Re: The new one will probably get sunk in the same place...
"How do these magic hypersonic missiles turn corners? Otherwise they'll struggle to hit anything but sea...
Modern surface to air missiles have been successfully used to shoot hypersonic warheads from ballistic missiles - as well as being designed to deal with anti-ship missiles. Although that's not really been put to the test in real life."
Hypersonic missiles are generally ballistic missiles which will be programmed in their downward trajectory to already be pointing towards the target, from then they will only require gentle steering which can be achieved by disrupting the airflow around the missile, the simplest way is to fire compressed air at various points from the missile body - but there are other methods.
So you think that steering one of these things is hard? Think how hard it is to detect something moving so fast, once you have actually detected it (it has moved miles within a single sweep of your search RADAR) you then only have a few seconds to find it in the beam of a tracking RADAR, arm your defence system, get a missile actually launched against gravity and then somehow get it in the same airspace of the object doing over seven thousand five hundred miles per hour. By the time your air defence missile has launched and actually got into the steering stage post takeoff - you're too late - and even if you do, by some miracle, hit it (you won't), the kinetic energy left in the bit and bobs you just hit will more than likely still hit what it was aiming at causing substantial damage. The only hope of hypersonic missile interception is laser based - and we're a long way from generating the sort of energy required to stop a missile hardened enough to survive mach 10 at range.
So no, we haven't got any anti-missile system capable of hitting a hypersonic missle in the real world. If anyone has managed to hit one it was a carefully constructed "test" with known timings etc. - ie the interception was carefully pre-calculated to the last detail.
Crickey, the US couldn't even intercept a subsonic Iraq Silkworm heading for USS Missouri that they saw coming in good time! Luckily for them an ancient Type 42 (HMS Gloucester) was part of the escort - engaging the lumbering 1st gen sea-skimmer with her Sea Dart while USS Jarret's CIWS "goalkeeper" engaged Missouri's chaff instead of the target!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
