The need for speed has been around since our earliest ancestors first hefted a rock.

Then came the sling — to give that rock more hitting power, and reach.

Then came bows. Then bullets. Then missiles.

The next level has arrived: hypersonics

What makes these weapons so potent is they are fast.

Very, very fast.

So fast weapon systems — and their operators — don’t get a chance to react.

Hypersonic is defined as anything flying at sustained speeds greater than 7409km/h (also known as Mach 6, six times the speed of sound). To put that into perspective, that means travelling between Adelaide and Melbourne in about six minutes.

In the past year, both Russia and China loudly proclaimed they had advanced this technology out of the testing arena and into production.

It’s a shift that could change the balance of world power.

So the world’s militaries - including Australia’s - are racing to understand the implications.

“Technology is moving faster and faster all the time,” says BAE Australia Director of Engineering and Technology Brad Yelland. And he says his company is working on understanding the implications of hypersonics: “What is it actually doing as far as the threats, security and safety of our country? And also what is it doing to the effectiveness and capabilities of our current defence force?

ULTIMATE UPSET?

US army researchers fear the ultimate potential of hypersonic weapons — when combined with swarms of AI controlled drones — is to send their troops back into the trenches. It’s a horrific concept — that the age of manoeuvre that has dominated warfare since World War II could return to the hard slog of World War I, where success was gauged in meters — not 10s of kilometres.

“Is there a role for traditional soldiers and armoured vehicles in the future?” asks Mr Yelland. “Is there a role for crewed surface ships in the future? Is warfare going to be swarms of networked unmanned systems and artificial intelligence? We’re a hell of a long way out from that, but we’re working hard to understand where the technology is headed and what possibilities are — and be prepared.”

It’s all because of the speed with which defenders can respond.

Hypersonic cruise missiles (HCMs) can power their way over intercontinental distances, ducking and weaving through the sky before bearing down at full speed on their target.

Hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) are in many ways similar, though they rely on ballistic missiles to boost them into space from where they can glide back down in a controlled manner.

There are hypersonic cannon shells, also offering almost instantaneous — and incredibly accurate — fire support.

And then there are hypersonic drones, able to dash about the planet to see what’s going on, or even to deliver equipment to troops or satellites to orbit.

All can be given artificial-intelligence, sensors and control surfaces enabling them to bypass defences and guide them accurately.

All are potential game-changers.

Enormous nuclear-powered aircraft carriers suddenly seem vulnerable. Large but static strategic bases — such as Guam in the middle of the Pacific Ocean — have a slim chance of countering such an attack. Tanks can suddenly see themselves hit as if out of nowhere.

So just how significant is the emergence of hypersonic weapons?

Do they really have the potential to topple existing balances of power?

There’s little doubt as to their disruptive potential.

Modern ships, tank and aircraft are not stand-alone units. All operate — ideally — within a fully integrated network of capabilities. So defending against hypersonic weapons will need an innovative, and probably integrated solution.

“Decoys and deception are as effective — if not more — than interceptors at the moment,” Mr Yelland says. “We don’t think there’s any doubt on that. But for future ships such as the new Hunter class frigates … that is why we need to understand the problem. Does deception work? What do you have to do to achieve deception? These are questions we are trying to find answers for.”

TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS

The US Army highlights the potential power of hypersonic weapons with a real-world example:

In 1998, US intelligence analysts located Osama bin Laden at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. Navy ships in the Arabian Sea launch their cruise missiles in a ‘snapshot’ to take advantage of the situation. But it took the missiles two hours to reach the target 1770km away. The camp was destroyed, but bin Laden survived: He had left less than an hour earlier.

Incidents such as this prompted the US Department of Defence in 2007 to issue requirements for a Conventional Prompt Global Strike program. It cited the need for the ability to hit “fleeting targets”. It defined this as the ability to launch — and strike — any target around the globe within “one hour”.

It’s an immensely tricky technical and engineering challenge.

“I don’t think people appreciate how much heat is generated in the vehicles, what sort of forces are on the vehicle ...” says Mr Yelland.

HEAT: “Friction from the atmosphere exposes the airframe to extreme temperatures,” Systems Engineer Andrew George of BAE Systems Australia writes.

