
The Rise of Hypersonic Weapons - jonbaer
https://www.thecipherbrief.com/article/rise-hypersonic-weapons-1095
======
ekianjo
> would be able to knock out a target’s nuclear capabilities fast enough and
> thoroughly enough to pre-empt any attempt at a retaliatory strike.

Did the author completely forget about nuclear subs?

~~~
ChuckMcM
I believe the author was implying countries like North Korea or Iran who might
develop a nuclear warhead and possibly ICBM technology but _not_ have the
other options (air or sea launch).

That said, a sub at missile launch depth is susceptible to a hypersonic weapon
from above. With sufficient mass, even a kinetic only impact from the surface
could take out those subs. A nuclear depth charge can take out subs down to
their crush depth although I don't know if you could deliver it on a
hypersonic glider.

The defense for this stuff is lasers of course. An interesting technical
weakness of hypersonic devices is that they are on the edge of their
energy/drag limits (they are already struggling to travel through the soup of
the atmosphere at those speeds). If you can ablate their leading edge with a
laser to change their drag profile they may self destruct through atmospheric
friction.

~~~
gozur88
>That said, a sub at missile launch depth is susceptible to a hypersonic
weapon from above.

If you know where it is. If you do, the sub has already failed as a weapons
system. We have all sorts of weapons that can take out subs if we know where
they are.

------
Cozumel
There's nothing 'hypothetical' about them like the article says, both Russia (
[http://www.ibtimes.com/russias-secret-hypersonic-nuclear-
mis...](http://www.ibtimes.com/russias-secret-hypersonic-nuclear-missile-
yu-71-can-breach-existing-missile-defense-1987590) ) and China (
[http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/china-successfully-
tests-7000-mph-d...](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/china-successfully-
tests-7000-mph-df-2f-hypersonic-missile-says-pentagon-source-1557121) ) have
operational hypersonic missiles. Whether they would use them when conventional
weapons work just as well and are cheaper is debatable but they already have
them.

~~~
dfsegoat
The article you cite for the PLAN system states that it completed it's 7th
test flight. This is not operational.

For instance the F-35 only recently became "operationally capable" \- but it
has been flying since 2006.

~~~
paulmd
And on the flip side, the P-51 Mustang took 149 days from placement of the
order to the flight of the first prototypes (and the near-immediate order of a
run of 300 further aircraft for evaluation).

I'm not disagreeing with you that a test firing is vastly different from
serial production, but the F-35 is the poster child for an unreasonably
protracted and dysfunctional development process. It's a massively complex
system with a dozen different major players all trying to pull it in
conflicting directions with dozens of contractors all trying to make sure they
diffuse the project across all 435 Congressional districts.

The overall implication that because the F-35 is a trainwreck that it's not
possible to ever develop a weapons system on a fast timeframe - _that_ I
disagree with. The fact that we are dysfunctional does not make everyone else
so.

~~~
dfsegoat
Oh for sure - F-35 is a dog and I could have picked a better example, and I
would even support your point to the extreme with:

[http://breakingdefense.com/2016/10/holy-smoke-gm-army-
turn-o...](http://breakingdefense.com/2016/10/holy-smoke-gm-army-turn-out-new-
hydrogen-car-in-9-months/)

They went from rfp => selection => 1st prototype in 9 months.

Obviously, a car is a bit different than a 5th gen fighter. But still.

------
throwanem
I'm not sure these are as destabilizing as the article makes them sound. If
Russia and China didn't already have the capability of destroying US carrier
battle groups, I could see the sense in the argument, but Moskits are cheap,
capable of Mach 3, and easily able to swamp antimissile defenses when launched
en masse. (And they can carry a nuclear payload, too, not that it's likely
they would in such a scenario, nor would they need to.)

~~~
nprecup
A hypersonic vehicle can travel much faster than that. We're talking about the
ability to strike targets anywhere on the globe in minutes. That IS
destabilizing. The example of striking carrier groups in the pacific is only
the tip of the iceberg.

This race amounts to a global game of chicken, and the stakes of a mistake are
world war. Let's hope cooler heads prevail.

