Russia is making their usual big claims that there newest S-500 Anti-missile system can shoot down hypersonic weapons. They also claim it will be 5-7 years before China and the USA will have offensive hypersonic weapons.
Israeli aircraft were able to defeat Russian Pantsir-S1 anti-missile systems in Syria. Israel has had hundreds of successful air strikes in Syria and lost one plane and this is despite Russia installing some S-300 systems.
Russia claims to have a few operational and deployed offensive hypersonic missiles.
The S-500 is an upgrade of the S-400 surface-to-air missile system. It is designed for intercepting and destroying intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as hypersonic cruise missiles and aircraft, for air defense against Airborne Early Warning and Control and for jamming aircraft. It has a planned range of 600 km (370 mi) for anti-ballistic missile (ABM) and 400 km (250 mi) for the air defense.
It has been claimed it will detect and simultaneously engage up to 10 ballistic hypersonic targets flying at a speed of 5 kilometres per second (3.1 mi/s; 18,000 km/h; 11,000 mph) to a limit of 7 km/s (4.3 mi/s; 25,000 km/h; 16,000 mph). It also aims at destroying hypersonic cruise missiles and other aerial targets at speeds of higher than Mach 5, as well as spacecraft. The altitude of a target engaged can be as high as 180–200 km (110–120 mi). It is effective against ballistic missiles with a launch range of 3,500 km (2,200 mi), the radar reaches a radius of 3,000 km (1,300 km for the EPR 0,1 square meter). Other targets it has been announced to defend against include: unmanned aerial vehicles, low Earth orbit- satellites, and space weapons launched from hypersonic aircraft, drones, and hypersonic orbital platforms.
The system will be highly mobile and will have rapid deployability. Experts believe that the system’s capabilities can affect enemy intercontinental ballistic missiles at the middle and end portions of flight, but reports by Almaz-Antey say that the external target-designation system (RLS Voronezh-DM and missile defense system A-135 radar Don-2N) will be capable of mid-early flight portion interceptions of enemy ballistic missiles, which is one of the final stages of the S-500 project.
Russia plans to buy ten S-500 battalions for the defense of Moscow.
The main components of the S-500 will be:
* launch vehicle 77P6, based on the BAZ-69096 10×10 truck
* command posts 55K6MA and 85Zh6-2 on BAZ-69092-12 6×6
acquisition and battle management radar 91N6A(M), a modification of the 91N6 (Big Bird) towed by the BAZ-6403.01 8×8 tractor
* 96L6-TsP acquisition radar, an upgraded version of the 96L6 (Cheese Board) on BAZ-69096 10×10
* multimode engagement radar 76T6 on BAZ-6909-022 8×8
* ABM engagement radar 77T6 on BAZ-69096 10×10
The system is planned to have a response time of less than 4 seconds (Compared to the S-400’s less than 10)
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I must agree. In order for the S-300 or S-500 to take down a hypersonic missile the rocket engine would have to be hypersonic. My guess is that a hypersonic rocket engine is quite a ways off. I also believe that it is highly questionable if Russia actually has hypersonic missile that is fully mature. From a recent article the Zircon is more a prototype that is under development. A Russian Naval officer even said that the Zircon is not ready to be used in the field yet. So in other words the Russia's hypersonic missile claims are just more of their scare tactics. Also remember that the US has spent years perfecting scramjet technology. The US may actually be ahead if the sightings about the SR-72 are actually true or not. It is quite plausible that the US's scramjet development is black-ops project..
That’s why there are satellite killer weapons. And electronic warfare….
Exactly. The Jews were unable to achieve air supremacy over Syria, precisely because of an inability to overcome air defences. Russian jets included.
not really, I am afraid. Although ballistic missiles do travel at hyper sonic speeds, they are not considered as “hyper sonic weapons” proper. Despite the semantic contradiction. The latter designation is for weapons travelling within the atmosphere, on non ballistic trajectories. They are also manoeuvrable, unlike ballistic weapons. This is my understanding of what is usually meant by the term.
You are making it up as you go along…. There is no such thing as “fairly late in its flight envelope” , the flight envelope has to do with design flight limits and it is not something one can be “late” in. So, rather than talking nonsense, leave the interpretations to the real experts.
They’re fighting Assad alright. That is the only way they can guarantee removing Iranian presence.
Me waits for Russia to shoot down a “ufo” using this tech
Pretty much this, the only reason to use an warhead on an hypersonic interceptor is to generate fragments who will in it self be an serious impact. However against an tungsten rod fragments will probably have limited effect, an direct his will be an lightshow.
Israel is not fighting Assad, they are fighting Hezbollah and supplies to them and some other Iranian efforts.
Actually the spin you refer to as funky would result in a catastrophic structural failure and end target would be hundreds of mi. off primary ground zero…
If you hit a rod from God with a huge ABM like an S-500, it would go into a funky spin and be thrown off course. It would still hit something but not in the way it’s intended, and probably several miles away from the target.
Don’t believe the hype. Stopping subsonic cruise missiles is difficult as is.
Russia is invincible. There is nothing that these rocket-words cannot shoot down. Better than a Harry Potter magic spell.
..and few minutes after a nuclear mounted ICBM was dropped over Washington DC..
Just saying..
Guess we will just need some war-Starships dropping tungsten rods then. Good luck intercepting that! Quick, someone get the DoD & tell them to throw money at Space X. 😉
Russia is making their usual big claims that there newest S-500 Anti-missile system can shoot down hypersonic weapons. They also claim it will be 5-7 years before China and the USA will have offensive hypersonic weapons.
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t a reentering ballistic warhead a hypersonic offensive weapon? BTW, this missile is probably similar in capabilities to the current version of the patriot surface to air missile.
“Israel has had hundreds of successful air strikes in Syria and lost one plane and this is despite Russia installing some S-300 systems.”
No they haven’t. Israel has had the odd success but overall they have been hopeless. This is conclusively proven by the fact Assad has won the war despite Israel’s best efforts. Taking out 1 switched off pantsir is pretty woeful given the number of missiles the pantsir regularly intercepts.
There’s a lot about this that make it kind of a “non-story”. There is nothing especially magical about shooting down a hypersonic-capable missile because there is no firm set of performance characteristics of a hypersonic-capable missile, in part because there’s no established standard because nobody is flying an air to ground hypersonic missile (especially not an airbreathing one, even if Iskander or Zirkon are just big ass rockets). There are too many operational variables to really make this a meaningful claim. If you were to engage a hypersonic threat fairly late in its flight envelope, and you had a lot of range, you were fairly perpendicular to the path of flight at the point of acquisition, there is nothing special about how it “used to be” hypersonic. Everything is about how the missile uses its energy, its flight profile, how and when it maneuvers and how and when it can maneuver because you can’t necessarily bank at Mach 8 even if you can bank at Mach 4, and when it runs out… this is all just more propaganda. “S-500 has a lot of range, can probably shoot down most threats coming in the next 20 years” is about all you could say with any veracity.