Countermeasures for hypersonic weapons

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Countermeasures against hypersonic weapons, which travel over 1.5 km/s, face significant challenges, particularly in interception. Conventional interceptors would need to be hypersonic and highly agile to effectively counter these missiles, as they must intercept from ahead rather than chase from behind. Laser systems may struggle due to the plasma sheath surrounding hypersonic missiles, which dissipates energy. Additionally, the agility of incoming hypersonic missiles complicates interception, requiring rapid course corrections from interceptors. Overall, the discussion highlights the complexity of developing effective defenses against this advanced class of weaponry.
  • #121
nsaspook said:
Going on the offensive is always applicable. Weapons are the tip of the spear, there is a lot of infrastructure to support any weapons operation even if you can't directly target the weapon. You kill the builders of the weapon, kill the operators, then bomb the logistics, crater the roads, etc.. This all has an effect on the amount of defensive countermeasures needed at the targeted end.
Might be pretty difficult to find and strike the infrastructure when that can be any normal looking shipping container on any ship or semi truck.
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  • #122
A reminder that development into hypersonic may not even your own choice. The "me too" crowd is quite influential and Russia continues tests.

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-new...inue-tsirkon-hypersonic-missile-tests-in-2021

In October 2020, the frigate ‘Admiral Gorshkov’ launched the Tsyrkon missile against a target at a range of 450 km. The weapon covered this distance in 270 seconds, reaching a speed of some Mach 8.0 and a top altitude of 28 km.

EDIT: This missile is known in the west as SS-N-33 (link) and is a hypersonic cruise missile.

EDIT: It is my opinion that the US has lost the lead in missile technology.
 
  • #123
ardnog said:
A reminder that development into hypersonic may not even your own choice. The "me too" crowd is quite influential and Russia continues tests.

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-new...inue-tsirkon-hypersonic-missile-tests-in-2021
EDIT: This missile is known in the west as SS-N-33 (link) and is a hypersonic cruise missile.

EDIT: It is my opinion that the US has lost the lead in missile technology.

You are not alone in that assessment, though I think China is considered the more worrisome of the two other major countries developing these weapons.

https://www.airforcemag.com/article/catching-up-on-hypersonics/

There was a quote recently by a Russian academic in the field that said, in effect: "Russia has a great deal of experience in this but no money. China has a great deal of money but little experience here. The US has both, but has lacked the will." I thought it was a good encapsulation of the situation (even if it's a bit more complicated than just lacking the will).
 
  • #124
boneh3ad said:
https://www.airforcemag.com/article/catching-up-on-hypersonics/
Interesting article. I hadn't considered the propulsion testing difficulties...
Propulsion testing is especially problematic. For a combined-cycle engine—one that uses conventional, turbine-like propulsion to get to high velocity, and then transitions to a scramjet for hypersonic speed—“we really don’t have anything that will let us do that adequately on the ground,” Lewis said. For any wind tunnel work in the U.S., “you have very limited choices. … So that’s an area that needs investment.”

Availability of flight-test ranges is another problem. Again, programs are competing for range time, not only with each other but with “all the other things we want to do flight-testing on,” Lewis said.

“We’ve got some amazing [test] infrastructure, but it’s very old,” said Maj. Gen. Christopher P. Azzano, commander of the Air Force’s Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. “We’ve put sustainment money into it over the last few years, but it needs more.”
 
  • #125
berkeman said:
Interesting article. I hadn't considered the propulsion testing difficulties...
I have met old timers from several places who remember the day the blow torches came to turn their wind tunnels to scrap.

Ignoring disinformation and media misunderstanding, it can be hard to compare programs from different countries from media reports because each country has a different design cycle where testing and system namings are performed at different points in the cycle.
 
  • #126
Illuminating articles. NASA tends to separate system tests even for scale models. Thermal materials were tested in blow-down wind tunnels where the 'air' is super heated in a pressure vessel then blasted through various enormous nozzles fitted into thick pipes. Difficult to stimulate 1000 km flights, one imagines, using blow down instead of recirculation.

Even back in the 1980's the 8x7 hypersonic wind tunnel cost a bundle to run and maintain.
 
  • #127
caz said:
I have met old timers from several places who remember the day the blow torches came to turn their wind tunnels to scrap.

Ignoring disinformation and media misunderstanding, it can be hard to compare programs from different countries from media reports because each country has a different design cycle where testing and system namings are performed at different points in the cycle.

Every country has different strategic goals as well, so the systems are not 1-to-1 counterparts.
 
  • #128
Klystron said:
Illuminating articles. NASA tends to separate system tests even for scale models. Thermal materials were tested in blow-down wind tunnels where the 'air' is super heated in a pressure vessel then blasted through various enormous nozzles fitted into thick pipes. Difficult to stimulate 1000 km flights, one imagines, using blow down instead of recirculation.