On the other hand, there are some pretty amazing applications of air breathing
hypersonic technology. You could use it to launch equipment, satellites and
people into space much more efficiently (air breathing means you don't need to
carry an oxidizer!). Or imagine being able to fly from NY to Hong Kong in an
hour! This kind of tech is not as imminant as the article is implying. We've
only barely demonstrated small air breathing hypersonic vehicles as feasible
(see X-51 and X-43). The X-43 was a crude initial test that demonstrated
flights of only up to 12 seconds. The X-51 managed to go for 6 minutes.
Scaling this up to a transportation vehicle will pose a significant
engineering challenge.

~~~
3pt14159
Not if you run the simulations. A city or three might get nuked in a tit-tat-
tit exchange, but total war isn't currently likely. During the 60s and 70s
there was the _chance_ we could just nuke all their nukes at once and maybe
they'd get London, NY, or Washington, but we'd survive. A total strike is no
longer even a first reach option because even if they level us and somehow
cripple our nukes or kentic weapons we can just unleash a bioweapon on
everyone and it's payback game over. I look at these weapons in the same way.
There might be a couple dozen million deaths from an exchange that starts with
them, but after some tense phone calls things will deescalate.

What I worry about is actors smaller than a well funded nation state getting
weapons like these, and for that we need intelligence.

~~~
ekianjo
Thats not how the chain of command would actually work in a nuclear exchange.
You are much more likely to go all in anyway.

~~~
3pt14159
Chain of command starts with the president. Look to how Moscow has acted
multiple times when there were nuclear worries due to faulty equipment.
Multiple times they waited until confirmation of a hit. Now thank goodness
nuclear weapons haven't been used since multiple parties have had them, but
had a strike actually occurred what do you think the response from Moscow
would have been? Full military preparedness (obviously), including potential
launching of a tit for tat response. But what do they have to gain from
launching everything? For all they know some insane general in America
launched the thing. If they don't see anything else coming why would they
commit suicide by launching everything?

There is no benefit.

~~~
adrianN
_A decade after the release of “Strangelove,” the Soviet Union began work on
the Perimeter system—-a network of sensors and computers that could allow
junior military officials to launch missiles without oversight from the Soviet
leadership. Perhaps nobody at the Kremlin had seen the film. Completed in
1985, the system was known as the Dead Hand. Once it was activated, Perimeter
would order the launch of long-range missiles at the United States if it
detected nuclear detonations on Soviet soil and Soviet leaders couldn’t be
reached. Like the Doomsday Machine in “Strangelove,” Perimeter was kept secret
from the United States; its existence was not revealed until years after the
Cold War ended._

[http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/almost-everything-
in...](http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/almost-everything-in-dr-
strangelove-was-true)

~~~
3pt14159
The episode I'm referring to was _after_ 1985, with Boris Yeltsin in the early
90s. However Perimeter was designed or used, I'm sure the Russians didn't
create a system that caused total war after a skirmish of a couple small
nuclear weapons.

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LoSboccacc
I think this article conveniently forgets to mention nothing hypersonic of
sort will outrun lasers.

lasers can't track of course and range is limited by factor like atmosphere
and earth curve, but still, thinking about an hypothetical future scenario
hypersonic weapons would just get lasered down by automated point defences all
the same as conventional speed ordinance.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
To shoot down a missile with a laser, you need a segment of light about 30-50
cm long, so the target doesn't move too much whilst burning a hole in it. In
that little segment has to be the energy of at least a .50 BMG, so 20k joules
of energy. In a portable form that can fire repeately, reliably. That's
doable, but not easily.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's about one nanosecond of light. E.g. travelling 1000mph is about a foot
per millisecond. I think your light could be 1000 times that long and still
hit essentially the same point on the target?

~~~
CapitalistCartr
Travelling 1000mph is about mach 1.3. Hypersonic is mach 5 to perhaps mach 15,
if our space launch research goes well. The target has to travel less than
about 5 mm in that time. A foot would schmear the light too far.

[Edit] OK, I've done a bit of calculating, and I think you're right. The laser
pulse could be a maximum of about 175 meters long.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
A foot of light is necessary if you focus on a millionth of a foot of target.
A longer bolt is acceptable if tolerances are looser than that. And they
probably are. 5mm is about 1000X larger than that.

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adrianN
This reminds me of Project Thor [1]. The idea was to drop tungsten rods from
orbit on the target. It would also be a weapon that is very hard to defend
against with similar implications to these hypersonic missiles.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment)

~~~
LeifCarrotson
It's not really "dropping" them - they're in orbit and already not falling.
You'd need to fire them backwards with a rocket engine (or railgun?) to
deorbit. At that point, why not just fire them as a ballistic missile?

~~~
azernik
Faster reaction time, less obvious launch, and ability to attack from any
direction (not just the direction that your bases and submarines happen to be
in). There were also proposals to just launch nuclear warheads into orbit, for
deorbiting in case of war, but they were banned by treaty because they were
considered too destabilizing - as were partial orbital weapons, which just
went into orbit for long enough to attack from unusual directions.

------
ufmace
I'm also skeptical about the targeting side of these "wonder-weapons". Going
really fast against, say, an aircraft carrier, is almost more of a liability
if you don't already know exactly where it is and how fast it's going pretty
much before you launch at all - you don't have much time to detect it and
change course to actually hit it, plus reduced ability to detect things
through all of the air resistance heat you're generating.

