Defense against Hypersonic Glide Vehicles

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has awarded Other Transactional (OT) Agreements to Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon Missiles and Defense to complete an accelerated concept design of the Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI) for MDA’s regional hypersonic missile defense program. Interceptors will be fired from Navy Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense destroyers using the standard Vertical Launch System (VLS) and will also integrate with the modified Baseline 9 Aegis Weapon System to detect, track, control, and engage hypersonic threats in the glide phase of the missile’s flight.

LM proposes navalized PAC-3 MSE https://insidedefense.com/daily-new...al-sea-based-pac-3-counter-hypersonic-threats
Raytheon can be provide new or existing design as Standard Missile or David Sling
and finally Northrop Grumman design is all new, probably
 
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The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has awarded Other Transactional (OT) Agreements to Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon Missiles and Defense to complete an accelerated concept design of the Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI) for MDA’s regional hypersonic missile defense program. Interceptors will be fired from Navy Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense destroyers using the standard Vertical Launch System (VLS) and will also integrate with the modified Baseline 9 Aegis Weapon System to detect, track, control, and engage hypersonic threats in the glide phase of the missile’s flight.

LM proposes navalized PAC-3 MSE https://insidedefense.com/daily-new...al-sea-based-pac-3-counter-hypersonic-threats
Raytheon can be provide new or existing design as Standard Missile or David Sling
and finally Northrop Grumman design is all new, probably
An optional defensive/offensive air breathing ASALM derivative upgrade or PAC 3 under mach 5 missiles which are able to strike or defend makes more sense than only 12xCPS on a ship. Mass production to face such overwhelming threats both defensively and offensively is necessary. Congress is still correct in doubting USN strategy on these monsterous and monsterouly expensive one shot wonder Mach 5s..
 
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has awarded Other Transactional (OT) Agreements to Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon Missiles and Defense to complete an accelerated concept design of the Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI) for MDA’s regional hypersonic missile defense program. Interceptors will be fired from Navy Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense destroyers using the standard Vertical Launch System (VLS) and will also integrate with the modified Baseline 9 Aegis Weapon System to detect, track, control, and engage hypersonic threats in the glide phase of the missile’s flight.

LM proposes navalized PAC-3 MSE https://insidedefense.com/daily-new...al-sea-based-pac-3-counter-hypersonic-threats
Raytheon can be provide new or existing design as Standard Missile or David Sling
and finally Northrop Grumman design is all new, probably
An optional defensive/offensive air breathing ASALM derivative upgrade or PAC 3 under mach 5 missiles which are able to strike or defend makes more sense than only 12xCPS on a ship. Mass production to face such overwhelming threats both defensively and offensively is necessary. Congress is still correct in doubting USN strategy on these monsterous and monsterouly expensive one shot wonder Mach 5s..

Well the Chinese seem to think they will work well enough. I think the future will be air launched weapons of much cheaper cost, but throwing a warhead two thousand miles is thirty minutes is always going to have some uses, even if its pricy. I think there's room for both. There isn't always a plane overhead when you want something dead. I definitely agree tearing open the Zoomies is pointless; there should be a low cost auxillary platform with plenty of hull space for more weapons and lower costs with larger numbers than those three orphaned hulls.
 
definitely agree tearing open the Zoomies is pointless; there should be a low cost auxillary platform with plenty of hull space for more weapons and lower costs with larger numbers than those three orphaned hulls.
Counterpoint.

The Navy is LOVING the Zumwalt hull. It large roomy, great seakeeping, solid crew quarters, lots of power...

I can see this as part of a way to get more of them made and avoided the standard you need to have a competition laws to order a big ticket idea like a ship.

A Zumwalt hull with the CPS tubes built in should be able to carry far more.
 
