Russia deploys Avangard hypersonic missile system | Hacker News Reader

Russia deploys Avangard hypersonic missile system

bbc.com

89 pointsZeljkoS89 comments

I was under the impression that "shoot the missile down with another missile" style ICBM defence doesnt work, and that everyone already knows this. Or rather, it has a ~50% success rate, which is essentially the same thing if your adversary can launch multiple rockets or if any of them have MIRV capabilities.

Does this hypersonic maneuverability thing actually change anything or is it just sabre rattling?

It reached a 50% success rate in 2005 and since then, hard data has been hard to come by. We are talking about classified military projects. It wouldn't surprise me if what "everyone already knows" based on 90s news stories is wrong in 2019.

The Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system has conducted 9 live fire tests since it became operational in 2005 and 6 were successful (67% success rate). The data is publicly released and easy to find.

https://www.mda.mil/global/documents/pdf/testrecord.pdf

Those tests are also highly contrived and do not match real world scenarios. Experts mostly agree that ICBM intercept capabilities remain essentially untested, and are likely to fail in the real world. The armscontrolwonk.com blog site has tons of relevant articles from defense experts explaining the limitations of current missile defense: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aarmscontrolwonk.com+m... The tl;dr is that it's all advertising.

It doesn't have to actually work reliably. It just has to present the appearance of possibly working some of the time in order to complicate an adversary's targeting plan and act as an effective deterrent.

>> It just has to present the appearance of possibly working some of the time in order to...

I though that was going to say "... ensure continued funding."

Why would I think that?

From what I can see from your link, the agreement seems to be that intercept capabilities are useful for outlier adversaries like Iran and North Korea, but not for major adversaries like Russia or China.

Fwiw, I tend to think that linking to a page of Google results rather than a specific article doesn't contribute much to the conversation. A specific link would be a better contribution. You might also make some argument as to why this blog and its authors are credible sources.

GMD is only against small attack with limited warheads. North Korea or Iran type scenario. It's also the official purpose of the program.

Russians and Chinese have multiple ways to counter GMD.

- Countermeasures that are indistinguishable from warheads during mid-course. Extremely light with same temperature as the warhead can't be distinguished from real warhead in vacuum. The number of interceptors required becomes prohibitively expensive.

- R-36 has 8000 kg throw weight, it can launch 4000 kg to LEO. Reducing the number of warheads enables Russian use trajectories where GMD don't reach. Latest versions carry just one.

The new thing in these hypersonic missiles is the ability to target small moving point targets like ships. The ability to steer, fly complex low profile trajectory and possibly some sensors in the vehicle make them new development. These are weapons for conventional conflicts and for limited nuclear conflicts.

ICBM warheads are already hypersonic weapons, but they can hit only stationary targets. Ballistic missile defense programs don't even attempt to counter them after they enter the atmosphere 6 km/second. Only the low end of Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBM's) can be intercepted during re-entry. Adding small asymmetries in the IDBM warhead makes them wobbly and impossible to hit even if targeting would be exact.

Additional simple ICBM counter-countermeasure is to send 2-3 nuclear warheads toward same target in close sequence (single missile can deliver them all). First explodes in the upper atmosphere creating ionized and hot fireball that is impenetrable to radar and IR sensors. Following warheads enter trough the the previous fireball and only the final warhead hits the target.

So what you’re talking about is probably the midcourse defense system in Alaska, which targets missiles in the middle of their flight path and hopefully protects the entire US from ICBMs (although we don’t have enough interceptor missiles defend against a Russian attack and it’s not clear that they could actually hit the incoming ICBMs). There’s another kind of missile defense system, which targets the missile payloads as they are falling (in their terminal phase). These systems are highly effective, but they can only defend a small area. We have them around military bases, Washington D.C., etc. They won’t work against Avangard.

Terminal phase intercepts don't work against ICBM's. They work only against SRBM's and some IRBM's with slower terminal speeds. Even small intentional wobbly in a fast warhead requires so fast mid-course corrections that it becomes physically impossible for a missile to do.

Sprint missiles used nuclear explosions and neutron flux to disable incoming nuclear warheads from distance but even they have to get relatively close and they probably don't work against conventional warheads.

