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That's why I said newest round of hypersonics. Yes, we have defences against the older version of the technology - but I don't think asking the Russians to only use the old missiles that we can intercept instead of the new ones we can't is going to work terribly well.
Depends on the type of system to be quite honest. Maybe there's some classified technology that will do the job, but there's nothing publicly available to the best of my knowledge.
Existing missile defenses are also vulnerable to spoofing attacks and large numbers of decoy missiles - this is just another nail in the coffin.
Here, here's the head of the US Missile Defense Agency saying that we can use the SM-6 (in production since 2013) against the new maneuvering hypersonics.
I don't think (and I think Admiral Hill would agree with me) that it's a comfortable capability, and the US is working on other tech to better handle the threat. But as I said, I think it's an overstatement to say there's zero defense against even the newest hypersonics.
Well, if you're just trying to strike a land target, you can just use inertial or celestial navigation and it will likely work fairly well and you might not need to worry about soft-kill systems. But if you are trying to hit a ship or other maneuvering object (which is part of the attraction of hypersonics, they are fast), you usually use radar or IR/visual guidance, all of which can be soft-killed.
You mean against the OLD maneuvering hypersonics. There's two years and change between this announcement and the demonstration of the Oreshnik.
The SM6, to the best of my knowledge, was used to defend Israeli shipping efforts from the Houthi's rocket attacks, and the result is that Israel's most prominent port went bankrupt because the US was unable to deter the Houthis from blowing up and attacking shipping vessels. If it can't stop the Houthis I have significant doubts about its ability to stop the far more advanced Russians. I'm sure the US is working on other tech to better handle the threat, and I'm sure that one day the technology will be capable of stopping what the Russians can do right now. That's not going to be much use in a conflict that takes place before the US manages to catch up, and who knows how long that will take?
I freely admit ignorance as to how a soft-kill system would work here, so I'll just take your word for it that they'd be able to stop some missiles - but I don't think they'll be able to stop enough missiles to make strikes with large enough numbers to get through uneconomical.
Seems inferior to the Avengard in capabilities to me (lower reported top speed, right, and apparently not a maneuvering hypersonic glide vehicle but rather "just" a MIRV), do you think otherwise?
We've been discussing the technical capabilities of interception. My understanding is that the US Navy intercepted quite a few of the Houthis' rockets. I believe the Houthis' success over the US military is not in the technical realm but rather in the fact that they are using cheap weapons in great quantities. Similarly, the Russians are overwhelming Ukrainian air-defense right now using, basically, mass-produced flying lawnmowers. All of this has little bearing on the technical feasibility of an intercept (but is obviously extremely important when it comes to the question of how to economically wage a war.)
Yes, soft-kill is interesting because it could fail entirely or it could work nearly 100% of the time. Against a radar-guided weapon you could jam it or you could use decoys and chaff that either mimic or mask the ship. Against a visual/IR weapon you could steam into a fogbank or, if no fogbank is available, you could attempt to blind the seekerhead with a laser weapon. These are deployed en masse on helicopters but I don't think onboard ships. I imagine the reason for this is because most anti-ship seekerheads are radar-guided, although some of the newer Western systems (like the LRASM and NSM) have visual/IR sensors.
It's anybody's guess how effective these systems are but it's hard to hit what you can't see.
The Avangard is several years older, and in a completely different class of weapon. Why exactly would Putin make a big deal of announcing their newest weapon platform if it is inferior to the one they already demonstrated five years ago? They're claiming that western technology is unable to intercept it and they're willing to prove it, which I don't think they'd be willing to do if that wasn't true. I think that's actually fairly believable, given that the US is several years behind in hypersonic technology and isn't even able to test interception of these weapons because they can't even make them for themselves.
They intercepted quite a few of the rockets and completely failed to accomplish their objective, before being forced to run away with their tail between their legs - there's no world in which this wasn't an embarrassment for the US navy. I explicitly mentioned that swarm attacks are another weakness of those missile interdiction systems. The only thing that matters in terms of military technology is effectiveness, and if these systems have a known failure mode that's easy and economical to exploit... do you think the Russians or Chinese are just going to play nice and not exploit the flaws in those systems? Those incredibly expensive aircraft carriers remain gigantic floating targets no matter the specifics of how their defence systems failed.
I mean, my guess is "ineffective" given that they very clearly haven't done their job so far.