------
CapitalistCartr
I think tying aerospace advances/research to only the military potential, and
thereby banning it all, would be stupidly counter-productive, and ineffective.
If we want spaceplanes, supersonic intercontinental flights, etc. this is
where the rubber meets the road. A test ban treaty would be as wise,
effective, and narrowly-focused as DRM is at preventing IP-violating file
sharing.

------
ethagknight
The article frequently mentions the agility of these hypersonics. Doesn't
'flies super fast' usually require 'flies in a straight line'? Do we have
suitable materials for control surfaces that can withstand the
drag/heat/pressure of an evasive, quick turn at Mach 5?

~~~
CapitalistCartr
The SR-71 did it fine slightly above Mach 4. If you call taking a few states
to make a turn evasive.

~~~
ethagknight
Requiring a few states to hang a left makes it difficult to both evade and
defense hit a target, right?

~~~
dredmorbius
Your attacker is going to have roughly the same problem turning as you do.
Though an unmanned attack vehicle (missile, drone) isn't limited by
physiological g-force limitations.

At some point though your airframe becomes airframes and flight dynamics
change considerably.

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upofadown
Once you get to the point that you can explode anything you want anywhere on
the planet it doesn't make much difference if you can do it somewhat faster.

... and it is getting pretty obvious that being able to blow things up doesn't
make much difference anyway in a political sense. Simple terror doesn't work
anymore to bring people around to your way of thinking. All the people that
can be simply coerced are gone now.

------
ryanmarsh
This got me wondering, how low would the cost to reach LEO have to get for it
to start making sense to use Falcon 9 + Dragon to deliver an SF team (e.g.
commanders in-extremis force) to an objective?

Then that got me thinking about the reality of drop ships. Isn't that the next
logical progression? I mean, currently we can put a battalion of paratroopers
anywhere in the world with 48 hours notice. We can put a Ranger company
anywhere in the world with 24 hours notice.

~~~
vilhelm_s
[http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2015/03/23/the_ulti...](http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2015/03/23/the_ultimate_cold_war_weapon_fantasy_ballistic_troop_transports.html)

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djyaz1200
Seems like we might want to address this and other threats by putting "dial a
yield" nuclear devices on our missile defense weapons?

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JumpCrisscross
How would one defend and/or re-configure carrier strike groups in a world
filled with hypersonic missiles?

------
ewr24
> _However, hypersonic weapons do not need to be nuclear in order to be
> disruptive, as demonstrated by the United States’ focus on conventional
> hypersonic weapons._

Does China and Russia believe that? It takes a few minutes to swap
conventional and nuclear warheads.

If anything US is the leader in this new cold war.

~~~
credit_guy
It's very difficult to see a scenario where it makes sense to put a nuclear
warhead on a hypersonic missile. The fact is, hypersonic missiles are dog slow
compared to ICBMs. ICBMs though suffer from the tyranny of the rocket equation
(most of the fuel they burn is used to push the rest of the fuel), so the mass
of the warhead is a small fraction of the total mass of the rocket (for
Trident 2 it's about 7%). The main problem is that ICBM's have to carry their
own oxydizer, which is heavy. Cruise missiles get oxygen from the air, and
this is a big deal. For a Tomahawk the warhead is 35% of the total mass of the
missile. Now when you deliver a nuclear warhead (or a bunch), you don't care
that much about the ratio warhead/total mass, since nuclear carries a lot of
punch in a small package. And if you plan to start WW3, you might as well do
it quick, no reason to use a (relatively) slow delivery vehicle, like a
hypersonic one, when you can use an ICBM.

It's when you want to deliver conventional explosives that you care about how
big your rocket is. It's one thing for the rocket to be 3 times as big as the
warhead (Tomahawk) and another to be 15 times as big (Trident 2). The Tomahawk
is really slow though, so the idea of the hypersonic is to be faster, at the
cost of having a smaller delivery ratio. The fastest current cruise missile,
the Russian-Indian Brahmos has a 12% ratio of warhead to total mass (if
launched from an airplane, less if launched from the ground), and a speed of
about Mach 3. What would be the ratio for a hypersonic weapon? It shouldn't be
less than 7% (otherwise you keep it "simple" and use the Trident 2 design) and
it's unlikely it will be higher than the 12% of the Mach3 Brahmos-A missile.
It will be somewhere in between, and most likely not that disruptive after
all.

~~~
ewr24
Very informative. However my impression is that US version is ballistic
missile with highly maneuverable shuttle as a payload. Article mentions it
will be capable to hit anywhere on earth within 30 minutes.

It seems like very very expensive way of bombing terrorists.

