Countermeasures for hypersonic weapons

  • Thread starter neanderthalphysics
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In summary: Do you have a specific example?Yes, for example, the US Navy's Standard Missile-3 Block IIA (SM-3B2) is an anti-ship ballistic missile that uses a hit-to-kill tactics to destroy targets at sea.It seems that conventional interceptor missiles would have to be hypersonic themselves, and even more nimble, to be able to intercept incoming hypersonic missiles. Furthermore, there will undoubtedly be issues with mounting sensors for terminal guidance on interceptors.That's correct. There would also likely be a need for very quick reaction times in order to be able to intercept the missile in its entirety.In summary, conventional interceptors would likely
  • #211
boneh3ad said:
Russia goes out of their way to oversell their stuff.
Yes they do. The Moskva was an invincible flagship. Now it's an artificial reef at the bottom of the Black Sea.
 
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  • #212
boneh3ad said:
Kinzhal was never a superweapon. But Patriot has a history of being seriously oversold (e.g., in the Gulf War when it was sold as having a nearly 100% success rate against Scuds and apparently had a nearly 0% success rate in reality). So to me this is very interesting because it's a very public demonstration of how much improvement these systems have had.
It's worth noting that PAC-3 is almost an entirely different weapons system than the Gulf War era Patriot. It follows the US tradition of keeping the same name for a system even when basically everything about it has been redesigned.

Unlike Patriot Classic, Pac-3 has an active radar seeker (in the missile itself), uses small maneuvering rockets for terminal maneuvering rather than aerodynamic forces, and is hit-to-kill rather than proximity fused. It is shorter range, but it's been heavily optimized for terminal defense against short to medium range ballistic missiles like Kinzhal/Iskander, and we've been testing it against aeroballistic targets like Boosted Zombie (basically an ATACMS converted to be a target missile on top of a Terrier booster). It's probably one of the best shorter range air defense systems in existence.
 
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  • #213
Vanadium 50 said:
Yes they do. The Moskva was an invincible flagship. Now it's an artificial reef at the bottom of the Black Sea.
As some guys I fly with in DCS would put it. "It has been promoted from surface combatant to submarine."
 
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