Wouldn't the missile itself be a warhead for conventional use? Depending on its mass, at hypersonic impapct speeds?

> There’s another kind of missile defense system, which targets the missile payloads as they are falling (in their terminal phase). These systems are highly effective, but they can only defend a small area. We have them around military bases, Washington D.C., etc.

Do you think "highly effective" is fair? The article I read about THAAD suggest it's probably effective against short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballastic missles; marginally effective against a limited number of ICBMs; and essentially ineffective against a large number of ICBMs. Against an adversary like Russia that has a ton of ICBMs, I don't think THAAD systems can protect even a small geographic area like DC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De...

https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/usmissiledefense

Even a low success rate forces an adversary to allocate many more ICBMs to each target in order to ensure destruction, and thus maintain a credible strategic deterrent. Or they need to develop alternative strategic weapons like this new missile. Russia can only barely afford to do that and every ruble they spend on those weapons is a ruble not available for invading their neighbors.

Russia and the USA already have more than enough for 50%, and will continue to have more than enough for that even after the next round of nuclear weapon disarmament.

I think the big deterrent is still that the nuclear submarines will probably survive and be able to retaliate — even with 50% defence — so MAD still applies.

Although, part of me has been wondering for a while now: could the USA/USSR have put nukes into their embassies in everyone else’s cites? Or does everyone put spies into the embassies which are physically in their own borders (even if that’s not something anyone would admit to) so putting nukes in those embassies would get spotted?

Material comes into embassies in diplomatic bags, these have to pass through security measures at ports and airports. Nuclear material would be easily detected and you could expect the immediate end of diplomatic relations between any states where this kind of event took place.

I think that any state that discovered this could only interpret it as an act of war.

USSR had no problem smuggling in conventional explosives and rather bulky spy gear into the US

I have no problem milking my cow, or goat, so obviously lions can do ballet.

Kinetic intercept has been reliable since (at least) the 1990s, it is why virtually all new weapon systems for the last decade or so are designed around it. They don't need to test the concept, just the implementation. Similar for decoy discrimination.

Many people conflate kinetic intercept with an unrelated design problem: at hypersonic velocities, material ablation limits both the speed and precision of maneuvering. An ordinary missile can easily intercept a hyperkinetic missile, due to the former having much more operational maneuverability and precision, but not the reverse. Over the last few decades, the research has been figuring out how to reliably deliver similar precision on hyperkinetic intercept platforms across all operational environments.

Maneuverability in the atmosphere at hypersonic velocities is significantly constrained by the limits of material physics. What you gain by reducing reaction times you give up in agility.

They don't have to dogfight, flying loops or barrel rolls. Just widening the cone of ballistic trajectories, deforming the cone of possible trajectories into something else make them harder to intercept, by requiring more defense sites over a larger area, which have to react in less time.

The actual reason why Russia (and others) are going for maneuverable hypersonic missiles is that everyone believes that Brilliant Pebbles would work, if it was ever deployed.

And the reason why Brilliant Pebbles suddenly became more relevant was that the reason it was considered unworkable in the 80's was high launch costs. SpaceX has already seriously cut those, and they openly talk about future plans that cut them by an order of magnitude or more. Starship will probably take a lot longer to bring to service than SpaceX says it will, but if it ever reaches the kind of capability Musk talks about, it will be possible for a person to go to sleep in a world where ICBMs work and wake up in a world where one power has a five-nines capable shield against them.

How is Starship related to Brilliant Pebbles? It's Starlink that seems to prove that you can put a constellation of satellites in the tens of thousands affordably. That's the type of coverage that Brilliant Pebbles needs to succeed, right?

Starlink launched by F9 proves that it can be done in principle, but it would take long enough to deploy that a response can be formulated before it's actually online.

The reason Starship is the threat is that the kind of launch capability needed for a mars colonial fleet, and the turnaround times advertised by Musk, mean that such a missile shield could be manufactured in secret and then deployed in a few hours.

> it will be possible for a person to go to sleep in a world where ICBMs work and wake up in a world where one power has a five-nines capable shield against them.

