Defense against Hypersonic Glide Vehicles

quellish said:
Wow, that is great news!

What "hypersonic missile" was used to test and validate this new capability? Surely it was tested against some hypersonic missile acting as a target. Maybe this system was tested against ARRW and prevents booster ignition?

Or was this actually a "simulated capability" against a "simulated missile" ? Because if this is the "classified capability" I think it was, yes that's actually what happened. Which is like saying that we now have "capabilities" that were validated in Call of Duty.
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They could potentially have tested it against ARRW, HAWC or LRHW, or some X-51-derived system.
 
Forest Green said:
They could potentially have tested it against ARRW, HAWC or LRHW, or some X-51-derived system.
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If any of those were used as targets we would probably know about it. All of the tests of these systems are very visible. They require a lot of support infrastructure, airspace closures, etc.
 
quellish said:
If any of those were used as targets we would probably know about it. All of the tests of these systems are very visible. They require a lot of support infrastructure, airspace closures, etc.
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And if their failure to simiulate Sizzler is any indicator (never mind the string of failures in hypersonics tests) then I would give it about 0.2% odds of being what they claim it is. Probably a new GPS jammer around DC or something. Maybe an AQM-37C could simulate a BGV. Barely. And a slow one at that.
 
bobbymike said:
spacenews.com

Space Force general: ‘Golden Dome’ missile shield requires Manhattan Project-scale effort

Gen. Michael Guetlein, vice chief of space operations of the U.S. Space Force, said Golden Dome represents a significant challenge that demands unprecedented collaboration across defense and intell…
spacenews.com spacenews.com
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Manhattan is primarily R&D to achieve nuclear breakthrough. Golden Dome though, we already have most of the tech (various missile/KV designs, sensor nets already built and continuing to see further reinforcements, C3I methodologies established), so the hardest part would be to fund the tens of thousands of interceptors and radar sets into service. Both are equally monumental.
 
yeetmahboi said:
Manhattan is primarily R&D to achieve nuclear breakthrough. Golden Dome though, we already have most of the tech (various missile/KV designs, sensor nets already built and continuing to see further reinforcements, C3I methodologies established), so the hardest part would be to fund the tens of thousands of interceptors and radar sets into service. Both are equally monumental.
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You mean millions of interceptor sites.

HGVs have a stupidly tight intercept footprint, roughly 7-10km from the target site max.

Launch sites every 10-20km all across the USA.
 
Scott Kenny said:
You mean millions of interceptor sites.

HGVs have a stupidly tight intercept footprint, roughly 7-10km from the target site max.

Launch sites every 10-20km all across the USA.
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Likely though around densely populated Areas, it's not worth the cost to defend large swathes of farmland with only a couple people every dozens of miles, nor is it worth protecting national parks or a empty desert. You would likely only need the sites around the coast/border of the United States as well, that would probably be a couple tens of thousands of sites, a gargantuan amount, but not in the millions.
 
You could likely get away with some gaps between the spacing as well as determining the likelihood of where HGV's would be used. It just isn't at all cost effective to build a overlapping impenetrable defense to the most advanced type of munition to protect every inch of American soil. To be realistic if at all you need to rely on statistics to determine how much an area is really worth defending.

Yes technically a HGV could fly through small gaps a couple of km wide between interceptor sites but that I'm thinking that would reduce the speed to make it easier to intercept with longer range munitions, and the chances of a hypersonic missile weaving around effective defense bubbles to be highly unlikely if not at all even possible.
 
Nx4eu said:
Likely though around densely populated Areas, it's not worth the cost to defend large swathes of farmland with only a couple people every dozens of miles, nor is it worth protecting national parks or a empty desert. You would likely only need the sites around the coast/border of the United States as well, that would probably be a couple tens of thousands of sites, a gargantuan amount, but not in the millions.
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The US border with Canada is ~4000mi/6400km long. Not counting the Alaska border. About half of that is from the Great Lakes east, so there's lots of cities to protect.

US Pacific coastline is 1400miles/2250km. Eh, you could arguably skip about half of that as not having any significance. Just don't try to say that to the people who do live there...

