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How much of this is hype and boasting about military advances. According to this article hypersonic missiles are far from practical https://www.scientificameric

• zozin 4y ago
  They are. Chinese and Russian “advances” in hypersonics are pure marketing. The US was testing scramjets in the 1960s. The US has a hypersonic space plane. Alas, the media fell for it and billions are now being spent on “catching up” with our “peer” competitors.
  • robonerd 4y ago
    All ballistic missile reentry vehicles are hypersonic too. Talk of "hypersonic" without specifying the technology and actual capabilities is quite silly. Presumably hypersonic cruise missiles is implicit context.. but I don't believe the general public understands that and the media is doing a generally terrible job of communicating it.
    • ramesh31 4y ago
      >All ballistic missile reentry vehicles are hypersonic too Sure, but ballistic trajectories are trivially interceptible. It's not just about speed. The new arms race is with hypersonic glide vehicles that are capable of maneuvering all the way to the target at mach 8+. With that, the weapon becomes impossible to intercept with any existing technology.
      • hungryforcodes 4y ago
        Existing. Soon to be found.
      • robonerd 4y ago
        My money is still on Aegis BMD intercepting the missile during the terminal phase. Hypersonic glide-boost weapons are mainly for avoiding mid-course interception. When you're going hypersonic, 'maneuverable' is relative; the turning radius is quite huge and such missiles will be easy for Aegis to track during the terminal phase.
        • ramesh31 4y ago
          >When you're going hypersonic, 'maneuverable' is relative; the turning radius is quite huge and such missiles will be easy for Aegis to track during the terminal phase. Except the associated plasma shielding makes it invisible to radar. And the Russian ones are capable of sea skimming and maneuvering at mach 8 in the terminal phase. At those speeds, you're talking horizon to impact in seconds. We really have nothing that can touch it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M22_Zircon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M22_Zircon We like to think of ourselves as massively advanced beyond Russia and China, and we are to an extent. But the reality is that the US military has wasted the last 20 years in pointless counterinsurgency operations that have narrowed our view to the actual threats we face, and de-prioritized this kind of cutting edge stuff. There's some serious catching up we'll need to do (both technologically and organizationally) to maintain deterrence against the rising conventional threats of authoritarian major powers.
          • throwaway0a5e 4y ago
            >Except the associated plasma shielding makes it invisible to radar. Anything moving mach 8 is gonna light up like a Christmas tree in other parts of the EM spectrum.
          • robonerd 4y ago
            > Except the associated plasma shielding makes it invisible to radar. All hypersonic ballistic missile reentry vehicles have this plasma stealth. That doesn't stop Aegis BDM from tracking and intercepting them. Have you ever seen a reentry vehicle coming in? They're as bright as meteorites, very easy to see. > And the Russian ones are capable of sea skimming and maneuvering at mach 8 in the terminal phase. These are the hypersonic cruise missiles; very different from hypersonic boost-glide missiles. This is what I mean about the media talking about "hypersonic" generically without specifying the technology they're actually talking about; it leads to people believing that 'hypersonic' is itself the technology.
      • tmccrary55 4y ago
        If only someone had directed energy weapons...
      • Aunche 4y ago
        Iron dome can't even intercept all of the subsonic rockets fired by terrorists with very limited budgets. Even if the entire US GDP was directed towards missile defense, I doubt that China or Russia would have any trouble overwhelming these systems simply by throwing enough conventional MIRVs at it.
        • towaway15463 4y ago
          Being able to ensure a strike with a single missile is a force multiplier especially when it comes to deterrence. If you need 10 missiles to ensure one hit your enemy may think they have favourable odds in a first strike. If you only need 1 missile per hit then the outcome of a first strike is not so good if they don’t get every single one of your missiles.
      • rad88 4y ago
        A ballistic missile could be within a few hundred miles of any point near the coast and be there in less than 5 minutes. You're saying this is "trivial" to intercept, what does that mean?