The only rational thing to do if you have a 99.999% capable ABM shield is to perform a decapitation strike, since you know this advantage cannot be permanent. And therefore a rational opponent will perceive such a shield as a mortal danger, and will need to perform a pre-emptive strike before the shield is in place. From their point of view, once the shield is up, they'll be hit anyway, better strike first.

SpaceX does not enter this picture, as they use liquid fuel rockets, not solid fuel. But from Russia's point of view, it's hard to truly believe the US is not secretly seeking such a shield, no matter what assurances they receive that the US missile defense is only limited in scope. The ABM defense is a matter of capability first, and quantity after. Once the capability is properly tuned up (and the US appears to be close to that point), the quantity could be built in a sprint of 12 months. This is not a likely scenario, but it's a plausible one, and Russia needs to plan for it.

> SpaceX does not enter this picture, as they use liquid fuel rockets, not solid fuel.

The point of Brilliant Pebbles is to put several thousand ABM satellites into permanent orbit. This can, and should, be done with liquid fuel rockets.

> The only rational thing to do if you have a 99.999% capable ABM shield is to perform a decapitation strike, since you know this advantage cannot be permanent. And therefore a rational opponent will perceive such a shield as a mortal danger, and will need to perform a pre-emptive strike before the shield is in place. From their point of view, once the shield is up, they'll be hit anyway, better strike first.

The saner alternative is to seek second-strike capability that cannot be intercepted by that shield. Such as hypersonic glide strike vehicles.

And the reason Starship is such a threat is that once there exists a proof-of-concept ABM satellite, a launch vehicle that can take up 150 tons per vehicle, several times a day, times multiple vehicles working at multiple launch sites, can deploy Brilliant Pebbles in a few hours.

> And therefore a rational opponent will perceive such a shield as a mortal danger

So let me explain how nuclear geopolitics actually works ...

Neither Moscow nor Washington believe in MAD, and never have. This became apparent during the talks between Reagan and Gorbachev (or whoever wasn't drunk at the time.) Both sides thought it was folly to not have an actual defensive capability besides game-theory wonks.

Thus Moscow has a shield - an ABM system in a ring around the city.

The US SDI "Star Wars" program was/is likely successful for space-based kinetic defense, but not the original laser stuff.

What Moscow doesn't like is changes to the status quo, like the early Shuttle doing sudden LEO maneuvers. Buran was developed basically to bomb Washington without notice, as retaliation for the Shuttle being able to do that to Moscow.

And Putin is a very different adversary than a bunch of old drunks distracted with an imploding empire.

How is whichever fuel SpaceX uses relevant to this? As i understand it this is about the massive launch capability with decreased cost. So the Space Force could deliver whatever it seems fit to the task be using whatever SpaceX offers as a launch provider. Maybe modularized, in some sort of container, which then deploys them in one go. Like the microsats of today, or Starlink, only on a larger scale. With a few launches, or to be sneaky and sure with a few in parallel at the same time?

Am i wrong?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles

I was under the impression that "shoot the missile down with another missile" style ICBM defence doesnt work, and that everyone already knows this.

Doesn't Israel shoot down incoming missiles with other missiles all the time? Or are you speaking specifically of ICBM-only scenarios?

Yeah ICBM’s, which are hypersonic. Pretty much nothing can reliably guard against a first strike. Maybe a retaliatory strike.

And that's the only reason MAD work. If one side was even about to be able to reliably defend itself against a first strike, the other would have no choice but to strike while they still can.

With enough mid course interceptors, you can. That's simple math

Even Israel's system is really poor (240/690 in may) and it doesn't try to shoot down hypersonic missiles.

If one of these 240 was aimed at your family house you'd be glad it was intercepted though.

Perhaps a stupid question, but during the re-entry glide I'd expect the glider to be shrouded by plasma. Doesn't it stop radio signals? How does the glider get information on the route?

It may get last-minute trajectory telemetry during the boost phase, but after that it's all internal measurements and timing by the IMU.

Makes sense. The video simulation shows satellites correcting the glider's path after it has left the booster. They even drew the hot plasma around it...

