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Masakari

Masakari

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Big Phoenix said:
Whats the deal with hypersonic missiles lately? Theyve been around since the 60s but now theyre being talked about as the end all by all in past few years.
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Aside from the associative media hype, I think it's the jump in proliferation (for strategic & tactical hypersonic weapons) that is driving the investment craze. We don't have jack shit for adequate air defenses, especially in the Western Pacific.
 
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phisey

phisey

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Big Phoenix said:
Whats the deal with hypersonic missiles lately? Theyve been around since the 60s but now theyre being talked about as the end all by all in past few years.

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Sprint (missile) - Wikipedia

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Waverider - Wikipedia

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Kh-22 - Wikipedia

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P-700 Granit - Wikipedia

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It's because hypersonics may overcome American ABM proliferation without violating the START or SALT treaties. Since those treaties effectively limited any advancements in theater-ballistic weapons, the ensuing arms race has gone in different directions. For the US it went towards ABM defenses like THAAD and the Aegis+SM6 kinetic hit-to-kill interceptors, but for Russia they had to find a way to keep their strategic deterrents credible without violating the treaties, so they just put their existing inventory onto hypersonic missiles that would defeat the US ABM umbrella.

We've demonstrated an aegis SM-6 successfully intercepting a ballistic warhead in the intermediate phase and THAAD is designed to intercept them at the terminal phase but in theory if they're coming in at mach 11+ nothing we have can stop them.

Worth noting that the Indians have one of the better hypersonics in the market now, the Brahmos.
 
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Big Phoenix

Big Phoenix

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phisey said:
It's because hypersonics may overcome American ABM proliferation without violating the START or SALT treaties. Since those treaties effectively limited any advancements in theater-ballistic weapons, the ensuing arms race has gone in different directions. For the US it went towards ABM defenses like THAAD and the Aegis+SM6 kinetic hit-to-kill interceptors, but for Russia they had to find a way to keep their strategic deterrents credible without violating the treaties, so they just put their existing inventory onto hypersonic missiles that would defeat the US ABM umbrella.

We've demonstrated an aegis SM-6 successfully intercepting a ballistic warhead in the intermediate phase and THAAD is designed to intercept them at the terminal phase but in theory if they're coming in at mach 11+ nothing we have can stop them.

Worth noting that the Indians have one of the better hypersonics in the market now, the Brahmos.
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If only there was tech that was developed that would have been the perfect countermeasure with a few tweaks....

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Boeing YAL-1 - Wikipedia

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Maybe change it over to a solid state laser, onto a uav platform so it can go much higher in the atmosphere so it has more range with massive increase in endurance...
 
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phisey

phisey

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Big Phoenix said:
If only there was tech that was developed that would have been the perfect countermeasure with a few tweaks....

en.wikipedia.org

Boeing YAL-1 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Maybe change it over to a solid state laser, onto a uav platform so it can go much higher in the atmosphere so it has more range with massive increase in endurance...
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That was the demonstrator for a boost-phase ABM solution and you're right it would've been great. I'm pretty sure they're still working on something like that with with a FEL/megawatt laser. The Air Force has a Directed Energy Weapons Directorate that makes those demonstrators. I don't think they work with NAVSEA at all, which has been working on the FEL laser and the railgun prototype that was cancelled recently.

I don't know if it will ever be powerful enough against hypersonics though. By their nature the hypersonic warheads would have to be resistant to extreme heat without ablating enough mass to alter its trajectory. So even if a laser were to successfully track one coming in a mach 11, there wouldn't be enough time to burn through its heat shielding.

We would have to develop hit-to-kill kinetic interceptors instead. We've already got THAAD and Aegis that have successfully demonstrated interceptions vs ballistic warheads, they'd just have to refine the vehicles and avionics to intercept hypersonic RVs.
 
Big Phoenix

Big Phoenix

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phisey said:
I don't know if it will ever be powerful enough against hypersonics though. By their nature the hypersonic warheads would have to be resistant to extreme heat without ablating enough mass to alter its trajectory. So even if a laser were to successfully track one coming in a mach 11, there wouldn't be enough time to burn through its heat shielding.
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Just need a laser that goes to eleven.