      • greedo 4y ago
        Bah... A SLBM (sub-launched ballistic missile) can reach a coastal target in less than five minutes depending on the exact trajectory. Good luck trying to intercept that.
        • robonerd 4y ago
          Presumably addressing this threat is what America's 50+ SSNs are for.
          • greedo 4y ago
            Presumably, but the ocean is a big place. Now todays threats are far different than at the peak of the Cold War. The Russian SSBN fleet is a shell of itself, and the PLAN is still just dabbling in sub-based deterrents. The diminished threat is matched by the absolute disrepair of USN anti-sub warfare skills. These have atrophied beyond description in the last 30 years.
          • deleted 4y ago
            [deleted]
    • thereddaikon 4y ago
      The Russian "hypersonic" missile is just the upper stage of a short ranged ballistic missile launched from an aircraft. Its just an existing weapon with more steps. The Chinese hypersonic weapons everyone is worried about is a boost glide vehicle. Basically a ballistic missile with a hypersonic lifting body as its warhead as opposed to a blunt body RV you usually see. This makes it more maneuverable and potentially harder to hit. The weapon the air force tested today is similar to that but meant to be launched from bombers instead of ground launched. The actual scary ones are hypersonic cruise missiles. Nobody has fielded one operationally yet. But the US is by far the furthest ahead in this technology. In march they had a successful test of HAWC the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept. Scramjet powered cruise missiles like HAWC are more dangerous than conventional ballistic missile or boost-glide missiles because they actually fly. And therefore can do the things normal cruise missiles like Tomahawk can do. They can take circuitous routes. They can change their altitude. They can fly somewhat evasively. They can fly to an area and pick targets of opportunity. And other things. Why does it matter? We've gotten much better at shooting down conventional cruise missiles. A few years back an Arleigh Burke destroyer had a number of Chinese built subsonic anti ship missiles fired at it by Houthi Rebels. It shot down every single one of them. These missiles are comparable to the Neptunes that recently sank Moskva in terms of performance. So modern warships aren't as vulnerable as Soviet era antiques. You need better weapons to kill them. hypersonic cruise missiles are much harder to intercept. Boost glides are of dubious utility in my opinion.
      • sudosysgen 4y ago
        Russia also has an air-breathing hypersonic missile with a scramjet engine - 3M22 Zircon. It is being field-tested and is already starting production after more than a dozen successful tests including hitting moving target - making them much further in development than HAWC which only recently managed to fly for any distance without blowing up and never actually struck a target. So your impression is not correct. The Russians and the Chinese actually are much further along for all classes of hypersonic missiles.
        • thereddaikon 4y ago
          No they don't. They claim they do but if you believe Russian claims after the last three months then I can't help you. They steal money from their military to buy yachts and mansions. Russia's wunderwaffe are not operational. The US spends more on its nuclear arsenal alone every year than Russia spends on its entire military. Where is the T-14? Where is the Su-57? They exist in propaganda videos and parades. That's it. You wont find them or zircon on the battlefield. Russia can't even afford to mass issue red dot sights to their infantry. Something America did 20 years ago. Do you really think they can afford some ridiculous scramjet cruise missile that does nothing to improve their national security?
  • ramesh31 4y ago
    >Alas, the media fell for it and billions are now being spent on “catching up” with our “peer” competitors. These things are no joke. I felt the same before actually looking into it. China can effectively deny the South China Sea to our carrier fleets with their land based hypersonic weapons. There is absolutely no means of intercepting them with current technology.
    • bparsons 4y ago
      The Pentagon does this every decade. They constantly need some sort of existential threat to respond to in order to justify budget increases.
      • booi 4y ago
        What's the defense against a hypersonic missile then? Current Aegis and CIWS defensive tech will not hit something traveling that fast. Surely the Pentagon doesn't even need to justify budget increases when we give them more budget than they ask for every year regardless.
        • moron4hire 4y ago
          They have to know what to hit and make sure the target they are tracking is actually a real target.