 
Assuming the target of a Mach 5 weapon is a US aircraft carrier, then a Zumwalt based Area Defence ship seems to make sense as an escort.
I have been re reading the USN War College wargames about the Cold War in the 80s and note that most US carriers eventually got sunk or seriously damaged in a full on war.
A sneak attack by Mach 5 weapons on the Minuteman silos would be pointless as the US Trident force has enough weapons to annihilate China in return.
Anti Missile systems tend to lead to arms control treaties as a cheaper solution.
 
definitely agree tearing open the Zoomies is pointless; there should be a low cost auxillary platform with plenty of hull space for more weapons and lower costs with larger numbers than those three orphaned hulls.
Counterpoint.

The Navy is LOVING the Zumwalt hull. It large roomy, great seakeeping, solid crew quarters, lots of power...

I can see this as part of a way to get more of them made and avoided the standard you need to have a competition laws to order a big ticket idea like a ship.

A Zumwalt hull with the CPS tubes built in should be able to carry far more.
If they love it she much why isn’t it the new large combatant?
 
You know just from look at the title and a quick skimming...

Replace China with Soviet and we back in fucking 1960-70s.
Reality can be a bitch like that.
 
definitely agree tearing open the Zoomies is pointless; there should be a low cost auxillary platform with plenty of hull space for more weapons and lower costs with larger numbers than those three orphaned hulls.
Counterpoint.

The Navy is LOVING the Zumwalt hull. It large roomy, great seakeeping, solid crew quarters, lots of power...

I can see this as part of a way to get more of them made and avoided the standard you need to have a competition laws to order a big ticket idea like a ship.

A Zumwalt hull with the CPS tubes built in should be able to carry far more.
If they love it she much why isn’t it the new large combatant?
Because you can't fix stupid. Why do we only have 180 F-22s & 20 B-2s?
 
A sneak attack by Mach 5 weapons on the Minuteman silos would be pointless as the US Trident force has enough weapons to annihilate China in return.
Mach 5 isn't fast enough. MM can be gone on 30 seconds notice. To your later point I would add, "for now". When (not if) they figure out how to spot submarines from satellites killing SSBNs will be like shooting fish in a barrel.
 
If they love it she much why isn’t it the new large combatant?
Because it does not work like that thanks to Congress.

There is like three different sets laws that basically say...

The DOD must put out a request the the Companies need to compete for with the DOD choosing the the one they most like.

The Navy can not go to Ingells and say, Hey I want 40 more Zumwalts hulls, heres money start building. No they have to have Ingells, Newport, Mobile and any other boat builter to included their design bid. Then run an extensive think tank program to choose the best for their needs.

All while congress is breathing down their necks.

Especially since the Zumwalt is disliked by Congress still, who holds the money bag and are famously... Stupid with weapon programs.

But by showing that the Zumwalts have uses and since they are already built. The navy can use the same loophole that they did to get the Burke 3s or FA18s built by saying it be cheaper to make a modification of an existing design instead of jumping thru the hoops to get a new one.
 
Mach 5 isn't fast enough. MM can be gone on 30 seconds notice. To your later point I would add, "for now". When (not if) they figure out how to spot submarines from satellites killing SSBNs will be like shooting fish in a barrel.
That would be extremely difficult since only ELF waves travel more than a few feet underwater and an ELF radar would be about the width of a small country, unless they can figure out how to create a virtual radar from many separate satellites.
 
Mach 5 isn't fast enough. MM can be gone on 30 seconds notice. To your later point I would add, "for now". When (not if) they figure out how to spot submarines from satellites killing SSBNs will be like shooting fish in a barrel.
That would be extremely difficult since only ELF waves travel more than a few feet underwater and an ELF radar would be about the width of a small country, unless they can figure out how to create a virtual radar from many separate satellites.
That's the thing with military technology. It's always the things you don't see coming that bite you in the ass.
 

The Missile Defense Agency awarded Lockheed Martin a $20.9 million contract to begin developing a concept design for the Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI), a defense program meant to defeat hypersonic missiles that travel five times the speed of sound.

“GPI leverages our proven success in developing and fielding the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, weapon system. This, combined with our Aegis weapon system expertise and knowledge, affords us the unique capability to support the hypersonic threat defense for MDA,” said Julie Pecson, program director of the Glide Phase Interceptor program at Lockheed Martin.