Well, yes. The Avangard is a maneuvering hypersonic glide vehicle with a reputed top speed of over Mach 27 that is mated to ICBMs. The Oreshnik reportedly has a top speech of Mach 10 or better and when deployed from an intermediate range ballistic missile and (when used operationally) it essentially used payload-less kinetic energy to hit its target. It might have HGV or terminal maneuvering capability - it seems that is unclear - but even just having multiple kinetic MIRVs (which will deploy on reentry, essentially meaning the single missile drops apparently 36 sub-munitions) makes it very dangerous to deal with. MIRVs are not new, though, they've been around (and been very problematic for missile defense systems!) for decades. Maybe the literal Russian Nesting Doll MIRVS (one missile deploys six munitions which each deploy six submunitions) are new, but it seems to me it's the same basic problem as MIRVs, just more efficient.
The Russians are always claiming their stuff (which is good) is the latest and greatest. If they were willing to prove Western technology was unable to intercept it, they could launch a single one at a US carrier battle group covered by land-based interceptors under ideal conditions for both parties and see what happens, but they haven't done that, so until they do I will remain convinced that it is likely very difficult to intercept but likely not impossible.
To your question, I seem to recall that part of the hype behind the Oreshnik was that it was capable of doing severe damage without a nuclear payload. This basically makes it a Russian version of the (undeveloped) Prompt Global Strike idea (albeit shorter ranged). I think that's part of why it's scary - Russia is teasing a conventional weapon that has a lot of the capabilities of an ICBM without the cost, and one that is extremely difficult for Western air defenses to intercept. I doubt it is technically impossible to intercept, if you get good missile defense in the right location - maybe I am wrong - but being hard to intercept is almost as good.
Keep in mind as an IRBM the Oreshnik isn't going to be targeting, say, the United States. It's going to be smaller and cheaper than an ICBM. It makes total sense to me that the Avangard - which is a strategic deterrence weapon capable of carrying nuclear warheads - would be as or more sophisticated than a medium-range weapon, possibly one designed for conventional use. The Russians have traditionally prioritized the development of their strategic nuclear assets and it makes sense to me that the Oreshnik is likely trickle-down technology from the strategic systems they like to focus on, maybe with some new features.
The US certainly seems to be behind in the development of hypersonic missiles. But they have* manned hypersonic aircraft out in Groom Lake, which is pretty nice. In fact, if maneuvering hypersonic targets are incapable of being intercepted (which, again, I think is an overstatement), it's arguably better than hypersonic missiles, because you could use it to deploy bombs cheaply rather than firing off expensive hypersonic missiles.
You win some, you lose some. The US has always been ahead in certain aspects and behind in others.
*no, technically I don't know this for sure. But there are Reasons to think it's true.
Right, so I agree with you that our experience with the Houthis suggests that the technical capability to intercept ballistic missiles exists (it's not really germane because there's no HGVs involved AFAIK but eh) and I also agree that it's very embarrassing for the US. But I wasn't arguing about that. I think you've slightly overstated the capabilities of hypersonic missiles. If you want to expand this into a discussion of the relative merits of Russian, Chinese, and American defense technology (all of which is quite impressive) I am happy to do so. But I've just been talking, purely, about whether the newest hypersonic weapons are impossible to intercept. Maybe they are, but maybe they aren't, and there are reasons to think that they aren't quite.
The only aircraft carrier that's been hit lately was by a cargo vessel. I've been over this with people on here before, everybody gangster about hitting aircraft carriers until you lose all of your orbital ISR assets. Then how are you supposed to find them? Unless longwave radar is reliable at long range, they are pretty tricky to locate - the ocean is big, the carrier is small. I would be zero percent surprised if in the Real World a single 30-year old Russian submarine with a full load of torpedoes is more of a threat to an aircraft carrier and its escorts than twice its value in ballistic missiles and their related kill chain.
I dunno why you would say that. The Houthis have tried to hit US ships several times, and have failed. Soft-kill systems, specifically Nulkas, have been part of the US response to such attacks, and here's another Navy Rear Admiral saying they performed well in combat while also saying that they needed an improved version. There was a missile launched at the USS Mason in 2016 that hit the water harmlessly, possibly because it was decoyed by a soft-launch system. So there's more evidence they work than that they don't, although of course none of those attacks were cutting edge Russian anti-ship tech.