Plasma shield also means no radar to scan for missile defenses, so I guess the maneuvering is just random?

Big bright ball of plasma might also make a great target for said missile defense kill vehicle.

Western sources routinely dismiss claims that plasma stealth is in practical use / is of practical use. We'll have to see of course.

And yes, plasma generated by re-entry fireballs are plenty detectable in other areas of the spectrum.

> Western sources routinely dismiss claims that plasma stealth is in practical use / is of practical

Given that the A-12/SR-71 were designed to use A-50 fuel addition for plasma stealth I am confused by this statement.[1]

[edit: reworded from definitive statement of actual use]

[1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29787/the-sr-71-blackb...

Well, my wording was a little imprecise. Plasma stealth as a physical concept is real, there's little doubt about that. I wasn't aware of the linked application (that's so cool! Thanks for sharing), but I would argue that that demonstrates a limited application of plasma stealth (rear aspect and plume RCS reduciton). Typical claims of plasma stealth involve somehow cloaking the entire fuselage and providing all-aspect stealth.

I guess what I was trying to get at is that western sources typically downplay the threat posed by any mention of plasma stealth, typically usually some combination of "we don't actually know if their systems use plasma stealth in a meaningful manner" and "even if they did, we don't believe that it poses of a significant threat".

Not a stupid question. What you're referring to is the blackout period during reentry. It's a challenge not just for missiles but spacecraft too. Lots of research has gone into it:

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/201000...

Beyond the advanced research concepts though, I believe the leading solution is typically inertial navigation (or a variation thereof):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016SPIE10158E..13L/abstra...

I don't know how this system works but US hypersonic missile designs suggest how it could work without requiring radio signals. Inertial guidance gets you into the general area of the target, at which point you switch to active terminal guidance i.e. the missile can identify and maneuver toward the selected target.

This is much more difficult than it sounds. At hypersonic velocities, your entire terminal guidance system is being actively destroyed by atmospheric ablation. Decades of research went into how to make a terminal guidance system that survived just long enough while retaining sufficient precision of control to hit the target. It is an exotic materials science problem.

Does a piece of cork amount to "exotic material science."

Disposable heatshields are certainly used on all of them.

And i always thought the whole point of a missile would be its one time use..

Yay. We've found another way to wipe out populations with no benefit to other populations. Is there any scenario where weapons of mass destruction deescalate?

Russia has a history of announcing weapon systems for propaganda purposes, and then it turns out they're mostly on paper, half done or of low quality. That doesn't mean this is the case here, but they do have a history of over promising and under delivering. The reality is that Russia's conventional or "normal" ICBM weapons are far more of a threat to the US than any hypersonic platforms.

The Chinese are the ones to watch. They have been much more thoughtful about their hypersonic weapons development and are trying to develop tactical hypersonic weapons in addition to strategic assets.

Any peace dividend for the research?

Are we a step closer to hypersonic commercial flight?

Or rather, back to it.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde

At Mach 2, Concorde was supersonic, not hypersonic

Yes, but we're worst from that now, for commercial flights.

From supersonic back to subsonic...

Concorde was a loss-making government-subsidized program, and you can always make things "advance" by burning money. Although on occasional years it was (barely) operationally profitable, it never made a profit once depreciation of assets was considered, much less the cost of the development program. Given the available technology and society's decision to ban sonic booms over populated areas, this (we know now) was inevitable.

It's worse than that. In order to conserve fuel, most commercial jets fly slower than they used to.

I hear that often, but it seems this doesn't apply to the flights between Asia and France which go over my town.

I know this because when i'm awake in the night i can hear them trough double paned glass in closed windows and then click on flightradar24.com to see who it is.

And then see them between 10.5km to 11.5km up, with speeds between 950 and 1050 kph above ground. Airbus 380 or Boeing 777-ER usually.

This goes both ways between Paris/CDG and many large locations in Asia, easily a dozen per night and direction.

