The U.S has decided to develop means to intercept boost-glide vehicles.
The Pentagon has assigned the project to DARPA.
This comes after America’s Government Accountability Office (GAO) report have stated that the U.S
currently lacks the defenses required to protect against the latest crop of hypersonic weapons
being developed by China and Russia, The report states,
“China and Russia are pursuing hypersonic weapons because their speed, altitude, and
maneuverability may defeat most missile defense systems, and they may be used to improve long-range
conventional and nuclear strike capabilities.
There are no existing countermeasures.”
Viewers can go through the report from the link given in the ‘Description’ section
below.
In its response to the GAO, the Department of Defence described the report as “an accurate
although sobering macro picture of how the US stands in the world against emerging threats.”
In this video Defense Updates analyses how the U.S intends to intercept Russian & Chinese
hypersonic weapon?
Let's get started.
An object is said to be hypersonic once they exceed speeds of Mach 5 or 5 times the speed
of sound.
This is about 1,715 meters per second or 3,836mph or 6,174 km/h.
Hypersonic weapons as off today can be broadly categorized into two types.
First is the Hypersonic Cruise Missile.
These use a Scramjet engine.
The scramjet is an innovation on the Ramjet.
Ramjet engine can power flight to supersonic speeds but scramjet can enable the missile
to reach hypersonic speeds.
These engines have no moving parts, like the compressors and turbines used in the turbofan
engines found on conventional jet planes.
They rely on the huge pressures created by fast airflow into the engine to ignite fuel
and generate thrust Second is using Hypersonic Glide Vehicle (HGV).
In this method, the system is launched to extremely high altitudes, where it skips across
the Earth’s upper atmosphere and then glides back attaining hypersonic speed and can be
maneuvered.
It must be noted that traditional ballistic like American Minuteman III, Russian Sarmat
or Indian Agni missile all travel at hypersonic speeds, but they follow a predictable ballistic
trajectory and can’t maneuver mid-course.
China is developing a Hypersonic Glide Vehicle named Starry Sky 2, it is currently in prototype
phase.
Russia has said that it has deployed Hypersonic Cruise missile Kinzhal and is currently testing
a Hypersonic Glide Vehicle named Avangard.
To know about these weapons details, viewers can check the video on the above card.
The DARPA project named as Glide Breaker will concentrate on intercepting Hypersonic Glide
Vehicle like Starry Sky 2 & Avangard.
Since there is no way to defend against Hypersonic weapons, they pose a major challenge.
These weapons could be used to target American bases around the world as well as the US Navy
aircraft carriers.
Hypersonic weapons because of their speed have huge Kinetic Energy apart from the destructive
force of the explosive carried by them.
This means these weapons could penetrate ICBM silos with even conventional warhead.
ICBM silos are generally not vulnerable to anything apart from nukes.
So hypersonic weapons are not only tactically dangerous but pose a strategic challenge.
In simple times intercepting a Hypersonic Glide Vehicle is like hitting a bullet with
another bullet when the incoming bullet is capable of evasive maneuver.
Current ICBMs attain hypersonic velocities but they follow a parabolic path and though
difficult, the path can be predicted.
But hypersonic glide vehicle will be able to make maneuvers, so tracking & predicting
their path will be harder.
As can be clearly gauged, this highly complex task to accomplish.
Of the current crop of Air Defense system available to the U.S, THAAD could kill hypersonic
glide vehicle in some situations.
Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), is a United States Army anti-ballistic missile
system, which is designed to shoot down short, medium, and intermediate range ballistic missiles
in their terminal phase.
THAAD uses a hit-to-kill approach that is the missile carries no warhead but relies
on the kinetic energy of impact to destroy the incoming missile.
The THAAD system is being designed, built, and integrated by Lockheed Martin Space Systems
acting as prime contractor.
Key subcontractors include Raytheon, Boeing, Aerojet, Honeywell, and BAE Systems to name
a few.
A THAAD battery consists of at least 6 launcher vehicles, each equipped with eight missiles,
with 2 mobile Tactical Operations Centers (TOCs) and the AN TPY-2 Ground-Based Radar (GBR).
The THAAD Radar is an X Band active electronically scanned array Radar developed and built by Raytheon.
It has an Operational range of around 200 km.
The missile has a speed of 8.24 Mach or 2.8 km/s.
The guidance system is Indium antimonide Imaging, coupled with Infra-Red Seeker Head.
The main problem with THAAD is that is point defence system designed to protect a small area.
Using THAAD to defense the entire U.S homeland will be too expensive to be practical.
According to DARPA, Glide Breaker will develop an enabling technology critical for an advanced
interceptor capable of defeating hypersonic vehicles.
Key aspects of the Glide Breaker program are classified.
Only proposals addressing the classified aspects of Glide Breaker will be eligible for funding
under this Broad Agency Announcement (BAA).
DARPA seeks proposals that present a credible path to a low cost, rapid demonstration of
program objectives.
Also, Glide Breaker is supposed to be tested by 2020.
It must be noted here that the Glide Breaker is not intended to intercept all incoming
HGVs.
The idea is to create doubt in the mind of a rival regarding the success of a HGV attack.
Glide Breaker will be like an armor that only defends against specific bullets, the adversary
won’t know which HGV will get through to successfully hit a target and which will be
intercepted.
DARPA puts it like this "a key figure of merit is deterrence: the ability to create large
uncertainty for the adversary’s projected probability of mission success and effective
raid size.”