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222: Hypersonic Long Range Weapons
Pic Courtesy: France 24
Emerging class of missile technologies include manoeuvrable vehicles that carry warheads through the atmosphere at more than five times the speed of sound. Hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs), like all weapons delivered by medium and longer range rocket boosters, can travel at speeds of at least Mach 5, or about 1 mile per second. The key difference between missiles armed with HGVs and missiles armed with ballistic re-entry vehicles (i.e., those that travel on a ballistic trajectory throughout their flight) is not their speed, but their ability to manoeuvre and change course after they are released from their rocket boosters. Hypersonic weapons can be classified into two distinct categories:
- Hypersonic cruise missiles. These operate much like typical sub-sonic and supersonic cruise missiles (using air-breathing engines to power themselves through the atmosphere) but fly at higher speeds. They cannot match the speeds or ranges achievable by boost-glide vehicles.
Pic Courtesy: PTs IAS Academy
- Hypersonic boost-glide Vehicles. They are accelerated to extremely high velocities on rocket boosters similar to those used to launch ballistic missiles. They then proceed to glide, unpowered, through the upper atmosphere until reaching their target.
Pic Courtesy: Union of Concerned scientists
The flight of hypersonic boost-glide vehicle is divided into six stages: boost, ballistic, re-entry, pull-up, glide, and terminal phases. In the boost phase, a rocket booster accelerates the missile carrying the hypersonic vehicle until the booster exhausts its fuel, at which point it detaches from the glide vehicle and falls back to Earth. In the ballistic phase, the vehicle travels above the atmosphere on a ballistic trajectory under only the influence of gravity. Both of these phases are comparable to a ballistic missile launch. Hypersonic trajectories diverge from those of ballistic missiles in the re-entry and pull-up phases. Here, the vehicle pierces the upper atmosphere, then slows its descent to enter a stable glide trajectory. In the glide phase, the vehicle generates aerodynamic lift to sustain near-level flight. Finally, in the terminal phase, the glider dives toward its target.
These weapons outperform existing missiles in terms of delivery time and evasion of early warning systems. Their flight characteristics are distinct from those of typical ballistic missiles, which spend most of flight above the atmosphere and are capable of only limited manoeuvrability, and from those of subsonic or supersonic cruise missiles, which travel through the atmosphere but fly more slowly.
219: Interesting Classification of Warfare into Generations
While researching for “future of warfare”, I came across an interesting article about classification of wars over the years into generations.
These thoughts are of Russian military theorists Major General Vladimir Slipchenko (1935–2005). General Slipchenko is considered as one of the leading thinkers on “non-contact” and “sixth-generation” warfare.
Slipchenko’s while examining warfare, classifies warfare into six generations.
Slipchenko’s Generations of Warfare
(Source: Vladimir Slipchenko, Voiny Novogo Pokolenia – Distantsionnye i Bezkontaktnye (Moscow: Olma-Press, 2004), pp. 32– 34.
No Contact Warfare. Slipchenko ties the idea of sixth-generation warfare to a concept of non-contact or contactless warfare. He conveys the idea that future war between modern states will take place without direct contact.
Future Warfare. Slipchenko outlined wars of the future as follows:
- The role and importance attached to nuclear weapons will gradually decline.
- Conventional long-range high-precision strike weapons will grow in importance.
- Wars will be shorter than in the past.
- Advanced militaries will restructure their forces from the traditional army, navy and air force to strategic attack forces and strategic defense forces.
- The tactical level of warfare will decline in importance and the strategic level will become the main emphasis in future warfare.
- The main role for land forces in the future will be to support the air force.
Seventh-Generation Warfare: Info Warfare
Slipchenko also worked on the concept of a future “seventh generation” of warfare, which he forecast could emerge in the 2050s among the most advanced military powers. Numerous aspects of this work, especially in relation to the exponential growth in the importance of information in modern and future warfare are already percolating into the modern day warfare.
Slipchenko ahead of his time highlighted the importance of cyber along with information in the future battle space, and also forecast this area emerging as a separate combat arm. He identifies the centrality of information in modern and future warfare, forecasting that its utility would eventually move beyond a combat support role and into the area of essentially a combat arm.
Slipchenko identified information as a future weapon in war similar to the destructive effect of kinetic systems, and suggested that this would influence war in its entirety from beginning to conflict termination. He estimated that info warfare will transform warfare beyond the strategic level to reach truly global scales.
According to Slipchenko, information superiority would be the key to gaining superiority in non-contact warfare. Domination would be required in the information domain of space systems as well as reconnaissance, warning, navigation, meteorological, command and control, and communications assets.
Information Confrontation. Slipchenko argued that the information confrontation demands continuous exploitation as compared to information warfare during a skirmish. Possibly hinting at exploitation of info warfare even in no war conditions (Present day Grey Zone).
Comments
Slipchenko’s Thoughts and predictions are coming true, that too ahead of expected timelines.
Information has become a new domain for warfare.
Information warfare is not in isolation but getting linked with other domains of cyber, space and electronics.
A new service is evolving to deal with this type of warfare (e.g. Chinese Joint Strategic Support Force).
This warfare is being exploited in a conflict scenario, without declaring open war i.e. Grey Zone warfare.
Additional Thought
Seventh or eighth generation warfare is also developing in another direction in parallel. The kinetic or contact warfare being fought by unmanned machines (or a combination of manned and unmanned machines). These machines will have a very high computing power, will be AI enabled and will work in a networked environment.
Random Observations
Sci-Fi movies become reality sooner or later.
Question
What are your views about the direction in which warfare is progressing ?
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References
https://jamestown.org/program/russian-sixth-generation-warfare-and-recent-developments/