Author: Lan Shunzheng
First published from: Sky Vision
At present, hypersonic weapons have formed combat effectiveness and have become the preferred weapon for striking high-value key military targets. The hypersonic weapons that are now in service can be roughly divided into two categories: boost-reentry gliders and boost-breathing cruise aircraft. Among them, the booster-reentry glider is generally modified from the existing model of missile, which is composed of a carrier and a hypersonic load, the carrier is a rocket engine, and the load is a warhead of a conical or waverider configuration, which has no power unit itself, and only relies on gravity and aerodynamic force for long-distance gliding, and after launch, the aircraft is sent outside the atmosphere by the rocket engine, and then the engine is detached, and the load glides long-distance under the action of its own gravity, so as to complete the reconnaissance or strike mission. The booster-aspirated cruise consists of two parts: a booster rocket and a cruise aircraft. The cruising aircraft can rely on its own scramjet engine to achieve hypersonic flight, but because the scramjet engine cannot work normally at low Mach speeds, it first needs to be accelerated to supersonic speed by rocket booster, and then the scramjet engine can be started to achieve hypersonic flight.
The existing air-space defense system has many difficulties in intercepting the above types of hypersonic weapons.
First of all, in order to achieve effective interception of hypersonic targets, it is required that the early warning detection system must be able to detect targets at a distance of 1000km. However, with the current technology, the detection distance of such platforms is generally 500~1000km, which cannot provide sufficient early warning time for the interception system. However, the existing space orbit detection platform is seriously insufficient in terms of the number and type of sensors, and the ability to monitor and distinguish the attributes of hypersonic targets flying near space is weak. When the aircraft is flying at hypersonic speed, the high temperature and high pressure caused by the sharp friction between the body and the air can ionize the air, making the air molecules present a plasma state, because the plasma itself is also a dielectric, so it can phase shift, refract and even absorb the external electromagnetic waves, which will play a natural stealth effect, thereby further increasing the difficulty of its detection and identification.
Secondly, hypersonic vehicles have strong maneuverability and unpredictable ballistic trajectories, and it is difficult to continuously track targets by relying on existing tracking and detection methods. For example, in the late gliding/cruising stage, in addition to direct dive attacks, the boost-reentry glider may also use jump-dive attacks, spiral-dive attacks and other attack methods, which makes it impossible for the defense system to continuously track and lock on to the target.
At the same time, because the flight Mach number of hypersonic vehicles can reach 5~20, it can achieve precise strikes on targets 1000 km away in less than 10 minutes, which greatly shortens the "decision-attack-strike" cycle, and it is difficult for the air and space defense command and control system to complete the combat process of detection-tracking-identification-decision-interception before the target arrives. In addition, the flight range of hypersonic vehicles is mainly located in near space, which happens to be the interception blind zone of existing air and space defense weapons, and most of the existing air and space defense weapon systems have a large uninterceptable area for hypersonic targets flying in near space. Therefore, a weapon system such as a hypersonic vehicle, which can well integrate space, space and energy, can easily penetrate the existing air-space defense system and complete the strike mission before the enemy reacts or even detects.
In order to achieve effective interception of hypersonic vehicles in near space, it is first necessary to realize the early warning and detection of hypersonic targets flying across airspace, and to build a multi-platform early warning and detection system for space/near space/ground (sea) surface:
1. Improve the space-based early warning and detection platform, and take terahertz sensors and infrared and visible light sensors as the primary detection means (due to the existence of the "thermal barrier" effect, the infrared radiation characteristics of hypersonic vehicles are very obvious, in which the infrared wavelength of radiation is mainly medium wave, and the infrared radiation intensity of the aircraft increases geometrically with the increase of flight speed, so the capture of infrared features is one of the important methods to detect hypersonic vehicles), focusing on the detection of the booster and glide/cruise sections of hypersonic targets.
2. Construct a new type of near space/aerial detection platform, deploy floating detectors that can stay in near space for a long time, and focus on the detection of hypersonic targets in the booster and glide/cruise segments.
3. Upgrade the existing ground (sea) early warning and detection platform, network and operate multi-band and multi-system radar, visible light, infrared and other types of sensors, and focus on the detection of gliding/cruising and diving sections of hypersonic targets. In addition, due to the flexible trajectory of hypersonic vehicles, it is difficult to apply traditional trajectory prediction methods, so it is also required that the early warning and detection network have strong trajectory continuous tracking and accurate trajectory prediction capabilities.
In order to deal with this new threat, on the one hand, it is necessary to tap the potential of existing air-space defense weapon systems, upgrade the technical performance of kinetic interceptors, fill the firepower loopholes in intercepting nearby space targets, and especially vigorously develop space-based interception platforms. Due to the high superiority of the air-based platform itself, the air-based interceptor missile has incomparable advantages in terms of interception distance and response speed, so the development of low-cost and versatile air-based interceptor missile is a defense strategy with a high benefit ratio.
On the other hand, new types of means of confrontation should be developed. For example, beam energy weapons are a means of confrontation with great application value, which produces extremely high energy density in the key parts of the target in a certain way, so as to achieve the effect of damage, paralysis, and killing the target. Depending on the method adopted, beam energy weapons can be divided into laser weapons, microwave weapons, and particle beam weapons. Judging from the current level of technological maturity, laser weapons and microwave weapons have great potential for military application, and they are likely to become an important means of counter-attack in the future.
In view of the fact that the maximum Mach number of hypersonic vehicles can reach 20, it can strike any target in the world within 60 minutes, which greatly shortens the command and decision-making cycle of conventional defensive operations. Therefore, in order to effectively deal with the surprise attack of hypersonic vehicles, the command and control system must complete a series of decision-making tasks such as the analysis and processing of the air situation, the identification and judgment of targets, and the lifting and interception of defensive weapons in an extremely limited time. Therefore, on the basis of the existing air-space defense command and control system, it is necessary to build a global efficient integrated command and control network integrating attack and defense by reducing command nodes based on data link technology, improving decision-making ability based on artificial intelligence technology, and integrating offensive and defense systems based on data fusion.