“We need materials and strategies to cope with the high temperature, which threaten to melt and warp the structure.” At hypersonic speeds, air molecules brushing up against a projectile begin to break down. This applies blowtorch-like heat and stress to the flight vehicle. So such craft have to be capable of withstanding well over 1000C for extended periods. Which means the engineering of the vehicle must be exceedingly precise to prevent ‘burn through’ — as happened to the Space Shuttle Columbia on its fateful return to Earth in 2003.

GUIDANCE: At hypersonic speeds, keeping a projectile stable is difficult enough. Guiding it adds a whole new realm of hurt. The craft must be streamlined. It’s control mechanisms robust. “Until started actually flying these things, nobody understands the impact upon the control surfaces,” Mr Yelland says. “You reach a certain point where all the Normal principals and rules don’t apply.” Which is why tests, such as those at Woomera, are being carried out.

THRUST: Then there’s the issue of boosting an object to the necessary speeds in the first place. Jet engines cannot go beyond Mach 5. Rocket engines are simple but inefficient, but they remain capable of doing the job. Companies such as BAE Systems want more: they want faster, more efficient and controlled propulsion systems. So they’re grappling with the challenges of ramjets, scramjets, and rocket-jet hybrids.

ARMS RACE?

It was not until 2011 — after several dramatic failures — that the first test of a hypersonic weapon was successful: A US Army missile launched from Hawaii was able to hit a target in the Marshall Islands, some 3700km distant, with less than 30 minutes flight time.

Then, in 2013, the US Air Force successfully fired the X-51 Waverider hypersonic vehicle from an old B-52 bomber.

China sat up and took notice: “Once it has functional capabilities, it will be used to implement conventional strikes against our nuclear missile forces and will force us into a disadvantaged, passive position,” a People’s Liberation Army publication warned that same year.

Within months, China engaged in the first of its own long series of tests to attain hypersonic weapon capabilities.

Things came to a head early in 2018.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in March that his forces had finished testing an ‘invincible’ Mach 10 hypersonic cruise missile. He boasted it could “also manoeuvre at all phases of its flight trajectory, which also allows it to overcome all existing and, I think, prospective anti-aircraft and antimissile defence systems, delivering nuclear and conventional warheads”.

His was not the first boast.

But it was but one in a quick succession of similar claims.

Just a few months earlier, in December 2017, Beijing declared it had successfully tested the first of what was to be a mass-production hypersonic weapon, the DF-17 ballistic missile. It is designed to boost a glider vehicle to more than 5000km/h before loosing it to plunge, under guidance, to its target.

Then, in February, Beijing announced it had successfully fitted an experimental electromagnetic rail gun to a warship. Such ‘superguns’ do away with the need for gunpowder producing high-pressure gas to propel projectiles. Instead, rail guns accelerate projectiles using magnetic fields. In doing away with the heat and pressure, the gun can potentially fire projectiles many times faster — and further.

In June, Beijing also claimed it had developed a reliable solid-fuel ramjet to power a new generation of hypersonic air-to-air missiles.

Is there an arms race? And is the West falling behind?

“If you believe everything China and Russia says, yeah,” says Mr Yelland. “I don’t think it’s wrong to assume we’re on the back foot. But I don’t actually put a lot of credence in anything that other than the fact they know something like hypersonics is an important technology.”

Nor would he call it an arms race, yet.

“It’s definitely a technology that is becoming more real. And therefore it has to be considered. If it’s a technology that a country like the US feels they’re on back foot with, then it’s something they put a high priority on.”

Which is why the US Pentagon in 2018 called for urgent submissions to revive its own hypersonic weapons program:

“China’s hypersonic weapons development outpaces ours … we’re falling behind,” Admiral Harry Harris — soon to be the next US ambassador to South Korea — declared in February. “We need to continue to pursue that and in a most aggressive way to ensure that we have the capabilities to both defend against China’s hypersonic weapons and to develop our own offensive hypersonic weapons.”

A CALL TO ARMS

“Both Russia and China are aggressively pursuing hypersonic capabilities,” US Air Force General John Hyten, who runs Strategic Command (STRATCOM), told a Senate Armed Services hearing in 2018. “Hypersonic glide vehicles are threats both Russia, and China are building now …. We don’t have any defence that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us.”

A US Missile Defence Agency report later revealed the Pentagon has placed an urgent call to its suppliers for improved sensors capable of detecting — and tracking — hypervelocity missiles in flight. And a new US Government Accountability Office report warns “there are no existing countermeasures’ against such weaponry.

Hitting a fast-moving target isn’t a new problem. Hitting one that can also dodge, however, is.

