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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.
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