US Atlantic coastline is ~2000mi/3200km. That one you will need to install defenses every 10-20km on, and at least 5 rows deep to cover all the towns and cities. 160 bases times 5 rows is 800, and that only covers people living within 100km of the beaches.

You'd need to run bases along each interstate highway. Not in the middle of nowhere, but where the cities are.

And let's not forget fun places like the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Which is a single urban area about 5x the area of Connecticut state.
 
Scott Kenny said:
The US border with Canada is ~4000mi/6400km long. Not counting the Alaska border. About half of that is from the Great Lakes east, so there's lots of cities to protect.

US Pacific coastline is 1400miles/2250km. Eh, you could arguably skip about half of that as not having any significance. Just don't try to say that to the people who do live there...

US Atlantic coastline is ~2000mi/3200km. That one you will need to install defenses every 10-20km on, and at least 5 rows deep to cover all the towns and cities. 160 bases times 5 rows is 800, and that only covers people living within 100km of the beaches.

You'd need to run bases along each interstate highway. Not in the middle of nowhere, but where the cities are.

And let's not forget fun places like the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Which is a single urban area about 5x the area of Connecticut state.
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I have nothing against Alaska but they could probably do without a extensive missile defense except to protect key military installations and radar sites.

To provide broad effective coverage without having way too many sites you could likely get away with a checkerboard like pattern running along the coast and border along Canada. (Gaps of a couple kilometers between sites). Yes I'm playing with chance.

Highways could honestly mostly do without unless they are major bridges, hitting a highway with an HGV doesn't seem too logical even if they are a major artery to the US economy, if the US really wanted to, roads could be fixed up really quickly. It is likely important to provide protection to key nodes like highway interchanges or rail depots ports, airports etc, but not every mile of railway either.

The most protection should be given to military instillations, power plants, the larger electrical grid infrastructure like transformer stations, communication hubs, and densely populated urban centers. Sorry suburbs.

(Even all of this would be insanely expensive)
 
I made a map of the west coast of what I'm thinking of. I didnt actually go through the trouble of finding every single major node I just plopped circles around (15km radius) where there seemed to be important things. There are roughly 300 circles? I didn't count them good. The densest areas are cities, ports, and military bases, (I don't know where all the bases are though so I only did a few of the biggest of them)
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Nx4eu said:
I have nothing against Alaska but they could probably do without a extensive missile defense except to protect key military installations and radar sites.
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Exactly.

The reason I had to exclude Alaska from the "Border with Canada" measurement is because Alaska's border with Canada alone is some 1200miles.

All I wanted was the Lower 48 border length, and I'm only talking about covering about half that length. A bit around the Western end of Washington state to cover the naval bases and the Boeing factories, and then from Michigan east.



Nx4eu said:
Highways could honestly mostly do without unless they are major bridges, hitting a highway with an HGV doesn't seem too logical even if they are a major artery to the US economy, if the US really wanted to, roads could be fixed up really quickly. It is likely important to provide protection to key nodes like highway interchanges or rail depots ports, airports etc, but not every mile of railway either.
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Yes, covering the all major bridges would be a necessity as well. I'd forgotten about those.

And covering the mountain passes.

The point was that the major interstates all have cities on them that would demand to be protected. And bridges and mountain passes that really do need to be protected.

Crud, I live in a place where if a 200+ mile chunk of mountain road has an avalanche or landslide, half the state is now a 600+ mile trip instead of 300 miles away.



Nx4eu said:
(Even all of this would be insanely expensive)
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And that's the problem.

Even covering the "bare minimum" would be extremely expensive. Providing full coverage would be impossibly expensive.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Exactly.

The reason I had to exclude Alaska from the "Border with Canada" measurement is because Alaska's border with Canada alone is some 1200miles.

All I wanted was the Lower 48 border length, and I'm only talking about covering about half that length. A bit around the Western end of Washington state to cover the naval bases and the Boeing factories, and then from Michigan east.




Yes, covering the all major bridges would be a necessity as well. I'd forgotten about those.