After a very shaky start, systems such as THAAD, Patriot PAC-3 and the Aegis-guided SM3 (Standard Missile 3) launched from either warships or ground bases are successfully hitting existing medium-range missiles. They’re also being tested against intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

But hypersonic vehicles appear to be beyond the scan-and-track abilities of most current radar systems. And the interceptors themselves have a long way to go before they can hit an extreme velocity target manoeuvring to evade them.

So, what is needed are more powerful radars backed by faster and more accurate processing systems. These are necessary to guide a new generation of small, hyper-fast and extremely reactive interceptor weapons.

Missile Defence Agency Director of Operations Gary Pennett recently told reporters that it has identified such “sensor and interceptor capability gaps” in important defence arenas.

“The key challenge to US national security and the security of US friends and allies is the emergence of new threats designed to defeat the existing ballistic missile defence system,” he said. “Any software associated with any of those systems might have some capability to track hypersonic systems. This evolving threat demands a globally present and persistent space sensor network to track it from birth to death.”

And efforts develop hypersonic technology continue among Western powers.

BAE Systems’ Reaction Engines Ltd has built an air-breathing rocket engine (SABRE). And the US defence research agency DARPA has contracted Boeing to build a rocket-powered, reusable hypersonic spacecraft dubbed XS-1.

Lockheed Martin’s famously secret ‘Skunk Works’ appears to be building a hypersonic spy plane, the SR-72, which combines traditional jet turbines with a ramjet to reach Mach 6.

In November, DARPA contracted three more companies — Aerojet Rocketdyne, Exquadrum and Sierra Nevada — to design and develop ground-launched propulsion systems for hypersonic missiles. DARPA has also initiated what it calls the ‘Glide Breaker’ project — research into what it would take to knock a hypersonic glider or missile out of the sky.

AUSTRALIA IN THE RACE

On November 15, 2018, the Australian Defence Science and Technology Group (DST) and the University of Queensland signed a $10 million agreement to consolidate their existing hypersonic expertise and test programs.

“High-speed flight science is one of the priority areas to be developed under the Next Generation Technologies Fund, a program focusing on research and development in emerging and future technologies,” a government statement reads.

It doesn’t say much else.

Australia’s Defence Department has imposed a blanket ban on merely discussing the subject. And the US Department of Defence has made moves to tighten reporting under its generally much more open auditing systems.

What we know is DST, UQ, BAE Systems Australia and the US Air-Force Research Labs and Boeing Phantom Works have been putting hypersonic test vehicles through their paces at the Woomera test range, in South Australia’s Outback, for the past decade.

It’s called the HIFiRE program.

It’s met with some success.

“We’re focused around sustained hypersonic flight,” says Mr Yelland. “We are the only guidance and control capability in Australia, and we’re actually one of the world leaders in that technology — which is why something like the Nulka (hovering decoy rocket) is so successful. It’s all about learning and understanding where we can take the technology.”

DOOMSDAY DILEMMA

Hypersonic weapons pose a new threat: they can quickly destroy a nation’s nuclear capabilities. And they could potentially carry nuclear warheads themselves.

“Blundering into a nuclear exchange is one such possible implication that concerns defence analysts, and it has occasionally concerned Congress,” the US Army concedes.

Would a country — not knowing what a swarm of ultra-fast missiles approaching it was armed with or was aimed at — risk losing its chance at getting a retaliatory nuclear strike off the ground?

That, after all, is the whole premise of nuclear deterrence: MAD — Mutually Assured Destruction.

And US Air Force General Hyten is well aware of the fact: “Our response would be our deterrent force, which would be the Triad and the nuclear capabilities that we have to respond to such a threat.”

It’s an issue addressed by a recent RAND report.

It found 23 nations are developing hypersonic technologies. It says adapting this for use in weapons has dangerous implications.

Nations would have to place extra power in the hands of their military commanders: there just wouldn’t be enough time for leaders to be brought up to speed in the event of an attack. Weapons and facilities would have to be more widely dispersed. And all would have to be continuously maintained at a hair-trigger alert status.

RAND wants the technology to be actively controlled and limited through new non-proliferation treaties.

That seems unlikely.

Both Russia and China have announced bold future projects based around hypersonics. And Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis said in April that hypersonic weaponry was “the number one priority” for the US military: “Both having them for ourselves, but also the defence against them. It is our number one priority in (this) developing technology”.

@JamieSeidelNews