If they actually did this it would be the start of a nuclear war which ends global civilisation. Why exactly would Russia just blow up a carrier group unprovoked? If I said that body armor doesn't protect against powerful firearms "Well if that was true why wouldn't you just go shoot an antimateriel rifle at the local SWAT team?" would not be a very compelling argument.
In this situation it is actually Vladimir Putin you're accusing of overstating the capabilities of hypersonic missiles. Whatever else you can say about the man, I believe he's quite knowledgeable about the capabilities of Russian weapon systems.
I don't see how the combination of hypersonics and throwing large numbers of cheap crap along as well can't defeat any modern missile defence system. Both of these are known weakpoints, and I don't quite understand how it'd be possible to overcome the two strategies in combination.
The US has denied it but the Houthis claimed that they managed to damage an aircraft carrier recently. The houthis seem substantially more trustworthy than US officials to me, but I think we'll have to wait and see for more information on this one. The last time the houthis claimed to have hit an aircraft carrier and the US denied it, the carrier then left the region. For the record I doubt this was an actual direct strike - I think the damage in this instance would be caused by a delayed interception that lead to some minor damage rather than a direct hit. As for ISR assets I wasn't aware that Yemen had a space program.
Of course, if you're talking about the Russian space program, that would be followed shortly afterwards by the destruction of the western satellite surveillance system and everyone is worse off. I don't think there's any real way to prevent a modern nation from shooting down satellites just yet, especially surveillance satellites directly above their heads.
The US Navy went in to bomb the Houthis in order to stop the Houthi missile attacks. The Houthi missile attacks did not stop, and the US navy left. I can't see any more likely motivation for the US to have left the area without achieving their goals. What other reason would they have to run away like that?
At least in this example you could shoot the antimaterial rifle at a bulletproof vest. I actually think this is a good analogy, the antimaterial rifle definitely wins the match-up, but claiming that a bulletproof vest provides zero protection is overstating it.
I'm quite confident that if I was chatting with Vladimir Putin in person he would agree with me that it is possible to intercept his hypersonic missiles in the boost phase (this is part of why Russia does not like our missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, I believe). He would then point out that as a practical matter that is very difficult to do. I think he would agree with me that while he is quite knowledgeable about Russian weapons systems, his knowledge on US weapons systems is necessarily somewhat limited (though perhaps still better than mine).
Yeah, if you look at my comment history you'll see me saying similar things. I think you're overindexing on the big picture (offensive weapons are hard to defeat with missile defense) and overlooking my extremely narrow technical argument.
Now, there is a solution to the large numbers of cheap crap: old-fashioned AAA, laser-guided 5-inch rockets, and lasers. All of these are very cheap. But the West doesn't field AAA in numbers, is just now getting the laser-guided rockets up and running, and is still fooling around with laser systems. (Also, both of the laser-involved systems don't work very well if, for instance, it's foggy outside, which sucks!)
The Russians, with their layered approach to integrated air defense, are arguably ahead of the West in defeating the "mixed" approach you're talking about here, but they still struggle against low-observable cruise missiles. (They really need more A-50 AWACs.)
I'm like 50/50 on whether or not it would have leaked. I will believe it when there is good proof of it.
The Houthis in fact reportedly used Russian satellite data in their attacks. They also reportedly got targeting data from Iran, IIRC.
It's also worth noting as a practical matter that there's a big difference (if you're a ship) between being deployed to an area like the Red Sea versus an area like "the middle of the Pacific" with considerably more room to maneuver.
So basically despite having satellite ISR data and an ideal situation in which to engage a carrier (I believe the entire battle group went into the Red Sea, correct me if I am wrong) they failed to sink a carrier or its escorts. In fact the most damage done to the CBG (so far) was due to friendly fire.
There are a couple of ways to deal with this problem. One of them is by fielding lots of little cubesats so that you're putting more assets in orbit faster than your enemy can shoot them down. This might not work for all applications but it can for some, like communications. (For instance I doubt the US could destroy the Starlink constellation with its ASAT stockpile, it would need to use other methods). Another alternative is to use maneuvering space assets like the X-37 or high-altitude high-speed ISR assets like the totally-not-already-built-and-tested SR-72 and the very real Chinese WZ-8, which will be more difficult to shoot down.
Off the top of my head, a very good explanation for US behavior is that they ran low on ammo.
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