DARPA Hypersonic defenses

[phavoc]

DARPA is looking into how to defeat hypersonic weapons. Ol Puty might find his arsenal neutered a bit in the coming years.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/stop-hypersonic-weapon-darpa-looking-153200349.html

 

[Condottiere]

Putin's problem is financing weapon research and development; you can't skim off the top of a falling gross national product, and still pay for expensive arms projects (you could, if you sacrifice your cut, social welfare, and infrastructure).

I think the rumour is they tried to put a nuclear warhead on one of these babies, and the test went awry; I will speculate the Russians have given up on the torpedo variant after the Kursk went down.

They've had to try to get India as a sugar daddy to finance their more conventional arms research and development, and in referring back to their plans to build a catamaran aircraft carrier, you have to recall the odyssey of the Admiral Gorshkov, which probably soured off the Indian government in pouring more money in the Russian military industrial complex, given other options.

They'd have to be pretty desperate to share their research with the Chinese to get funding, having learned their lesson with Germany.

 

[Gentleman John]

If you're talking about Russia's attempt to emulate Project Pluto (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto), then it's more likely that the recent incident was a failure of the propulsion unit. The Tory-class engines intended for Pluto were operating on the bleeding edge of materials technology at the time, and I don't think that temperature- and radiation-resistant ceramics have progressed that much since then. A minor imperfection in a core operating at the temperatures expected from a Tory-class engine would have catastrophic results.

But - back on topic. At the speeds quoted, a cloud of ball bearings would rip through any missile. 'All' (he wrote) you need is the ability to get them to the appropriate point in space/time.

 

[Condottiere]

What they need is time to react, which a hypersonic missile is supposed to minimize.

The Chinese and the Russians would probably first have to take out the surveillance satellites and Airborne Early Warning aircraft that the Americans would be using for round the clock coverage.

And then one assumes the Americans will eventually develop viable railguns and lasers, now that they're increasing the capacity of their onboard electrical generators.

 

[phavoc]

What they need is time to react, which a hypersonic missile is supposed to minimize.

The Chinese and the Russians would probably first have to take out the surveillance satellites and Airborne Early Warning aircraft that the Americans would be using for round the clock coverage.

And then one assumes the Americans will eventually develop viable railguns and lasers, now that they're increasing the capacity of their onboard electrical generators.

Taking out satellites is something an opponent would only do to start a war. And it's not as easy as you think. There are multiple layers of satellites (low orbit all the way up to geosynchronous, and a few others in 'deep space'). Taking out the US satellite network would require multiple missile launches as well as ASAT launches from aircraft for the low-earth ones. The US military would see missile and rocket launches as soon as they lit up their engines, and before if they rockets were being rolled to the pad.

The US also employs other ground-based radar systems, such as the BMD sensors, that utilize multiple scanning techniques such as back scatter OTH emitters.

It sounds good on paper, but the Russians and Chinese are only aligned due to their mutual opponent in the US and Western Europe. Without someone to distract they would go back to fighting with each other, and the Russians would end up having to use nukes in Siberia to stop the much larger Chinese army.

 

[Condottiere]

You have to know the exact location of the target, first off, and second off, you have to not let your enemy know what's coming, where it's going, and when it's arriving, hence you have to poke out their eyes and ears, something that Kremlin and Politburo press releases tend not to mention.

We know the Russians and Chinese have anti satellite weapon platforms in orbit, it's one of the perks when you have total control of your space programme that no one's quite sure what's the payload.

Sea skimmers seem potentially more effective.