia/China suddenly shows off world-class missile defense systems. But... under the current estimations, regular old cruise missiles / Tomahawks / Harpoons remain an efficient weapon, and aren't obsolete yet. I'm sure that Russia / China will eventually develop adequate missile-defense systems. But this Moskva sinking event (especially a Flagship / cruiser) proves that the Russians don't have an adequate defense yet vs a cruise missile, let alone a cruise missile salvo.

gamblor956 5y ago
I think the idea is to have hypersonic missile capability if it is needed, but keep the loadout stocked with cheaper regular missiles that have proven themselves capable of taking out Russian/Chinese warships.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  There's also the option of developing subsonic cruise missiles further: ex... random movement patterns, or "cruise missile swarms" (intelligent cruise missiles that communicate with each other to maximize the chance that at least one hits the target), etc. etc. Hypersonic is the brute force and "obvious" approach to defeating enemy defense systems. But its important to not let the hype get carried away.
  - topspin 5y ago
    > (intelligent cruise missiles that communicate with each other to maximize the chance that at least one hits the target) The Moskva was designed to launch exactly that system. The P-500 Bazalt/P-1000 Vulkan missiles that are launched from the huge battery of launchers that dominate the deck of the Moskva class coordinate among themselves in flight to minimize the attack profile and prioritize targets. The thing you're thinking of is already old hat. Hypersonic weapons seek to deliver equivalent power in a far smaller, lower cost and more agile platform.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      But you can always decrease the costs of such systems, improve their mass-production, and maximize their smarts. The "Gray Wolf" cruise missile system that USAF is investing into (or maybe more accurately: experimenting with) is one such "cruise missile swarm" that's quite modern, for example, and is competing against Hypersonic missiles for development. The Gray Wolves seem like they're small enough to be deployed on common fighter-aircraft, like F16 or F35. ------ Lets say you only need 8 Gray Wolves to reliably hit and kill an enemy cruiser. That's only 2x F35 fighters that need to be deployed to launch those 8x Gray Wolves. It might be easier logistically speaking, to launch 2x or 3x F35B or F35C fighters off a US Navy Carrier / US Marine Assault Ship to launch 8x missiles, rather than figuring out how to launch a larger bomber who can carry the larger Hypersonic missile. No one really knows how the next war is going to face. Even though we're getting more information in this Ukrainian/Russian conflict, we're not really seeing major naval battles (Ukraine after all, doesn't have a Navy). Therefore, we don't really have much insight at all to how carriers / destroyers / frigate missile platforms vs airplane systems work. > Hypersonic weapons seek to deliver equivalent power in a far smaller, lower cost and more agile platform. But the Hypersonic missiles themselves need to be much larger and full of propellant to break not only the sound-barrier, but the hypersonic barrier. That's a lot of drag to breakthrough. Can those systems be shrunk to a small enough size to fit onto an F35 or F16? If you can only "shrink" those missiles to B52 size, that limits their deployment. Its not like you can launch a B52 from a carrier. And even if you could, B52 doesn't have any stealth capabilities like the F35, so you wouldn't want to use it in anything resembling a contested airspace. Subsonic weapons are naturally going to be smaller than hypersonic weapons. Subsonic weapons always have exponentially less drag, since they're flying at far slower speeds. Less drag means more range with less propellant, and smaller weapons yet yielding more payload (bigger explosives, since you're spending less precious "weight" on propellant). EDIT: Case in point, the USA's HAWC project has no explosives at all, and is purely a kinetic-energy projectile.
topspin 5y ago
> Ukraine just showed that regular ol' cruise missiles are still sufficient The attack on Moskva wasn't simply a pair of R-360 missiles. It was a coordinated attack using drone threats to distract the target combined with poor weather conditions and the naivety and perhaps (in)competence of the Russian Navy. A hypersonic weapon, at least while they remain unstoppable, could forego these sort of preconditions. A cruise missile salvo requires a salvo launching platform. A large ship with many launchers and a large magazine, for example. A hypersonic weapon could forego that as well; a small, agile and far lower cost platform such as a single aircraft or frigate class ship could deliver the same result. The high probability of destruction means a stealthy long range aircraft such as B2 armed with air launched hypersonic missiles could deny entire oceans to enemy ships. That is far too compelling and ensures the pursuit of this capability. Like it or not this arms race is already under way. The argument is already settled.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  > It was a coordinated attack And modern AIs can coordinate those attacks for us automatically. Not even a "deep learning" AI either, we're talking about old-school flocking behaviors that's well studied and understood. It will be cheaper to write an AI to coordinate those attacks, rather than building larger engines to break the hypersonic barrier. Defeating the enemy air-defenses with cheap computers automatically swarming the enemy at 500mph is a lot cheaper than trying to build a 3000mph rocket.
  - topspin 5y ago
    > It will be cheaper to write an AI to coordinate those attacks, rather than building larger engines to break the hypersonic barrier. 'Cheaper' has to factor in all costs, including salvo launching platforms and logistics. Not everyone has (as you speculated on in another reply) an abundance of aircraft carriers and their F-35 squadrons and those that do will still place a high value on having the choice. This is why those than can are all developing hypersonic weapons and no amount of arm chair theorizing will stop it. In any case, my original question, prompted by our brand new Moskva data point, was can surface ships be protected? They've already proved vulnerable to existing anti-ship missiles and the future will inevitably include hypersonics and flocks of AI missiles and anything else we here can dream up to make already poor defense even less viable. The implication being that they can't, and that this is the important question. If one seeks a clever way to save money perhaps the costly floating targets that are large surface ships should be at issue.