Even back in the 1980's the 8x7 hypersonic wind tunnel cost a bundle to run and maintain.

Blow down tunnels are actually far more able to simulate high altitudes than recirculating tunnels.

EDIT: I misread that. Recirculating can certainly simulate long flights but you can get a lot of data in short times in blow down tunnels.
 
  • #129
caz said:
Ignoring disinformation and media misunderstanding, it can be hard to compare programs from different countries from media reports because each country has a different design cycle where testing and system namings are performed at different points in the cycle.

is NASA still dependent on Russian rocket engines? I haven't been keeping up to date.
 
  • #130
ardnog said:
is NASA still dependent on Russian rocket engines? I haven't been keeping up to date.

As far as I know, no. Congress passed a law forbidding it in 2014. The exception was allowing ULA to use up the rest they had on hand but not order any new ones.
 
  • #131
Klystron said:
Illuminating articles. NASA tends to separate system tests even for scale models. Thermal materials were tested in blow-down wind tunnels where the 'air' is super heated in a pressure vessel then blasted through various enormous nozzles fitted into thick pipes. Difficult to stimulate 1000 km flights, one imagines, using blow down instead of recirculation.
boneh3ad said:
Blow down tunnels are actually far more able to simulate high altitudes than recirculating tunnels.

EDIT: I misread that. Recirculating can certainly simulate long flights but you can get a lot of data in short times in blow down tunnels.

Upon reflection and rereading articles on new hypersonic flight, blow down tunnels should handle the stated ~10 minute experiments. Establish the simulated altitude and conditions then feed the fluid flow from multiple a/o ganged pressure vessels. My perception may be biased by blow down tests on thermal tiles and experimental ablation shields shortened by destruction of the material.

On the subject of hypersonic test range scarcity, I noticed no mention of West Coast facilities beyond Edwards. Could this be due to population expansion coupled with seismic activity?

I had migrated from wind tunnels to flight simulators when the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake struck the Bay Area. Four gigantic very high-pressure, high-temperature vessels already prepared for major tests across the street from the sim building either ruptured or vented during the quake. I recall stumbling out of an ultra-cool computer room into a wave of heat and soot surpassing a desert dust storm.
 
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  • #132
Stormer said:
Might be pretty difficult to find and strike the infrastructure when that can be any normal looking shipping container on any ship or semi truck.
View attachment 280622

The typical military response to that is to blow them all up during an actual war.


 
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  • #133
Klystron said:
Upon reflection and rereading articles on new hypersonic flight, blow down tunnels should handle the stated ~10 minute experiments. Establish the simulated altitude and conditions then feed the fluid flow from multiple a/o ganged pressure vessels. My perception may be biased by blow down tests on thermal tiles and experimental ablation shields shortened by destruction of the material.

On the subject of hypersonic test range scarcity, I noticed no mention of West Coast facilities beyond Edwards. Could this be due to population expansion coupled with seismic activity?

I had migrated from wind tunnels to flight simulators when the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake struck the Bay Area. Four gigantic very high-pressure, high-temperature vessels already prepared for major tests across the street from the sim building either ruptured or vented during the quake. I recall stumbling out of an ultra-cool computer room into a wave of heat and soot surpassing a desert dust storm.

I don't know why they didn't mention other ranges. Maybe it just wasn't important to list them all. Really, Edwards isn't even testing these kinds of things as far as I know. It seems to be out over the Pacific run by Point Mugu.
 
  • #134
nsaspook said:
The typical military response to that is to blow them all up during an actual war.

The military often has an over-inflated view of what they can find and explode, or neither US or the Soviets would have got stuck in Afghanistan for 20 years trying to beat goat shepherds.
 
  • #135
ardnog said:
The military often has an over-inflated view of what they can find and explode, or neither US or the Soviets would have got stuck in Afghanistan for 20 years trying to beat goat shepherds.

The military knows well the limitations on the use of force. Decisions on the use of force and it's limitations are mainly political, not technical. Effective countermeasures to hyper-sonic weapons will be found IMO and used if deemed necessary.

What the US or the Soviets we couldn't find and explode in Afghanistan was (is) an idea not a military objective to destroy a military target. The Soviet military (I was off the coast of Iran and Afghanistan in 1980 and 1981) had no problems massacring entire towns and bouncing rubble to smaller and small rocks in an attempt to break the will of the 'rebels' by reducing much of the country to the stone-age. Fifteen thousand Soviet soldiers killed doing that broke the will of the USSR instead.
 