The MDA shared that interceptors will be fired from Navy Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense destroyers using the standard Vertical Launch System and will also integrate with the modified Baseline 9 Aegis Weapon System to detect, track, control, and engage hypersonic threats in the glide phase of the missile’s flight.
 
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Well, a good Russian tradition is to officially commission the system only after it is already put in service) According to official sources, they are deployed starting from October around Moscow (15-th Special Purpose Air-Space Army).
Can you point out where did you see that they were deployed already in October please?
 
About the S-550: it have been already corrected.
The journo had mistaken S-500 and S-550.


Let's note that Moscow is the least place in Russia where deployment of S-550 (i.e. a specialized and MOBILE anti-ICBM device) would have any sense as it is already covered by FIXED A-135 and Nudol missile.

Naturally the contrary applies for S-500 as it will cover the Capital against IRBM and cruise missiles (and in future hypersonic weapons).

https://topwar.ru/187180-gosispytan...hal-postavki-zrs-s-500-prometej-v-vojska.html

How you see an initial unit has been already deployed: it however would not be immediately operative as it would used to train the AD troops first.
 
Let's note that Moscow is the least place in Russia where deployment of S-550 (i.e. a specialized and MOBILE anti-ICBM device) would have any sense as it is already covered by FIXED A-135 and Nudol missile
Then again it does make some sense from Training points.

You already have a know system with people there who know how to use. And have a solid nice and warm fuzzy feeling on what right looks like.

Plus you have all the training gear and like there.

So it could be as simple as using the A135 traing gear and personal as a baseline. And hopefully getting people from that system cross train on the other.

Basically russia knows the A135/Nudol system works with X. Does the S500 work with X as we think it do? And going from there.
 
Not, because the two systems have actually nothing in common.
The first unit that I was talking about was the one of S-500, not of S-550 (that still not exist).
Such unit is being formed in the area of Moscow but has nothing to do with the ABM defence system.
A.t.c. S-500 missile is a derivative from S-300V (i.e. of the Army) wheeled export version : so it would paradoxically be better to use a Ground Force unit than one of Aerospace Forces for an accelerated training.

Naturally you have to consider that in both the case of S-500 than of future S-550 the missiles is not the only thing a.t.c. what is more needed compared than in, let's say, the case of the S-400 (or the AEGIS system of the USN) is a radar specifically dedicated to track ballistic or hypersonic targets at very high quotes.

Infact, ballistic targets move very little on the longitudinal axes but climb very fast at extremely high altitudes so a conventional search radar (i.e. one that in order to intercept planes and air breathing cruise missiles would make a large horizontal scan) would lose track of them when they reach above a certain altitude: in case of a purely balistic trajectory you can still have hope to get an hint of when and where they will pop up again in your screen but in a case of a MIRV and even worse a MARV payload: INDOVINALA GRILLO! as we use to say.
So, you will need ALMOST something able almost to gave you a full scan in the vertical but this usually came with a very narrow horizontal one.
An hypersonic glide vehicle instead: well, first they can bounce and in addition of that they can weave a lot both on an horizontal than in a longitudinal axis so you will need a whole continental size network of such radars to be able to just follow a few of them fired in salvo.
Russia actually has one, built up in a span of decades, USA still got something (very something) but just as a protection of themselves and maybe Canada against more conventional ballistic menace and have dismantled the rest.
Europe, Middle East, Southern-Eastern Asia have about nothing on that regard.
It obviously apply also to naval matter, so the idea of acquiring Zumwalt above is worthless: they have not any of such radars.
Even worse: they have not even a conventional AD radars (as they are DDH, not DDG) and their potential VLS allowance is inferior even to that of a Burke, go figure...
 
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I just had a thought. If clouds and other airborne matter can destroy hypersonic vehicles as the dod notes here:

Then wouldn't the gigantic cloud of nanotube "super chaff" that lasts 10 hours provide not only a radar shield, but area denial for hypersonic weapons?


 

Hmm....

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhDl_22DxHQ&t=510s
 

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