        • robonerd 4y ago
          > Current Aegis and CIWS defensive tech will not hit something traveling that fast. Aegis BDM is designed to hit hypersonic reentry vehicles. CIWS is irrelevant, why even bring it up?
          • ramesh31 4y ago
            >Aegis BDM is designed to hit hypersonic reentry vehicles Ballistic hypersonic reentry vehicles. The entire point is that these new weapons are maneuverable in the atmosphere at mach 8+ all the way to the terminal phase.
  • RobRivera 4y ago
    the perfect cover for funneling money into Metal Gear
  • secondcoming 4y ago
    I'm no expert, but I think one of the issues with the missiles from the 60's was that they got so hot from air friction that a plasma enveloped it which prevented it from being guided. Same as how comms are temporarily lost with space shuttles on re-entry. Maybe the Russians have overcome that issue.
  • nimbius 4y ago
    the missile in TFA only achieved fivefold the speed of sound. Russias Avangard moves at twenty-seven times the speed of sound. thats faster than the re-entry speed for the space shuttle endeavor. it also advertises a newfound maneuverability. Americans under-estimate their adversaries sadly quite often. when the TU95 bear first arrived during the cold war era its specifications were habitually lowballed by analysts until it appeared on radar over Canada. When the RQ710 was deployed in Iran with the same arrogant impunity, it was intercepted, landed, and dissected. heck, we spent about two decades insisting we could depose a cuban leader and just as long insisting we would "win" against the taliban. and when the united states assumed china incapable of a cryptographic advantage, the nation summarily identified and executed more than a dozen spies thanks in part to dismissive hubris. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-espionage-idUSKCN18G0UM https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-espionage-idUSK... the absolute worst thing you can do is dismiss a capable enemy.
    • greedo 4y ago
      The US also overestimates the threats from its potential adversaries quite frequently. The Soviets weren't 10ft tall, and the modern Russian military has been shown to be quite fragile in Ukraine. Perhaps military intelligence is a bit harder than posting on HN.
      • tablespoon 4y ago
        > The US also overestimates the threats from its potential adversaries quite frequently. Yeah, for instance, IIRC, the F-15 (at least partially) resulted from a severe over-estimation of the capabilities of the Mig-25.
  • cracrecry 4y ago
    This is not Marketing. This is a real thing. It is a real thing that they can put a several nukes in one of those and kill the entire population of New York, or London, or Paris in five minutes. Also it is real that Putin has used exactly that card, that threat as a negotiation tactic, in order to get away with invading a foreign country, in order to compensate for the joke of a country they are. Putin has specifically said that: that he developed those weapons, that they can be nuclear and no country can neutralize them. History teaches us that accommodated Societies usually fall under much primitive rules like the Mongols with Genghis Khan, or the Huns, The Romans (against the Greeks), the Germanic tribes(against the Romans), the Arabs(against the Persian and Byzantine empires), the British against the Spanish Empire, the Russians against the Germans and so on. The US, or UK, France, Poland or Germany just can't ignore it, whenever they like it or not. There is someone out there telling Ukraine is their property or else. They need to develop a neutralization of those weapons. A country just can't ignore an Arms race if the adversary follows it, they have to follow as well.
• MR4D 4y ago
  I'd love to pick this article apart, but instead I'll just offer this: The Phoenix missile (which used to be carried by the F-14) is borderline hypersonic [0]. And it is shot at airplanes. Now imagine an Exocet-type missile but at a much higher speed. A fast missile does one very important thing - it reduces the time the defender has to react, and thereby increases the odds of the attack succeeding. Glide-paths, targeting, etc are just variations of an attack plan - speed is what kills. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-54_Phoenix#:~:text=Speed%3A%203%2C000%2B%20mph%20(4%2C680%2B%20km/h) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-54_Phoenix#:~:text=Speed%3...