And covering the mountain passes.

The point was that the major interstates all have cities on them that would demand to be protected. And bridges and mountain passes that really do need to be protected.

Crud, I live in a place where if a 200+ mile chunk of mountain road has an avalanche or landslide, half the state is now a 600+ mile trip instead of 300 miles away.




And that's the problem.

Even covering the "bare minimum" would be extremely expensive. Providing full coverage would be impossibly expensive.
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Just as a hypothetical even if the system costed ~1 trillion dollars to build, I think it could be justified if you spread the cost across a decade or two as a large nation wide infrastructure project akin to the national highway system. The thing that kills this would be the maintenance cost. I honestly couldn't imagine how darn expensive it would be to field a fleet of 10s of thousands of different levels of layered air defense systems and radars and making sure they all are ready for the foreseeable future. Say goodbye to all other defense programs, they'll need to be cut to just have the money to maintain the sunk cost. Doing such would be the ultimate form of isolationism as you'll likely lose the budget for any power projection efforts and modernization. But hey at least most of the US is now missile proof (probably not)
 
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Nx4eu said:
Just as a hypothetical even if the system costed ~1 trillion dollars to build, I think it could be justified if you spread the cost across a decade or two as a large nation wide infrastructure project akin to the national highway system. The thing that kills this would be the maintenance cost. I honestly couldn't imagine how darn expensive it would be to field a fleet of 10s of thousands of different levels of layered air defense systems and radars and making sure they all are ready for the foreseeable future. Say goodbye to all other defense programs, they'll need to be cut to just have the money to maintain the sunk cost. Doing such would be the ultimate form of isolationism as you'll likely lose the budget for any power projection efforts and modernization. But hey at least most of the US is now missile proof (probably not)
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I think the missiles would actually be pretty cheap to maintain. Like with the Trident missiles, once you have the initial loadout for all the bases, you can basically just make enough for each base to shoot one a year or even less. Sealed, "wooden rounds".

The radars would be expensive.
 
Scott Kenny said:
HGVs have a stupidly tight intercept footprint, roughly 7-10km from the target site max.
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Of which there is about 10.

www.airandspaceforces.com

Space Force Starts Work on Golden Dome, Massive Effort Ahead

The Space Force is playing a key role in planning for “Golden Dome,” President Donald Trump’s air and missile defense project, leaders said.
www.airandspaceforces.com www.airandspaceforces.com

www.defensenews.com

‘Golden Dome’ success will require national buy-in, official says

Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein said the biggest challenge with President Trump's Golden Dome will be organizational collaboration.
www.defensenews.com www.defensenews.com
 
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Forest Green said:
Of which there is about 10.

www.airandspaceforces.com

Space Force Starts Work on Golden Dome, Massive Effort Ahead

The Space Force is playing a key role in planning for “Golden Dome,” President Donald Trump’s air and missile defense project, leaders said.
www.airandspaceforces.com www.airandspaceforces.com

www.defensenews.com

‘Golden Dome’ success will require national buy-in, official says

Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein said the biggest challenge with President Trump's Golden Dome will be organizational collaboration.
www.defensenews.com www.defensenews.com
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Each end of each military air field.

Each corner of each Naval Base, unless each leg of the base perimeter is more than 20km.

Army bases we'll need to debate on, since most Army bases have big chunks of ground that are only used for training in and so could be left undefended as impact sponges.

The entirety of DC will take at least 6.

Probably all of Hawaii. Alaska will still only need the "each corner of the base" minimums.

I'm going to assume that the missile fields are undefended, since each silo is far enough away from any others that they'd need a defensive launcher per silo.
 
In other news:
The Ministry of Defense emphasizes the SPY-7 radar to be installed on two ASEVs has five times the tracking capability of the existing SPY-1 radar and can deal with not only ballistic missiles on lofted trajectories but also multiple ballistic missiles launched simultaneously.

