HyperScam - The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Japan Enlisted as Partner in Crime.

The White House press release on the recent Camp David summit between Biden and the leaders of South Korea and Japan was replete with summiteers’ pledges of undying cooperation on missile defense, a sure sign that taxpayers in all three nations are about to have their pockets picked. Sure enough, we now hear that, following the meeting, the Pentagon and its Japanese counterpart are about to confirm a formal agreement on joint development of a “Glide Phase Interceptor” aimed, as its name suggests, at intercepting hypersonic missiles as they glide at enormous speed toward their targets.

The program is a scam, based on fantasy, for a variety of reasons.

A Chimerical Weapon

Fundamentally, hypersonic weapons can themselves best be described as “chimerical.” Conceptually, such missiles come in two varieties: a so-called “boost-glide” system boosted to high altitude by a rocket before detaching and gliding unpowered but at at very high speed to the target; while the other proceeds at equally high speed under its own power, supplied by either a rocket or a “scramjet” engine. Prospectively, both can maneuver in unpredictable fashion, thus frustrating any effort by defenses to track and intercept them.

Though hypersonics have received heavy promotion ever since Vladimir Putin announced the deployment of Avangard, lauding it as an intercontinental hypersonic missile “absolutely invulnerable to any air or missile defense system” in 2018, no one has much to show for all the billions of dollars contractors have trousered in the cause of competition with the Chinese and Russians.

Partners in Threat Inflation Step Up

“Threat” nations have certainly done their part to help things along - the Chinese are regularly reported as developing ever-better models, including one that supposedly flew all the way around the world. Since neither the Middle Kingdom’s defense lobby nor our own have any interest in giving us objective, comprehensive data on these tests, we have no way of knowing the missiles succeeded in maneuvering. This is the weapon’s key attribute, since without it a hypersonic is just another high speed missile, with a predictable trajectory. The Russians have supposedly provided such evidence in the form of their “Kinzhal” missile, routinely described as “hypersonic,” deployed against Ukrainian targets. “It’s almost impossible to stop it,” declared Joe Biden in 2022 following news of Kinzhal in action in Ukraine, a dutiful rendition of the hype. But the Modern War Institute, a research body at West Point, broke ranks with this threat-deflationary report: “The missile is not capable of making sharp turns or rapid changes in direction, which is a critical aspect that makes hypersonic weapons so potentially difficult to intercept. In terms of maneuverability, the Kinzhal is more akin to a giant lawn dart loaded with explosives.” This may explain why the Kinzhal is supposedly vulnerable even to the infamously deficient Patriot air-defense missile.

Broken ARRW

Dispassionate assessments have no effect, of course, on the U.S. hypersonic money machine - $4.7 billion in research spending this year - despite its inability to come up with a working system. Earlier this week we learned that the Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, ARRW, the Air Force’s effort at a boost-glide weapon under development by Lockheed, has failed yet another test, though service chiefs refused to give details. (Following the previous test failure, there was ugly talk by the Secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall, of cancelling the program. But Lockheed programs don’t die that easily, if at all, so Kendall appears to have eaten his words, and the program staggers on.)

A Sensible Frugality

Up until now, spending on anti-hypersonic defenses has been modest, a sensible frugality given that the concept is a fantasy. For a concise explanation of why this is so, I turned to MIT Professor Ted Postol, eminent authority on missile defenses and their shortcomings. Herewith his dim view of the proposed Glide Phase Intercepter:

“The problem is that interceptors have very significant limitations on their maneuvering capability and also take significant time to reach an intercept location.   This means that any intercept that has a chance of being successful must have a valid predicted intercept point (PIP).   There is no way to determine a PIP for a maneuvering vehicle.

In the case of a standard warhead, the warhead follows a highly predictable trajectory.  This trajectory is simply determined by Kepler’s laws at higher altitude, and the laws of aerodynamics as the warhead descends to lower altitudes where it is affected by gravity, momentum, and predictable aerodynamic forces.

A hypersonic vehicle is fundamentally not interceptable because random maneuvers cannot be predicted in advance – which fundamentally means that it is not possible predict where to send interceptors in advance of a hit.

In the case of ballistic warheads, they can in principle be intercepted because it is quite possible to predict where an intercept point can occur.   The problem here is that decoys and other countermeasures can readily make it impossible for all practical purposes to distinguish the warhead from decoys and home on it.

The truth of this matter is that it will never be possible for interceptor-based defense systems to [target] warheads or hypersonic vehicles with anything more than a zero, or near zero probability of a hit.”

Naturally, these awkward realities don’t bother Northrop and Raytheon, current beneficiaries of the Missile Defense Agency’s GPI funding ($209million for 2024) nor to the Japanese, who are increasingly embroiled in U.S. defense programs - thanks to our ongoing and entirely successful efforts to remilitarize Japan, which is set to double its defense spending over the next five years.