  • FunnyBadger 4y ago
    There's a downside to hypersonic - they are NOT agile especially in terminal guidance so they are primarily/only good for stationary targets. Going so fast carries this cost. The hypersonic weapon win is when you need a short OODA loop in an engagement - perfect for that and we've see that happen already in Ukraine with them: the attack on Yavoriv - it was over and targets dead before ATC/Air Defense even realized there were incoming. That's a short OODA loop. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop https://www.npr.org/2022/03/13/1086327654/russian-forces-escalate-attack-in-western-ukraine-target-military-base https://www.npr.org/2022/03/13/1086327654/russian-forces-esc... A similar effect would occur with HGVs launched from SLBMs off the US coast - it's be over before anyone even raises the first alarm of incoming.
  • ortusdux 4y ago
    See also: Supercavitating torpedos, which reportedly can travel at 300-350 mph.
    • JoeAltmaier 4y ago
      And destroyed the first submarine that tested them! Russian, the typical failure of a new torpedo is guidance, which often results in the device describing a circular route instead of a straight one. Ending up back where it started. So they fired, and before you could say Jack Robinson it hit them, having traveled in a circle of a mile or so. Or so I recall from reports after the fact.
• dirtyid 4y ago
  Not practical for US who has platforms to hit global targets at much lower costs, i.e. money spent on hypersonic research can build up enough JASSMs to last until WW5. But IMO useful backup if adversaries manage to negate platforms like carriers and long range bombers. Basically, establishing conventional MAD with CONUS Prompt Global Strike using icbm/hypersonics. Flip side is this is massively benefitial to PRC (or anyone else) who can't catchup in conventional force posture to hit CONUS with anything but hypersonics. For them it's low hanging asymmetric fruit that comprehensively deters US power projection. IMO we're entering era where advanced rocketry including meter level CEP and accurate terminal guidance will proliferate and obviate a lot advantages of current power projection platforms.
  • Victerius 4y ago
    > build up enough JASSMs to last until WW5 Love the imagery.
  • rad88 4y ago
    Honest question, how would you describe MAD as being practical? Bearing in mind that the treaties to maintain it were abandoned, and both sides invest (and act) heavily in rocking the boat?
    • idiotsecant 4y ago
      I think it's hard to argue that MAD isn't in effect right this second. If there was no threat of massive retaliation and possible resulting extinction is there any doubt Russia would have used nuclear weapons in it's Ukraine invasion?
      • rad88 4y ago
        Why would they? There are 8 million Russians living in the country, and close social ties besides. Putin consistently lies and says 80% of the population is Russian and that Ukraine is Russia. Plus the fact that Russian people are generally not psychopathic murderers, the invasion could only be acknowledged as a limited operation, they depend on the world and European economies, the military destroyed other countries/regions far away from NATO and then had no need for the atom bomb either... yes I think there's room for doubt.
• ritwikgupta 4y ago
  Hypersonics are already being used in warfare today [1][2][3]. They are already practical weapons and gaining parity in offensive and defensive capabilities is critical. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/22/europe/biden-russia-hypersonic-missiles-explainer-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/22/europe/biden-russia-hypersoni... [2] https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2022/05/russia-has-fired-between-10-and-12-hypersonics-ukraine-pentagon-says/366748/ https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2022/05/russia-has-fired-... [3] https://www.euronews.com/2022/05/10/russia-fires-hypersonic-missiles-at-odesa https://www.euronews.com/2022/05/10/russia-fires-hypersonic-...
  • rad88 4y ago
    > Russia is thought to have an HGV in its arsenal. > .. > But the Kinzhal, as a variant of the Iskander SRBM, is not an HGV
    • ritwikgupta 4y ago
      The CNN article is taking the definition of an HGV entirely out of context from the underlying CSIS article it links. From the CSIS article: > Russia’s Northern Fleet has begun preparations to deploy the air-launched ballistic missile Kh-47M2 Kinzhal on MiG-31K carriers. The deployment of the new hypersonic weapon is consistent with Russia’s ongoing and persistent efforts... Not all hypersonics are HGVs/skip-glide weapons.