  • #136
nsaspook said:
The military knows well the limitations on the use of force. Decisions on the use of force and it's limitations are mainly political, not technical. Effective countermeasures to hyper-sonic weapons will be found IMO and used if deemed necessary.

What the US or the Soviets we couldn't find and explode in Afghanistan was (is) an idea not a military objective to destroy a military target. The Soviet military (I was off the coast of Iran and Afghanistan in 1980 and 1981) had no problems massacring entire towns and bouncing rubble to smaller and small rocks in an attempt to break the will of the 'rebels' by reducing much of the country to the stone-age. Fifteen thousand Soviet soldiers killed doing that broke the will of the USSR instead.
The problem with trying to project power to the other side of the world is that we have to decide how long we want to keep soldiers away from home and family and how much money we want to keep spending, whereas they can just sit at home waiting for opportunities to take pot-shots.
 
  • #137
FactChecker said:
The problem with trying to project power to the other side of the world is that we have to decide how long we want to keep soldiers away from home and family and how much money we want to keep spending, whereas they can just sit at home waiting for opportunities to take pot-shots.

I think it's not just a case of living in caves and taking potshots, but the fact that they actually enjoy it.

Even if you blew the whole planet back to the stone age, they'd still be happy.

I think you have to evaluate very carefully what you mean by "win" in situations like this.
 
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  • #138
The North Koreans demonstrated that it was quite possible to maintain a disciplined resistance in the face of truly overwhelming military pressure. Afaik, no North Korean city survived the war, yet the military effort remained uninterrupted.
I think the more recent US delusion that killing Al Qaeda leaders would cause the movement to fall apart should have been instructive, as all it did was clear the way for more ruthless and more effective successors.
So I'm deeply skeptical as to the value of 1000 mile golden bullets. It assumes someone in NYC can effectively target some place in Miami or Chicago and achieve some militarily significant result. I call it BS.
 
  • #139
etudiant said:
The North Koreans demonstrated that it was quite possible to maintain a disciplined resistance in the face of truly overwhelming military pressure. Afaik, no North Korean city survived the war, yet the military effort remained uninterrupted.
I think the more recent US delusion that killing Al Qaeda leaders would cause the movement to fall apart should have been instructive, as all it did was clear the way for more ruthless and more effective successors.
So I'm deeply skeptical as to the value of 1000 mile golden bullets. It assumes someone in NYC can effectively target some place in Miami or Chicago and achieve some militarily significant result. I call it BS.

I agree, so that's why I see the hypersonic weapon threat more as a trigger for starting a war, not as a useful weapon for ending one.
 
  • #140
etudiant said:
The North Koreans demonstrated that it was quite possible to maintain a disciplined resistance in the face of truly overwhelming military pressure. Afaik, no North Korean city survived the war, yet the military effort remained uninterrupted.
I think the more recent US delusion that killing Al Qaeda leaders would cause the movement to fall apart should have been instructive, as all it did was clear the way for more ruthless and more effective successors.
So I'm deeply skeptical as to the value of 1000 mile golden bullets. It assumes someone in NYC can effectively target some place in Miami or Chicago and achieve some militarily significant result. I call it BS.

I think you are leaving out the part where the North Koreans were all but beaten but then the US crossed the 38th parallel and triggered Chinese intervention. Ultimately, that is what led to the stalemate. These are two very different examples in that the North Koreans fought a fairly conventional war and were propped up by a larger power. Al Qaeda is a very different, non-state entity that survives because, ultimately, it is an idea, not a physical state.

But this is all effectively irrelevant to the discussion of hypersonics. The hypersonic developments have been aimed at potential great power conflicts, not asymmetric warfare. I guess you could argue it would be easier to carry out a strike against fleeting command and control targets with a hypersonic weapon in an asymmetric engagement, but that's a pretty expensive way to do things considering that we already have that capability via drone strikes. The problem is that in a hypothetical conflict with a peer such as China or Russia, air superiority is not likely to be achieved over their territory, so you need something different to hold them at threat. That's the reason for all of the hypersonic developments.

nsaspook said:
I agree, so that's why I see the hypersonic weapon threat more as a trigger for starting a war, not as a useful weapon for ending one.

At some point it is all about deterrence and matching a peer adversary. If only one side develops a new weapon that changes the strategic balance and the other cannot similarly hold them at threat, it lowers the bar for that one side with the new weapons to use force since retaliation options are limited. If both sides have similar capabilities, it's a higher bar for either side to launch an attack because there is a degree of mutually assured destruction.

In both cases, it also fundamentally alters the other side's strategic decision making. One of China's chief goals is to assert dominance over the South China Sea, and to do that, they need to keep our carriers and other air power far enough away that they remain ineffective. This is why they are working to develop these weapons that can hit carriers and Guam. If we have similar capabilities, we can defeat that aim to some extent.

