[Rotdhizon]

I imagine the realistic answer is "we don't know", because it's never been truly tested. They are constantly improving and iterating designs, speeds, anti-intercept tech, anti-tracking. As you said as well, this is only what from is available in OSINT reporting. There are surely classified weapons from all major countries lying in wait for the most serious scenarios.

A big part of hypersonic/ICBM warfare is anti-detection tech. When you have the two most military capable countries with 'hypersonic' ICBMs that can in theory reach across the planet is < 30 minutes, a massive part of that is stopping the other country from realizing you even fired a missile in the first place. That detection is usually done through satellites afaik. One of the next steps in global warfare is going to be satellite degradation and interference.

It's a whole different world when you detect a launch in the silo and know you have half an hour to react versus not realizing a missile is in the air until it's 5 minutes off the west coast.

[jandrewrogers]

Detecting hypersonics is relatively easy because they are the opposite of stealthy. Even most glide vehicles have an initial ballistic trajectory that exposes it to many sensors at distance. The US field-tested a number of short range hypersonics since the 1990s that don't have a ballistic trajectory but those were all canceled.

Hypersonics have two related technical challenges.

They are not maneuverable, at least not in the way people imagine, due to fundamental limits of material physics. They are more "straight line" fast. This requires very fast reaction times on the part of defensive systems but the intercept is otherwise pretty trivial using the same off-the-shelf intercept terminal guidance from 20-30 years ago.

The big advantage hypersonics have is they significantly reduce the amount of space an air defense system can cover due to their speed. Hypersonic air defense missiles can counter this to some extent, which the US has, but these have drawbacks related to the second point.

Terminal guidance for hypersonics is an extremely difficult engineering problem because none of the physical materials you can use in terminal guidance systems can survive endoatmospheric hypersonic travel. A hypersonic missile without effective terminal guidance is an ICBM with a shorter intercept window. This isn't that useful for many targets.

The US has been continuously developing and testing different hypersonic terminal guidance designs since (at least) the 1980s. The first viable design only went into production 15-20 years ago. Presumably they've improved on and generalized it since then. There isn't much evidence that any other country has effective terminal guidance for hypersonics.

It is worth noting that effective precision terminal guidance was a prerequisite for US deployment of hypersonic weapons. Everyone else touting "hypersonic missiles" skipped that part.

[adrian_b]

In TFA, only the missiles with terminal guidance are discussed, of which three models are currently known, one in each of USA, Russia and China, none of which has been deployed yet.

[jandrewrogers]

There is no indication that any of these systems have precision terminal guidance in the normal sense of the term, nor evidence that Russia or China have solved the engineering problems related to it.

The US has deployed hypersonic missiles with precision terminal guidance, though not strike weapons, for almost 20 years in more limited domains. However, given the longstanding US doctrine to not deploy a hypersonic attack weapon without precision terminal guidance, and the demonstrated engineering capability in the domain, it is reasonable to assume that Dark Eagle has this capability. Any information about how the terminal guidance works will be closely guarded; it has no obvious engineering solution and it took the US several decades to figure it out.

A bunch of things in that article are incorrect or misleading. For example, the kill chain latency model isn't correct in several respects. It looks like an AI mashup of popular internet slop.

[bilbo0s]

>nor evidence that Russia or China have solved the engineering problems related to it.

Absence of evidence, especially when dealing with China, is not evidence of absence.

I would rather our planners take China having that nut cracked as a base operational assumption at this point.

[mrguyorama]

>It's a whole different world when you detect a launch in the silo and know you have half an hour to react versus not realizing a missile is in the air until it's 5 minutes off the west coast.

Missile submarines have basically made this reality for decades.