> First, let's establish some terms. Hypersonic is, obviously, supersonic on steroids. But while "supersonic" has the clear cut definition of being faster than the speed of sound (Mach 1), hypersonic is a little fuzzier. Generally, hypersonic speeds are the point at which the molecules of air that surround the aircraft start to change by breaking apart (dissociation) and/or picking up electrical charge (ionization). These things don't happen at one particular speed, so the term "hypersonic" instead refers to the point at which they start to meaningfully affect the mechanics of flight—generally accepted to be Mach 5, or 3,836.35 mph in conditions of 20 degrees Celsius at sea level.

Source: https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a28426/hypersonic-sp...

Worth considering that nearly all of these hypersonic weapons rely on a pretty beefy booster to get the initial altitude and energy. I don't know what the range/time range off between these hypersonic solutions versus a pure ballistic solution would be. In a military context, these hypersonics grant a variety of interesting capabilities, all of which seem relatively irrelevant to civilian applications.

This appears to be a destabilizing first strike weapon.

I fail to see how this is any better than existing first strike weapons.

Anti-anti-ballistic-missile technology doesn't mean much when anti-ballistic missiles barely work, and all your adversaries have lots of rockets each with lots of reentry vehicles.

Maybe destabilizing means we, the US now have less time to make a decision on a first strike by Russia and the potential for an incorrect analysis leads to a retaliatory strike before we lose the ability to do so.

That sounds like it would be a net negative for Russia

Missiles are worthless if you can destroy them before they are launched.

You mean it appears to bring us back to the situation before the US invalidated the ABM treaty, causing an arms race, right?

Not necessarily.

Dissuasion must be credible and that requires credible delivery systems (missiles).

Thus, if for example the US develop anti-missile systems that are able to shoot down Russian missiles then Russia no longer has a credible dissuasive arsenal. Consequently Russia must develop new missiles that evade anti-missile systems. This does not mean that they are designed for first strikes, it just tells the US "don't hit us because we can really still hit you back".

It's the age old race between offensive and defensive systems.

This renders the investment into advanced defences - i.e. the ring of fire that NATO has surrounded its enemies with - useless.

At least in the case of Russia.

It also puts the carrier question to rest. Carriers are a policing weapon - during all-out war, hypersonic missiles take them out.

Missile Defense technology just got a boot up the arse. I guess we're going to see freakin' laser beams soon enough.

It's one of the promised 'asymmetric answers'.

Smart.

> They have a "glide system" that affords great maneuverability and could make them impossible to defend against

Determine range of maneuverability and make appropriate size explosion in it's path.

So shoot it down with a nuke? This has its own problems, EMP being notable.

There is a long history of using nukes to intercept missiles.

Here's one of the USA's (ancient) efforts:[1] Both missiles [long range and short range] used nuclear warheads, and they relied on destroying or damaging the incoming warhead with radiation rather than heat or blast.

The technology was quite impressive for its time. A Youtube video is titled "SPRINT ABM - Zero to Mach 10 in 5 Seconds", with a caption in the video pointing out "white hot skin". [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safeguard_Program#Operation

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msXtgTVMcuA

Yes, that was very impressive. But you forgot to mention the operational range of the used missile system.

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile) says 25miles/40km

Think about how many you'd need to reliably protect your denser populated metropolitan areas? And the accompanying radars?

When i first saw this 'Temple of Doom' [4] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1f/SR...

i immediately had to think of the Planet of the Apes movies.

OTOH they'd make really good anchor points in the seawalls we need to build because of rising oceans!1!!

>Such "boost-glide" systems, as they are known (Avangard appears to be one of these), are launched like a traditional ballistic missile, but instead of following an arc high above the atmosphere, the re-entry vehicle is put on a trajectory that allows it to enter Earth's atmosphere quite quickly, before gliding, un-powered, for hundreds or thousands of kilometres. [ ... ] Indeed the glide vehicle's trajectory, "surfing along the edge of the atmosphere" as one expert put it to me recently ...

Almost a century later we're still implementing weapons program as conceived by Nazis. In case of Avangard even the gliding phase speed of 20 Mach is the same as in the Nazi design :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbervogel

"The design was a significant one, as it incorporated new rocket technology and the principle of the lifting body, foreshadowing future development of winged spacecraft such as the X-20 Dyna-Soar of the 1960s and the Space Shuttle of the 1970s. In the end, it was considered too complex and expensive to produce. The design never went beyond mock-up test.

