How DARPA and US Army Hypersonic Air­breathing Weapon Concept needs Directed Weapon countermeasure

“The nature of battle will fundamentally change. Missile defense systems will struggle to counter Hypersonic flight, making targets — especially large naval warships — more vulnerable to attack. But as has been the case for revolutionary military technologies in the past, the best defense will be to destroy the missiles before they can launch, increasing war planners' emphasis on offensive action”

Analysis from the intelligence website Stratfor on defense against Hypersonic Missiles

The next Arms Race among the Developed World Nations has begun. No, it's not Nuclear weapons; they already have tons of those stockpiled.

Rather, it's kinetic weapons, Directed energy Weapons and Hypersonic missiles such as the Hypersonic Air­breathing Weapon Concept as explained in “'Hypersonic' missiles traveling 5 times the speed of sound are fueling a new arms race”, published MAY 19, 2016, by Paul Szoldra, Tech Insider.   

DARPA and the Air force had their weapons on display at DARPA's Demo Day in the week on Monday May 9th 2016, which is basically a weapons system trade fair put on by the Pentagon.

Developed by a joint DARPA/Air Force program, these Hypersonic missiles are a lot like their Directed Energy counterparts such as the Boeing HEL MD 10 KW Laser as described in my blog article entitled “Boeing HEL MD 10 KW Laser successfully Tested shooting down Mortar Rounds and Drones”.

So should the US of A be worried?

Hypersonic Missiles delivering Nuclear bombs to USA - Russia, China, and India  are the Angry Birds

Russia, China, and India are all trying to develop them as well in what has been dubbed as a Mach 5 arms race.

Already Russia is alledged to be developing more advanced versions of their P-270 Moskit and P-800 Oniks that can travel at Mach 3 (3675.1 Km/h) and deliver Nuclear Weapons as predicted in my blog article entitled “How Russian P-270 Moskit and P-800 Oniks stopped by US Navy’s Phalanx and Railguns”. 

Russia, under their secretive Project 4202, have been developing the highly maneouverable Yu-74 and the Yu-71 that can travel at Mach 9 (7000 mph) as reported in “Russia testing hypersonic nuclear glider that holds 24 warheads and travels at 7,000mph”, published Jun 15, 2016 by Tom Batchelor, Express UK.

The Russian army has retrofitted the RS-28 Sarmat ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) to be capable of carrying 24 nuclear-loaded Yu-74 gliders without having to leave Earth Orbit as noted in “Russian Hypersonic Glider Weapons Would Easily Penetrate U.S. Defenses”, published June 14 2016, by Bruce Dorminey , Forbes.  

U.S., Russia and China have long relied on the nuclear triad as it relates to platforms to launch their nuclear warheads to their designated targets:

1. Submarine-launched ballistic missiles
2. Strategic bombers
3. Conventional ICBMs

The developement of Hypersonic Missiles changes all that, At such fast speeds, nuclear could reach the continental United States of America in a matter of minutes, not hour as pointed out in November 2015 by Nikolai Sokov, a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, quote: “The future, I believe, looks pretty gloomy. We are looking at a combined nuclear­conventional arms race in Europe in the near future. Which will likely continue for an extended period of time”.

Hypersonic missiles do not have to travel into space, orbit and deliver their deadly payload; they travel in a direct line to their target. More interestingly, many of these weapons don't even need explosive warheads; the kinetic energy alone deliver by the impact is also deadly. Basically this Mach 5 arms race can also be described as the Angry Birds Arms Race, named after the popular casual smartphone game.

So how do you defend against a flying bird....I mean missile...flying at speeds as high as Mach 3 up to Mach 5?

How DARPA and US Army Hypersonic Air breathing Weapon Concept - Improved AI Radar and Directed Energy Weapons Needed

Truth be told, you can....it just requires a rethink of communication systems with such weapons flying at such high velocities as well as the Radar Technology used to track them and Directed Energy Weapons i.e. Lasers!

Conventional surface-to-air and Air-to-air missiles cannot even catch up with these Hypersonic missiles, let alone track them. At Mach 5 (3,806 mph), tracking an object that fast on Radar would require rapid spinning radar with a higher sweep rate and data analyzed using a AI, similar to the one that Facebook uses to analyze ads as pointed out in my blog article entitled “How Facebook AI Engineers use AutoML to teach FLOW to make Asimo”.

Even communicating with them may require the use of laser based communication systems as predicted in my blog article entitled “DARPA's Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 - Learning To communicate and Walk Before Running”.

Also the DSP (Digital Signal Processors) would have to process this data in real time, and plot this information not on a traditional radar sweep screen, but on a HDTVs computer screen in real time as well as calculate future trajectories. This as the main weakness of Hypersonic vehicles is that they can only travel in perfectly straight lines.

For this reason, once you have a Radar System that's adapted to track their trajectories as described above, the US Navy can predict their position. Once they can determine the current position and trajectory, they can determine future position.

Then using a nuclear-powered Directed Energy weapon such as the Lockheed Martin’s ATHENA as described in my blog article entitled “Lockheed Martin’s ATHENA - Ground based Laser competition to Raytheon’s LAWS as US Military goes Star Wars”, this automated Radar system can fire a pulse of energy and destroy the Hypersonic missile before it even reaches the target.

There may indeed be a Hypersonic Vehicle Arms Race that's ongoing. Destroying where the missile came from is a good idea and is indeed possible. Even better is being able to create a virtual Iron Shield to stop inbound Hypersonic Missiles.

Directed energy weapons powered by mini nuclear reactors, with laser beams travelling at the speed of light, provide the perfect countermeasure to this growing threat.