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Hypersonic missiles are still in the prototype/research stage, the short/medium-term nuclear threat remains non-hypersonic. Regardless, right now there are zer
by scottLobster 4y ago
Hypersonic missiles are still in the prototype/research stage, the short/medium-term nuclear threat remains non-hypersonic. Regardless, right now there are zero systems that can hope to stop a hypersonic missile, reaction time limitations alone are a huge hurdle there.
That said, effective missile defense is theoretically possible even given current tech, it's just extremely hard. In that sense it's not different than the various AI initiatives. Lots of wasted money on goose chases, but also lots of advantage for those who get it right, and some legitimately useful innovations along the way.
- lsllc 4y agoAccording to a late August Reuters article, Russia has deployed hypersonic missiles at least 3 times in Ukraine: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-it-has-deployed-kinzhal-hypersonic-missile-three-times-ukraine-2022-08-21/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-it-has-depl...
- 988747 4y agoStill counts as "research", just this time in actual war conditions.
- scottLobster 4y agoResearch includes live fire tests. Russia has the advantage of an actual warzone with actual air defenses to test in. That or they're running out of missiles and down to pushing research prototypes into service (which given their use or Iranian drones and other supply woes would not surprise me).
- chipsa 4y agoStrongly suspect that Kinzhal is just a relatively bog-standard air launched ballistic missile running in a depressed trajectory, and much of the talk is just bloviating. There's no US equivalent, because we decided to cancel it (See AGM-48 Skybolt, and later AGM-69 SRAM and AGM-131 SRAM II).