This is probably why you also see so much investment in the offensive systems compared to defensive ones. Offensive weapons are generally easier to develop, and both sides can achieve many of their strategic goals through offensive weapons and hope their deterrent value buys more time to build defensive weapons.
 
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  • #141
Sure, eventually all sides with have effective hypersonic weapons and countermeasures so the net gain is zero with a higher bias reference point for mutually assured destruction.
 
  • #142
nsaspook said:
The typical military response to that is to blow them all up during an actual war.
That is not even close to feasible. Do you realize how many shipping containers that comes into US waters every day?
Not to mention that it would be illegal to target civilian ships.
 
  • #143
Realizing this thread specifies counter-measures to hypersonic delivery systems, my concurrent study has helped me understand astrophysical research and theories of hypersonic meteor entry in atmosphere and asteroids/planet formation. So, interesting thread.

I will cite some of the relevant books in "What are You Reading Now (STEM only)" as time permits.
 
  • #144
Klystron said:
Realizing this thread specifies counter-measures to hypersonic delivery systems, my concurrent study has helped me understand astrophysical research and theories of hypersonic meteor entry in atmosphere and asteroids/planet formation. So, interesting thread.

I will cite some of the relevant books in "What are You Reading Now (STEM only)" as time permits.
I liked Opik’s book. How dated is it?
 
  • #145
caz said:
I liked Opik’s book. How dated is it?
Well Opik's name is hyphenated on the Opik-Oort cloud. Seems like an excellent basis.

New books I am currently reading on solar system formation lament how quickly new data supersedes theory, but also rejoices that space exploration has returned from ~40 year doldrums. Turns out some of Darwin's ideas on formation appear plausible given 19thC. technology limits. Now that is dated.
 
  • #146
Klystron said:
Well Opik's name is hyphenated on the Opik-Oort cloud. Seems like an excellent basis.

New books I am currently reading on solar system formation lament how quickly new data supersedes theory, but also rejoices that space exploration has returned from ~40 year doldrums. Turns out some of Darwin's ideas on formation appear plausible given 19thC. technology limits. Now that is dated.
Sorry. Opik Physics of meteor flight in the atmosphere 1959

Here’s a review
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/1.3060580
 
  • #147
Wouldn't the limiting factor for a hypersonic missile be the sensors, not necessarily the missiles themselves? For example, the AIM-120 AMRAAM can already go approximately Mach 4 (from unclassified numbers at least) but is a great missile given the context it's used in. Tactically, the AMRAAM is used by aircraft with powerful radar suites that provide guidance to the missile for the majority of its flight until it goes Pitbull and engages its onboard active radar. So it would seem that the kill potential (KP) of the missile hinges more on the sensors rather than kinetic performance.

Any missile maneuvers like a brick when near max velocity, and the motors only run for a certain amount of time after launch. After which they rely entirely on potential energy for maneuvering, which bleeds fast. Going back to the AMRAAM example, this problem is overcome by tactics. The AMRAAM can be launched from a radar soft-lock in Track-While-Scan (TWS) mode. This allows the launch platform to passively send position data to the missile of the target without alerting the targeted aircraft that a missile has been launched. The assumption should be that if you see a hostile F-15 spike, assume he's already launched an AMRAAM at you and maneuver accordingly. The targeted aircraft only receives a warning of a missile when the AMRAAM goes pitbull, by which point it's too late to maneuver.

For heaters (IR guided missiles), the only way to defeat them in close is to cause a greater angular rate of change than the missile is aerodynamically capable of, which of course varies from missile to missile. But a hypersonic missile would still maneuver like a brick by the time it's actually hypersonic.

My two cents anyways.
 
  • #148
Stormer said:
That is not even close to feasible. Do you realize how many shipping containers that comes into US waters every day?
Not to mention that it would be illegal to target civilian ships.

In a war you restrict shipping for ovbious reasons and civilian ships can get targeted if they are being utilized by the enemy for a military purpose.
The US Naval Handbook (2007) states:
Civilian passenger vessels at sea and civil airliners in flight are subject to capture but are exempt from destruction. Although enemy lines of communication are generally legitimate military targets in modern warfare, civilian passenger vessels at sea, and civil airliners in flight, are exempt from destruction, unless at the time of the encounter they are being utilized by the enemy for a military purpose (e.g., transporting troops or military cargo) or refuse to respond to the directions of the intercepting warship or military aircraft. Such passenger vessels in port and airliners on the ground are not protected from destruction.
 
  • #149
nsaspook said:
In a war you restrict shipping for ovbious reasons
And destroy your own economy...