The Silbervogel was intended to fly long distances in a series of short hops. The aircraft was to have begun its mission propelled along a 3 km (2 mi) long rail track by a large rocket-powered sled to about 1,930 km/h (1,200 mph). Once airborne, it was to fire its own rocket engine and continue to climb to an altitude of 145 km (90 mi), at which point it would be travelling at about 21,800 km/h (13,500 mph). It would then gradually descend into the stratosphere, where the increasing air density would generate lift against the flat underside of the aircraft, eventually causing it to "bounce" and gain altitude again, where this pattern would be repeated. Because of aerodynamic drag, each bounce would be shallower than the preceding one, but it was still calculated that the Silbervogel would be able to cross the Atlantic, deliver a 4,000 kg (8,800 lb) bomb to the continental United States"

This lacks a 'now playing:'

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJC-_j3SnXk (O Fortuna - Carmina Burana - Carl Orff, 3m28s)

Strong move! I'll raise you the "Götterdämmerung will fly" scene - https://youtu.be/gwsPLciYPyU?t=32 - in particular and the whole movie in general :)

I tend to think the likely explanation of Russian hypersonic weapons is akin to commercial sector marketing of AI, all too often hype over substance.

Russia is simply unable to conventionally compete economically and militarily with the US.

So in order to buttress domestic and international support for Russia’s Putin regime, the result is hypersonic information operations.

Unlike conventional precision guided weapons for tactical use, hypersonic missiles are strategic and nuclear in focus.

So not as likely to be exposed as vapourware in operational use.

So a likely area for empty chest puffing and peacocking.

Empty theatrics is a real possibility.

Russia is not likely to share hypersonic missile telemetry.

Nor is the US DOD and industry, as keeping quiet allows for opportunity to seek addition funding to counter hollow capability.

I wouldn't believe it's anything close to operational and reliable. The only weapon Russia is capable of deploying today is cheap propaganda (which turns out to be quite efficient nowadays, thanks to how much stupid people it can reach via the Internet).

Historically, USSR then Russia never boasted about non existing weapons, on the contrary, they tend to deny their existence until they deem it useful.

Historically. But these are different times and we've been in a propaganda war for a while now.

"I wouldn't believe"

Sure let's base military defense strategy on "believe".

Well, those planning military defense strategy might have more information to go on than Russian PR releases...

They sure do. I also sure they do not consult qwerty456127 on those matters

yeah more propaganda they can't even feed their people.

Agriculture exports, at $20.7 billion in 2017, have overtaken the arms industry as Russia's No. 2 earner. Wheat makes up about a quarter of the total. Russia harvested an area of wheat almost twice as large as the U.S. in the year ended in June, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture

https://www.wsj.com/articles/grain-is-our-oil-russia-is-best...

Russia was the world's largest exporter of wheat in 2017-18:

https://www.export.gov/article?id=Russia-Agricultural-Equipm...

Hmm? Where you've got that? They're doing quite fine. In fact Moscow is one of the most expensive cities in the world...

Perhaps your sources confuse them with USSR or even SK?

It's not Stalin's USSR anymore.

The USA has had Mach 23 ICBMs [1] and Mach 10 anti-ICBMs [2][2.2] since the 60s and 70s respectively. The Sprint rocket actually glows white hot because of its high speed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-30_Minuteman [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile) [2.2] https://youtu.be/msXtgTVMcuA?t=20

All ICBM reach near-orbital velocities (~7.8 km/s, ~17,000 mph, ~Mach 23), including the Russian R-7 (the world's first ICBM in 1957) and the modern ICBMs on which Russia's Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle will ride. This is only possible while outside the atmosphere.

The difference is that the traditional re-entry vehicles quickly slow down to mere supersonic speeds (Mach 1-5) when they re-enter the atmosphere, making them somewhat more vulnerable on final approach. Hypersonic glide vehicles, in contrast, maintain hypersonic speeds (Mach 5-10) until very late.

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