The defense ministry plans to equip the ASEVs with the upgraded Type 12 SSM (ship-launched type), the Tomahawk cruise missile, and high-power laser system, which are scheduled to be installed on the ASEVs after 2032. Not only that, the defense ministry plans to install the Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI), a next-generation missile defense system, specifically designed to shoot down hypersonic missiles on the two ASEVs and the JMSDF’s Aegis destroyers.
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Forest Green said:
www.navalnews.com

Japan's ASEV Super Destroyer: Fresh Details Unveiled - Naval News

The mock-up of the Japan's future AEGIS System Equipped Vessel (ASEV), a large destroyer was showcased at IDEX 2025.
www.navalnews.com www.navalnews.com
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It is the kind of idea a ten year old would come up with. Had a newbie joined this forum and suggested such a thing in it’s own thread, he would be heavily criticized or ignored.
 
I will like to remind people that the US use to have a decent air defense network in the Nike System.

That was nearly 300 or so launchers spread across the country.

Now you can do away with the inner ones, ADA wise it be simpler to defend against a missile, hypersonic or not, that trying to hit... Say St Louis Missouri over one trying to hit DC due to it being force to remain in cruise and can't dodge. Plus the further infront that you can station the ADA system the easier it becomes so I doubt that the system will have many interior installations.

Throw in that the old Safeguard series of systems was expected to need 8 radars sites, One PAR and a MSR combo each, as well?

Actually will not need that much to protect CONUS.

And you can save money by using off the self gear like the SPY6 and it data systems for the radar.
 
Firefinder said:
And you can save money by using off the self gear like the SPY6 and it data systems for the radar.
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Probably LRDR, so SPY7/TPY3, but yes. All the bits exist as separate pieces (short of Glide Breaker missiles, and even then I'm sure SM6s could play the role), just need to turn in all into a single system.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Probably LRDR, so SPY7/TPY3, but yes. All the bits exist as separate pieces (short of Glide Breaker missiles, and even then I'm sure SM6s could play the role), just need to turn in all into a single system.
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As is all those bits can talk and communicate to each other so as long as you didn't do try to make it do extra duties it should be pretty easy to set up a permanent emplacement deal for them.

Well besides finding the land for them.
 
Firefinder said:
As is all those bits can talk and communicate to each other so as long as you didn't do try to make it do extra duties it should be pretty easy to set up a permanent emplacement deal for them.

Well besides finding the land for them.
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Relatively easy to carve out a corner of each military base to stick the launchers. But if you have to buy more land in the areas that need defended, well, that's going to be stupid expensive.
 
Firefinder said:
I will like to remind people that the US use to have a decent air defense network in the Nike System.

That was nearly 300 or so launchers spread across the country.
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There were a HELL of a lot more than 300 launchers. (134 145 batteries.) They produced 2550 W31s (nukes) just for the Nike Hercules force.
 
sferrin said:
There were a HELL of a lot more than 300 launchers. (134 145 batteries.)
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There are dozens, if not hundreds, of decommissioned Nike bases scattered across the CONUS (No doubt there are some too in Hawaii and Alaska).
 
sferrin said:
There were a HELL of a lot more than 300 launchers. (134 145 batteries.) They produced 2550 W31s (nukes) just for the Nike Hercules force.
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Was using launchers as in Launch Sites where all the gear is for the missiles.

As in the entire base or section of the base where the Nike systems was set up. In Army parlence that is use interchangablely with launchers as in the gear that fire the missile. Which is a largely a hold over from the OG Nike Replacement system that resulting in Safeguard due to how that systems launchers can be spread over 25 miles from the main control system.

Speaking of Safeguard the expect need to have the Full set up?

Was 9 base complexes set up in Conus, plus two between Alaska and Hawaii for a total of 11 full up ABM systems with radar Pyramids. Doubt a hypersonic defense system will need more then that.
 
Firefinder said:
Speaking of Safeguard the expect need to have the Full set up?

Was 9 base complexes set up in Conus, plus two between Alaska and Hawaii for a total of 11 full up ABM systems with radar Pyramids. Doubt a hypersonic defense system will need more then that.
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Probably won't need more radar sites than that, but will need a lot more launcher sites.
 
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