how can the u.s military beat hypersonic missiles attacking hypersonic glide vehicle
weapons can skim along the upper boundaries of the earth's atmosphere
using trajectory and the speed of descent to destroy targets with unprecedented force
therefore much discussion is underway regarding how best to defend against or stop these kinds of
hypersonic missile attacks in part because they occupy a specific area of the atmosphere which
at least at the moment can be tough for sensors and missile defense interceptors to reach this
dynamic explained recently by principal pentagon director for hypersonics michael white means that
hypersonic attacks moving through the highest areas of the earth's atmosphere occupy what could
be called an in-between space meaning they are too high for many ground-based radars and missile
defense radars to reach yet not high enough for space-based missile defense interceptors
to destroy our air defense systems and our missile defense systems are designed to operate on either
side of that near space operating zone a therefore the pentagon is moving quickly to close what
could be a gap in defenses white recently told reporters according to a pentagon transcript
air defense systems work well up to 70 000 feet or so and are designed to have radars
that look over at the horizon to find low altitude cruise missiles and be able to
handle threats aircraft and missile threats up to about 70 000 feet our ballistic missile
systems are designed to look up for mid-course intercept exotmospheric intercept of ballistic
missiles and all of our system elements are designed for that mission he explained
not only can hypersonic weapons fly at altitudes from eighty thousand to one hundred fifty thousand
feet thus higher than the seventy thousand he mentioned but white said these kinds of hypersonic
attacks can travel at sustained speeds making them difficult for some radar systems to track
while hypersonic weapons will undoubtedly travel fast in many cases hitting a target in minutes the
longest window for a possible intercept would not be on its a centre descent but rather during the
bulk of its flight at these particular near space altitudes the challenge with hypersonic systems is
that they fly in a region of the atmosphere the hypersonic speed allows sustained flight in the
upper regions of the atmosphere so they fly at a range that some people call near space say between
80 000 and 150 000 feet without hypersonic speeds you don't have enough lift to fly at that altitude
with the low densities and so hypersonic speed really enables sustained flight there white set
so what is the solution to this kind of tactical predicament several things come
to mind perhaps the first of which might be an initial thought of hypersonics versus hypersonics
why not engineer defensive hypersonic systems able to travel through these otherwise difficult areas
to reach this kind of approach might benefit from advanced high-speed sensing ai enabled algorithms
facilitating detection in milliseconds to guide an interceptor moving at hypersonic
speeds to collide with and destroy an attacking one perhaps satellite sensors can increasingly
track hypersonic weapons and ideally function as some kind of cure guidance node for interceptors
any kind of interceptor capable of destroying hypersonics would naturally need to move faster
and perhaps be more agile than a space-traveling ground-based interceptor
designed to take out intercontinental ballistic missiles icbms targeting the main portion of a
glide vehicle's flight through the air might offer the best opportunity for intercept
perhaps fostering a need for newer kinds of faster near-space travelling interceptors
okay i'm good with you okay we're ready
so
thank you go there
you