At the end of the day I dont see how this changes the paradigm all that much. Seems more like the trick of Reagan and military build up of the 80s that was used to bankrupt the Soviets. If youre worried about nuke delivery, mad still has us covered. If its defending carriers, well youre gonna have a lot of trouble defending against hundreds of normal speed drones just as much as you are a handful of mach 5+ missiles.

I still say carriers are the Battleships on post WW1 era. We have 10-15 billion dollars tied up in those things and as every day goes by they become ever more vulnerable and all while providing less and less utility.
 
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phisey

phisey

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Big Phoenix said:
I still say carriers are the Battleships on post WW1 era. We have 10-15 billion dollars tied up in those things and as every day goes by they become ever more vulnerable and all while providing less and less utility.
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The carriers will retain their utility until their planned end of life. Even if the Chinese eventually develop a reliable kill chain to threaten the whole carrier group (which is unlikely), they'd have to keep that killchain alive and they'd have to somehow wish the carriers to stay within range.

All the carriers really need to do to nullify the threat of land-based ASBMs is stay out of range and bring on more refuelling assets to maintain the same mission tempo despite being way the fuck out in the middle of nowhere.

Which is exactly what the navy is doing now.

If you've ever wondered why the heck the Navy decided to go with an unmanned aerial tanker as the first production carrier-born unmanned aircaft. Now you know why. The Navy can carry three of these for every tanker-configured F-18 they used to employ and they carry almost 2x more fuel:

 
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phisey

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CaughtCross said:
Neat that it isnt that practical but is functional.

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The idea was to fire those MKV or exoatmospheric kill warheads through the railguns. The final range was classified but most folks presume it was in the 250+ mile range, which was way past what was needed to make a spallate payload of these ballistic. It's used for ASAT or hit-to-kill interceptors against anything ballistic.


That was tested through the 90's. Nowadays they're tiny enough to fit several even in the tiny rolling airframe missiles. The SM6 and SM3 and THAAD have a lot more. The idea is just to a have a solid slug of carbide standing in the way of a kinetic weapon and physics does the rest.

The railgun would've been a lot cheaper way to get them downrange to intercept incoming weapons, but even then it would've been about $70k per shot. Still better than VLS launched interceptors and you'd have thousands of them in an Zumwalt's magazine instead of a couple hundred.
 
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Big Phoenix

Big Phoenix

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phisey said:
The idea was to fire those MKV or exoatmospheric kill warheads through the railguns. The final range was classified but most folks presume it was in the 250+ mile range, which was way past what was needed to make a spallate payload of these ballistic. It's used for ASAT or hit-to-kill interceptors against anything ballistic.


That was tested through the 90's. Nowadays they're tiny enough to fit several even in the tiny rolling airframe missiles. The SM6 and SM3 and THAAD have a lot more. The idea is just to a have a solid slug of carbide standing in the way of a kinetic weapon and physics does the rest.

The railgun would've been a lot cheaper way to get them downrange to intercept incoming weapons, but even then it would've been about $70k per shot. Still better than VLS launched interceptors and you'd have thousands of them in an Zumwalt's magazine instead of a couple hundred.
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I would think firing rubegoldberg missiles is a losing proposition economically.

phisey said:
All the carriers really need to do to nullify the threat of land-based ASBMs is stay out of range and bring on more refuelling assets to maintain the same mission tempo despite being way the fuck out in the middle of nowhere.
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Dont forget China is building a lot of subs, they now have a larger navy than we do. Also Im sure they arent developing autonomous subs or sophisticated mines either.
 
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Masakari

Masakari

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Nice.

Hi-speed-sled-678x381.jpeg


theaviationist.com

Rocket Sled Traveling At 7,200 km/h (4,363 mph) Successfully Stopped During Hypersonic Test At Holloman

The test marked the fastest recovery of a monorail sled in over 30 years, and the first time a planned reusable sled was ever recovered at those speeds.
theaviationist.com theaviationist.com
 
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phisey

phisey

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Big Phoenix said:

I would think firing rubegoldberg missiles is a losing proposition economically.


Dont forget China is building a lot of subs, they now have a larger navy than we do. Also Im sure they arent developing autonomous subs or sophisticated mines either.
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Chinese subs are fucking terrible. They copied the best Russian diesels (the Kilo) and fucked that up.
 
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